January Beauty

River Watch: Back In the Deep Freeze

The river finally dropped, but then so did the temperature. And so it goes...

Flowing Free

Last week I went down to the river. The frigid temperatures had broken for a second time this winter, and a thaw was underway. Maybe the last one.

The ice was still thick, but it was going. As all things must go.

I looked at the thawing ice, a sign of hope, and felt a bleak coldness. A few nights before a woman had walked out on the town bridge, a mile or so upriver from us. She had taken off her coat and laid it down, climbed over the railing, and fallen through the darkness. In the morning light there was only her coat and a jagged hole in the ice.

So for most of a week we had been looking at the river and wondering where she was. And wondering so much more. We knew her troubled life; we knew her pain; we could even tell ourselves that she was now free of that pain. But at what cost? For we also knew her children, and we knew the way it should have been.

Once again life had confronted us with harsh mystery. No use to ask why. Seasons come and seasons go; life is given, and life is taken away. Nature looks at us with an unwavering gaze. No malice, no apology. As if to say, "Live! Make the most of the season you have. Do what you can. But this is how it will be."

The night before, I had driven across the bridge and seen flashing lights a quarter mile downstream on the river side of the road. The river was opening up, beginning to give up its secrets. She had been found.

This week I went down to the river again. Red winged blackbirds were calling in the evening fields.

The ice had broken up the night before and the river was flowing free.

Flowing as it has for generations, and as it will for generations to come.

Washing everything clean, and, even in the face of death, bringing new life once again.

A Happy Song

Driving through the frozen wastes. Stopping at Bass Lake, remembering summer swimming and fishing on and around this ice-bound dock.

Stopping along the little outlet stream halfway down the grade into the valley. It's burbling along in spite of the frigid temperatures.

Stopping along the river five miles or so upstream from the house. Still some open water, and no floes to be seen. Where have they gone?

Climbing out of the truck at home. I already know where the floes have gone. They're jammed up down there behind the house. I walk down to take another look.

Ice from shore to shore.

So it's cold and icy. But here's what will stay with me for now: the happy song of that fast-flowing brook.

Solstice Countdown: 15

So when it gets cold, the river begins to freeze up, and the drifting shards of ice make an ethereal, tinkly music as they shuffle by...

And you can see the vapor trail of an F-16 from the base in Spokane whose pilot is in a good mood as he makes his training run (I hope that was an F-16, and not a 737)...

And the ice on Bass Lake makes unearthly Star Wars sound effects as it tightens its grip.

Just 15 more days until the Solstice.