The deep unbroken silence of the last couple of days of thick soft snow has given way to the steady drip of icicles transforming into tiny rivers. Who could have predicted a day as warm as this one, after those snowy ones? It’s that queer mountain weather but we’ve had such gentle winters the last few years that we’ve forgotten the drama on late winter on the southern Highlands.
When I went out to get the snow off the cars this afternoon (or maybe late morning, I can’t recall), I wore a heavy sweater and a hat, gloves and a warm scarf. By the middle of the afternoon, I’d lost a layer and the scarf and the gloves.
The snow still looked deep in the back yard but when you stepped on it, the bottom layer was all slush…the tracks up the driveway looked arctic and adventurous but they, too, were illusions of almost-water. By the end of the sunshine of the day, there was a wide creek of clear water flowing down our hill, looking for passage in the old and northward river.
You could smell spring on the wind…coming on a twisty path, but not yet here.
We knew it was coming though. Sooner rather than later.