Water

April 10th. What I learned about snow: It falls and settles in the crannies and undulations of the land. You never know just what depth you will encounter. Even on a flat field, you don’t know.

Its melting is unpredictable. Why here and not there. Why this sunny spot still thickly covered? And when the melt comes that ushers in the spring, you can push through all kinds—ice, “corn snow” (which is kerneled), “rotten snow” (which is all structure and no strength), slush and water—in a single brief expedition, as I did today.

I just came back from a walk back into one of my deep places of mind. I went outside after a murky day and roamed in the twilight the great flat flood caused by the roaring snow-melt river. The water has eliminated the steep river banks that carve into our valley floor. Now all is flat, the same level, so water spreads wide and wide. I stood alone in all the water in the expanse of fields under the sky. I took position, not where the river bank usually is, but pushed back by water to where the grass used to be and will be again, and absorbed the roar. The water included my feet in tall rubber boots. Just being there, keeping the river company and vice versa, and witnessing this time in the river’s life and season. When I was little we lived near a river and April was then, too, the time of dangerous fast water and then, too, I used to just stand there and that was enough.

On this walk I disturbed a beaver who flung itself into the water like a kid doing a cannonball, with great splash and no dignity. Out in the current it gave a scolding slap of its tail on the water, then disappeared in the current. Geese flew in, honking on the intake and outtake of breath like an old Model T’s horn, and making their own big splash on the shallow water of one of the new field-lakes. Ducks made their rude complaints as they flew by on their low horizontal trajectory. The water creatures—those adapted to dealing with floods—are out in force. This valley, after the glacier left it, was a gigantic lake called by geologists Lake Hitchcock. It was an arm of the lake that became the Connecticut River —and it was 750 feet deep. It filled the valley to almost to the tops of the hills. This afternoon Mark and I drove the length of it down to Bethel, an eight-mile wonderland of new, graceful shallow lakes and islands at the base of the steep hills. Imagine the watercolors of Turner and the pastorals of the Hudson River School and the English landscape artists, all of which celebrated the great willows leaning out over delicate rivers and lakes.

This river is high. The covered bridge in South Randolph had maybe a foot clearance at 6:30PM. We might get some rain tomorrow—what will happen? Surely they have made that bridge to last. At another point, in the area I call the water meadows though they are usually dry, the water covered the road. A temporary sign proclaimed, “HIGH WATER/one lane traffic” and we drove through on the shallow part, the water splashing over our windshield in a torrent. It was splendid.

Love, Josie