Distant edges as seen from the middle

March serves as an in-between month, neither fully winter nor spring, that time of pent-up buds, a point midsemester when we find ourselves halfway through the textbooks.

And so in my elementary classroom of many years ago, we often found ourselves no longer able to look at the seemingly unending math problems before us. We needed a distraction, a puzzle more intriguing than 83.3 x 71.4.

We found it in puddles. Thanks to melted snow and cold rains, an array of them dotted the playground and neighboring cornfield. A trickle of water down the sloping asphalt interested us the most, though, as a shallow bank of snow had forced the stream to collect in a miniature pond. Gradually the water worked its way around the barrier, taking the path of least resistance toward a roadside ditch

So we set our small bodies to building up the snow dam, to stemming the ceaseless flow, organizing our activities while some - because of their age or height or smarts - asserted themselves as leaders. Even with mittens on, hands grew chilled as we gathered snow from grassy areas; feet and pants legs became increasingly soaked as we brushed up against the stream. Crisp air filled our warm lungs, though, invigorating us while we placed our chunks of snow. Some of us even created smaller dams up-stream to slow the flow.

Then finally, as recess neared its end, we paused to stare at our creation - a four-foot high wall of white stretching halfway across a parking space, perceptibly collecting water. Reflecting the gray sky, the lake seem-ed to be a deep abyss from which our insubstantial faces peered back at us.

Pioneers sometimes began their journey west in March. It, too, was an in-between month for them; if Iowa's wintry weather remained at bay, they could reach their destination in time for spring planting, meaning food could be on the tables next autumn. The tall grasses had not quite sprung up yet, allowing them to make good time if the ground stayed hard.

Their diaries describe the plains first as a large meadow, something they could comprehend, then as a great desert, for its deceptively flat and calm terrain appeared virtually lifeless. It was an error, on their part; while the rainfall wouldn't support the forest of trees they'd become accustomed to out East, the soil beneath them proved to be among the world's richest.

How those early travelers must have suffered, pressing against the wind, their collars pulled up as a vista of brown grass stretched into the horizon before them. As evening approached, they'd stop to put up for the night, shooting a rabbit or a prairie chicken for their dinner. Once darkness fell and the comforting scent of campfire smoke wafted about, they might sing or tell stories. These small figures, encased by the dark, realized all they had were one another.

Of course, a few did stay, building towns on the emigrant trail to California, that supposed paradise of unlimited opportunity and wealth.

And for those who did continue on and reached the coast, they found another seemingly desolate span before them, the great barrier of the Pacific Ocean.

Perhaps at night as the campfire began to die, some of those pioneers stared at the abyss that is the sky. The stars amid that depth and mystery, accompanied the moons' hypnotic motion, must have appeared deceptively calm.

For centuries, many could not conceive of the universe larger than our solar system. The stars, they concluded, sat on an invisible sphere that circled our Earth. In the early 1900s, scientists realized those stars formed a galaxy, the Milky Way, of which we primarily saw one spiral arm. By mid-century, astronomers realized our galaxy was only one of millions.

We stand today at the edge of this new frontier, our astronauts barely having waded into the black sea.

Infinity boggles our minds. Perhaps trapped between birth and death, two finite points, we have difficulty thinking outside of that framework. Indeed, "the infinite" is the subject of mystics, of New Agers staring at the phantasmagoric oom, of mathematics seemingly gone awry when we're told in grade school that numbers have no beginning and no end, that zero is just a midpoint. The infinite is faceless, mindless, a mystery too great to grasp.

And so upon entering it, we quantify, give names, take measurements, establish outposts. We project our hope into the spatial and temporal unknown, then lay out plans to tame the wilderness and work to see those efforts come to fruition.

We need the unknown, another problem, which we've never addressed before, to solve. It's not the puzzle's solution, though, but how we fit the pieces together that matter. They tell us who we are; they give us purpose. It's nice, too, if the puzzles have edges, so we can better feel our way around to a denouement.

And what of those puddles back in our playground, of the dam we created to stop the ceaseless water? Our young minds, convinced a limitless future loomed before us if only we could break from the four walls in which bleak March had imprisoned us, found themselves fascinated by the great sky reflected in that sheen of water.

As the recess bell rang and the children ran for the school building, one of us always stayed behind at the puddle, still staring. Then, before breaking into a run himself, he'd stomp his feet into the puddle, just to prove to himself that the bottom was still there.

(originally published March 6, 2005)