It’s tough being a three-season hiker in a four-season state like Maine.

To keep hiking, you’ve pushed your shoulder-season hikes until snow has finally choked off access to trails. Without snowshoes or other winter equipment that you have no interest in owning, you’re done for the year.

So, by now, you’re at a loss over how to get through the winter. It’ll be April, May, or whenever that spring arrives when you can hike again. There’s one sure way to beat those winter blahs that set in too soon – start planning now for those long spring and summer hiking days.

It might seem a tad early to be looking forward to summer hikes in midwinter. But, by the time you get out the maps, guidebooks, and the calendar to mark the weekends with trails and mountain names, it will start to make sense. Nothing can release you from the short days and long nights of winter to visions of midsummer trekking by picking a date to start your hiking season.

Choose a date sometime in mid-April to begin. By then the trails have started to melt clear of snow and ice in Acadia, one of the first locales in the vicinity to become snow-free. You can almost visualize the buds on the trees. Water will be flowing down the ledges on the hills. There may be a few patches of snow and ice left. Plan a loop hike, like up Dorr Mountain, over Cadillac Mountain, and down the Canon Brook Trail.

Make it a long day hike, as a warmup for the overnighters that are sure to come. You’ll have plenty of time to stop for lunch because days will be getting longer by then. Fill up the rest of April with more trips to Acadia to condition those legs for the rest of the summer season.

If the lure of warm, long days on mountaintops doesn’t have you thinking of summer hikes yet, then you need to keep marking the calendar. Pass a winter day by putting trail names to dates and you’d be amazed at the images conjured up. By the middle of May the season is rushing toward summer. Usually, by then, the 4,000-footers in Maine’s western mountains have seen the last of the snow, and trails are clear to the summits. Winter will have become a fading memory. The biting insects won’t have yet sprung from the wet areas en masse, so you’ll still have a couple of weeks to take some long day hikes.

The few weeks between the last of the snow and the first black fly are perfect for early season hiking. You may have to posthole your way to a mountain like Bigelow, but mark the calendar anyway to make those dates firm. Soon a sensation of warm southerly winds blowing across Avery Peak, with you on top, becomes more apparent.

Flip the page on your calendar to June. Even the hardiest hiker knows the vagaries of June conditions. The joys of finally having days long enough to hike until late are offset by the pains endured by the hordes of black flies, chewing your skin. But some days in June are blessed with a perfect bug-fighting breeze, bright sunshine, a high peak, and clear visibility.

Trying to pick a firm date in June, when all the right conditions are present, is tough. Put several hikes on your June calendar, and be flexible, knowing that rain, high water and the bug index may cause a change in plans.

By now you’re on the page for July. Winter has long gone. You’ve made your reservations for a three-day weekend at Chimney Pond in Baxter State Park under the new rolling reservation system, so those dates are firm. Imagine the sun directly overhead. Not like now, when it’s casting long shadows even at midday. Instead of looking outside the window at the ground covered in white, picture yourself crossing the Knife’s Edge and that familiar view that, as yet, you still haven’t gotten tired of seeing.

You should be into August by now; it’s full on summer and you’re overdue for a long-distance backpacking trek. Take a week, any week. Put VACATION across its length. Leave room to write a hike in underneath it and write it in. It could be a section-hike of a few nights or more on Maine’s Appalachian Trail. The thought of wandering through the leafed-out forest, under a late summer sky, while on your way to the next campsite should cure your cabin fever. Leave a weekend somewhere in the month to stay home and recover.

Look outside at the bare trees and remind yourself it can’t last forever – because in January, it seems like it could.

So that’s what this has all been about. It’s about projecting yourself, visualizing what the coming summer will bring. The saying, “If you can’t take winter, you don’t deserve summer,” isn’t exactly true for a three-season hiker. In fact, the opposite is true. It’s precisely because they can’t take winter that they deserve summer.

Brad Viles is an avid hiker who has logged some 8,000 lifetime miles, including the Appalachian Trail. A trail maintainer for the Maine Appalachian Trail Club, he has climbed Mount Katahdin more than 75 times. He can be reached at sball1@ prexar. com