I’d like to take time out from March madness, democratic doom, spring break and other portents of the season to focus on one that is very near and dear to me: melting ice.
A harbinger of spring if there ever was one.
Back in good old North Dakota of my youth, the ice thaw was the most exciting thing going. You’d trundle off to school bundled in overcoat, gloves and a knit cap, but walking home for mid-afternoon cartoons, the coat would be open, the gloves and hat jammed into pockets. And your shoes would be slipping, slapping and soaking.
This was winter at its best: departing. It was the first sign of life in an otherwise forbidding landscape. It trickled thoughts slowly into your brain that had been suppressed for months. Green grass. Bicycles. Fishing poles. A sandy beach. Or even a dusty gravel road, a somehow dustier pickup truck, bologna sandwiches and iced tea enjoyed off of a tailgate with sweat running into your eyes. The break from farm work on a hot, windy day could even be imagined. And relished.
I’m a bit tardy bringing this up. April is nearly here, and it seems spring comes in earlier and hotter every year in many places, though climate change is producing extreme weather events that could set back the mud season.
I recall “spring break” from school spent behind frosty windows looking out at a white landscape. For those who could swing it, spring break was the time to head to warmer climes, implying that the clime they were escaping was anything but warm.
But maybe I’m not too late. I saw the weather reports from last weekend’s snowstorms across the upper Midwest and into New England. Somebody somewhere is still getting the white stuff.
I’ve been living in Seattle so long that I have nearly forgotten (repressed?) the memories of a tough winter. But occasionally I go visit there in winter and it all come blizzarding back.
Out here in the maritime Northwest (not to brag or make you feel bad), I start counting the end of our short winter when the days begin to lengthen perceptibly in January and the garlic I planted in November shoves its tender shoots through the straw mulch. Yes, there are plenty of weeks left of chilly days, biting rain and cold winds, maybe the odd overnight snow. But that only toughens up nature’s resolve to surge into a hopeful push.
As a kid, the promising indicator came as a trickle and a crackle. Thin sheets of ice on the sidewalks would start it off, turning to puddles as the concrete beneath was heated by the bright winter sun. A weak start—say, thin cloud cover and just bumping 32 degrees—wouldn’t be enough to make a splash and make it last. It would just refreeze as the day waned, making those sidewalks even more treacherous, because the new ice would be smooth.
But then it would happen again, and a third day would hit 40—whoa! The snowbanks would deflate. The driving lanes would mush up. The gutter edge would start to come back into view.
And that is when I would begin my engineering work. Study the thinning top layer to find a spot where its clarity revealed a subfrgidian rivulet. Balance increasingly weighty elements, from sticks to rocks to feet, upon the glaze until cracks would starburst out, signaling the inevitable collapse. Follow the leaves or twigs or whatever had been suspended in the surface ice down this new freshet, the miniature gutter creek.
As the melt grew, so did my machinations. Natural eddies and oxbows would form as water found its way past and around immovable objects like rocks, stubborn ice chunks and car tires. Not content to let nature flow, I would impede its course, blocking the path with found objects, maybe my boot (temporary) or a gathered bank of gravel (semi-permanent). The rechanneled current would undermine nearby ice, and the melt would widen.
I contributed mightily to the flow with my snow shovel, scooting slush into glinting pyramids that needed to be fed constantly on a relatively warm day. Bonus effect: my efforts would help dry the sidewalks sooner and I heroically saved my mother from the treacherous “black ice” that lurked on freshly refrosted concrete.
Eventually, grass would begin to appear as a tonsorial fringe edging the deep white mounds in the center of the lawn. The glorious synergy between sun and ice would return the streets to asphalt and revamp the gutters into sneaker-soaking waterways. It signaled the end of my annual ice play, the loss of innocence, the inevitable growing up. Unless, of course, another winter storm swept in.
We can’t let winter win.