Thaw: Place Post No. 6

Friday. March 19

Finally, I can sit outside without freezing. It'll be cold again in a bit, when the storm moves through, but for now, we're having some nice weather. The ground is damp underneath the grass and the leaves, but it is so nice to sit under the cottonwoods that for once, I don't mind the soggy coldness of winter.
The ice on Walgren is rotting today, beginning its spring thaw. A little more will go out everyday, but if we get cold weather again on Monday, that will slow it once again (It's Tuesday as I type this, and we got more snow today), but not allow it to freeze over. That's pretty much it for the winter on the lake. As the ice continues to melt for the next three weeks (or longer, depending on the weather) the hazy patches will separate, looking like oil on water.

In my light hoodie, I'm getting hot, it's almost 65 today and nothing but a mild breeze. I can hear the Canadian Geese overhead, so I know summer is coming, but today's temps aren't going to stay, not yet. That hasn't stopped dad, who's getting the boat ready and putting away the ice gear. He hopes to be on Minatare (another lake , about an hour from home) by next week. I think that's pushing it, but that's what makes him happy.

I rise from the damp spot on the ground, uncrossing my legs and shaking them. Heading down to the bridge sounds like a good idea, so I scramble down the gentle hillside and hook a hand over the wooden slat of the bridge. The little creek/crick in front of me has been running for at least two weeks; we've had more snow this winter than I have seen since my childhood memories of snow tunnels behind the house. Those snowdrifts were up to the gutters, and I suppose that was more than 20 years ago.. a lifetime, at least.

Seeing the water run clear in quick in front of me makes me smile. When I leave work in the evenings, I curse this same water, because it has pooled in the ditches along the highway that joins home and town. For fifteen miles I have to squint as I drive south; the sun, as it sets across the dried, yellow grasses, burns brightly in this melted snow runoff, and blinds me.

But here, today, looking at the results of warming temps and the coming of spring, I'm not blinded by the sun, only a little dizzy. The small ripples of water absorb some of the bright beams, which filter through the pale cabbage-colored water, but the other bit of sunshine that hits the water gets caught on the crest and moves along with it, a soft ripple of molten gold.

I want to see a fish, a minnow, maybe a turtle, but there's no activity like this yet. Maybe in a week. I lean over, squeeze and empty juice bottle in the water, suck in a great gulp of it, and return it to the Rav. It's too late in the day to go over to my old elementary school and use a microscope, but I'm tempted to pull a Dillard and see what I can see.

I have been awed and amazed all year by the readings I have had in my MFA courses. Some I've read before, others I've not, but in this light, the light of context and contemplation, I'm seeing things I've never seen before. This week we're reading about the urban landscape, how we find and create nature in the city. This nature doesn't necessarily even have to be of-the-earth type stuff, but seems to be adaptable to whatever is always around us. It is all our perspective, as Dillard wrote, it's all about how we take the time to look and see.

After leaving my bottle in the Rav, I walk over to the edge of the lake, where it's too reedy and marshy to still be frozen, and squat down, sniffing, looking to see what I can see. The edge of the ice that is close and observable for detail, is smushy looking, like wet cotton, and there are sticks and dried leaves and fine sediments stuck in it, a little further out. The mud here smells dank, like the holes left behind in week-long mud when you pull up a rock and air rushes in, trying to seal it over. It's smelly, the breakdown and decay of all the dead things that got stuck, but it's spring mud, and this thought moves me.

Cabin fever hasn't hit me as hard this year as it has in the past. I thought winter on the Plains was bad, here where everything is so wide open, so susceptible to snowing one in and blowing things closed, but it sure beats winter in the city. I feel like beyond the comfort of the winter--the bounty of snow, which means fuller lakes and rivers and better harvests, the ability to drive from place to place and not walk, and the warmth of my home (the heat is not my responsibility!)--I've come to find a general comfort in my placement at the moment. I'm certain I'm not here forever; in fact I'd like to leave next month, but instead of feeling quite so vicious about "home" I'm beginning to feel a bit of warmth.

Something splashes out beyond the silent reeds, something that has broken a spot in the ice and jumped up. It's got to be a fish, or maybe an otter? A beaver? A muskrat? A cheese rat? Who knows what it is. I eye the general area but see nothing, then walk to my car. It's inevitable: the next time I come back there will be less ice and more water; more mud too. More animals. In a month, kids will be out on the dock fishing, and the sheen of bruised, rotten ice will be gone. In a month the semester will be almost over, and it's just as inevitable that I'll be thinking strongly about what's next for me. It's human nature, nature that things come and go, change and progress. Even in it's solid, stagnant flatness, the ice too, is moving slowly. Yes, this is the thaw.