But that was then. To quote another awesome movie: "The world is changed. I feel it in the earth. I feel it in the water. I smell it in the air."
In short, break-up** is underway.
Housing guilt-tripping us into cleaning our driveway. These are actually some pretty cool machines--first a snow plow breaks up the ice, then this contraption comes behind and scrapes it up, crushes it, and spits it into the back of trucks to be driven away and dumped in political dissidents' yards. Okay, maybe not the last part, but it's still fun to watch.
The day is stretching, seven minutes at a time--it's subtle at first, and then one day you realize the sun didn't set until 9:30. The temperatures still yo-yo to single digits and even occasionally dip below 0 at night. The sidewalks are visible, the roads are clear, and the snowline is slowly creeping back from the concrete. So much snow is melting that ankle-deep floodplains are developing and the constant drip off the roof sounds like rain, and everything is STILL mostly white. The icicles are massive and vaguely terrifying.
As of last Thursday, the first geese were spotted in Creamer's Field. The cold has shifted from "painful" to "brisk" and even occasionally to "refreshing." It's a daily struggle to convince the kids that 30 degrees still means they need to wear shoes and some sort of arm covering. The locals are venturing out in t-shirts, and it's nice to open the windows and air out the winter fug that's permeated my house for the last four months.
It's like they're trying to get hypothermia.
I am a little sad that the snow is finally melting, but only because I have to stop driving on the sidewalk. I will not miss Bertha skidding into the intersections, and I won't miss the sideways lurch as the tires spin on the ice and suddenly catch. That being said, break-up is the worst time to drive up here. As the snow melts and refreezes, it gets ridiculously slick. Trying to drive on rotten hard-pack is equally bad.
You can't tell, but Bertha is well and truly stuck. This was taken while we waited for a tow-truck after getting another truck stuck trying to pull us out the first two times.
One of the more unpleasant parts of break-up is that the hard pack--the 4 inches or so of compressed ice and snow that you've been driving on all winter--has to be removed from your driveway. Now, if you're smart, you hire someone with a machine to come do it and count the money well-spent. If you're Rick and me, you do it yourself and promise your aching body that you'll be less cheap next year.
Rick with his sledgehammer. There's actually a pretty awesome video that goes with this, but I can't get clips to work on the blog. Let's just say Rick's a beast.
We got the savages out working on it, too.
Just in case you were wondering why we needed a hammer. The stuff below was 4 inches thick; it was closer to 5 by the street.
Of course, there are compensations for doing it yourself. No one else had an inuksuk*** in their yard.
*(Sing along if you know it): "In November the snow starts to fly / Piling up, ankle-high. / By December it's up to your knees/ Still a bride's a bride to be. / January, higher still, / To the parlor window-sill. / February finds a drift / and a storm that seems never to lift. / March comes in like a lion, what else / Still the snow never melts. / April showers will come so they say / but they don't, and it's May..."
**The term is supposed to describe the process of the frozen rivers thawing and breaking up, but the idea of breaking up with winter is also incredibly appropriate.
***Freestanding sculptures of stone made by Inuit to convey messages, but that definition lacks nuance. If you want more information, here's a link.
www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/inuksuk-inukshuk/
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