I’m not sure if anyone else has noticed, but April seems to have completely disappeared this year. One minute it was March, all blustery and confused, and the next thing I know, it’s May. Except it’s not really May. It’s still winter.

I saw the crocuses, briefly. A flash of purple, like a secret whispered quickly before a gale force wind snatched it away. Now we’re back to snow flurries and the kind of gray sky that makes you question all your life choices. My fleece jackets, which I thought I’d be retiring, are still in heavy rotation. My good down jacket, too.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to work. We’re supposed to have a gentle transition, a time when the mud becomes less an existential threat and more a quaint inconvenience. A time when I can plan to plant my pansies without fear of them becoming pansy-cicles.

I just want to know where April went. Did it get lost somewhere over the Bridgers? Is it hiding in Hyalite, waiting for us to give up hope? Someone needs to find it.

Meredith Coldsnap is a seasonal columnist who writes exclusively between October and May, which in Bozeman is most of the year. She owns fourteen fleece jackets.