another frozen creek bed
We await snow.
Our white world continues, vast and endless as it appears at times looking out at the great expanse of snow contained within the distant walls of the black mountains. There seem to be no limits to winter when one is in the midst of it all. I take comfort in knowing the boundaries are far away. I can see farther than I can walk in a day. Change too is far enough away.
Mild as it is, winter remains. I find a certain solace in the season.
Now the snow has lost its freshness, its life, its sparkle. Every track that was set since the last storm remains. Snowshoe hare, rabbit, squirrel, elk, moose and man. The hillsides appear littered with markings of our comings and goings. It has been over a month since our last good snow. The snow is old and tired. The snow has lost all substance, and turns to a coarse sugar and falls apart beneath each step. It is dry, parched and granular like desert sands. I reach down and scoop up a handful, put it in my mouth. It melts, allowing me a suggestion of relief from thirst. Only a trace of moisture remains.
The ice continues to build. It is an odd winter. We have not seen the ice form as it does this year. We are fascinated to watch the build up each day, eerie silvery blue formations that glow in the sunlight, an opaque mass of hard surface and soft flowing lines. From where does this water emanate when the mountain appears at rest in her deep freeze of the season?
And what will happen in spring? What impact will these heavy flows of ice have when the top of the mountain begins to melt and sends down her mighty brown torrents? Will the creeks be forced to change their course or will the ice give way?
We notice the slightest of changes. And the mountain always alters herself ever so slightly. Nothing remains the same, if one takes the time to see. Often no more than subtle variations in radiance as the mountain plays with light and shadows in the long low luminosity of winter. Other times, dramatic fluctuations as clouds sweep across the horizon, dancing wild and grey, and tease of the promise of a storm.
Today, an allusion of snow in the air. The sky is still and heavy, pallid as the fields of snow. It is difficult to discern between land and sky, all is white and cold and still, unmoving and silent. There is no wind. The trees remain oddly, uncomfortably motionless. I wait for something to move, but all remains the same. The sun is unseen behind the heavy shroud. Do these clouds perchance promise snow? Will they bring the well needed moisture here, here where the river begins?
At the table over lunch, we discuss what will happen in summer should the snows not come this winter. Surely they will come.
Rain refreshes the river, a temporary quenching of thirst, but it is the snow that feeds. The nourishment of the river, the nourishment of the lands, for miles and miles below, as far as the Rio Grande may flow. As far as we allow the river now to go, with our rights and claims and growing needs and diversions, taking the water from its natural course. How have we affected these waters already, and what more are we willing to do before the river runs with no more than the tears we cry?