By Hannes Thum
The creek outside my window has been frozen over for a long time now.
This stretch of the creek runs through an exceptionally cold spot of the valley, in a north-facing hole of sorts where the cold air from all around sinks in deeply at night and doesn’t dissipate until the afternoon sun finally peeks around the corner for a couple of hours late in the day.
This is a place where the snow (particularly since we haven’t had any new snow in a while) facets out into long, shard-sharp crystals each night. Where the air crackles with tiny, glinting flecks of frost every morning. Where I like to stand and look, but it is pretty cold to stand and look for too long.
A place where it is no surprise that the creek has been frozen over for a long time now.
I know that the water must have been running underneath the ice this whole time, but I can’t say that I have much actual evidence of that fact. Upstream a short walk, where the sun has kept the ice off of the surface of the creek, the water has been visibly running. And downstream another short walk, out of this hole, water appears again. So, there’s that. I suppose it must always be moving beneath the ice.
But, to stand right here and look at what I’ve been looking at for most of the winter, it would be hard to say much of anything about the water actually being there. There has been no telltale trickling noises; no swirls of black shadow shifting beneath the ice. Just ice. Unmoving. More like a strip of granite than like anything resembling motion.
If the ice itself has made a noise, I haven’t heard it. But I can imagine the creaks and groans that must occur at times, because sometimes the shape of the ice has changed a bit overnight. Again, though, I can’t say for certain.
All of this was true, day in and day out, until yesterday.
Yesterday, a section of the ice collapsed, fell down towards the creek bed, and either broke up or slid below the rest of the ice, or both. I didn’t see it happen, but I can certainly see the result. And now, after all of this time, I see liquid, unfrozen water.
It’s not much of a section. Maybe four feet wide and eight feet long – a window (portal?) through which one can now see and hear the moving water as it slips downstream and back underneath its cover of ice.
The water was there the whole time. Of course.
And, so, I have a new thing to stand and ponder about in the morning. Or, many things. The breakup of ice and of winter. The first tease of spring. Something about the cycles of the years and the seasons, and something else about the hidden ways that life continues even in the cold of winter. How time passes. How one might pass the time.