Spring rain is supposed to soften the earth, release shoots of daffodil and tulip, turn the grass green. But what is supposed to happen does not always occur. Warm air pushes up from the deep south, but artic cold lingers, chills the air near the earth.
Water falls. On the warm window of the house it runs downward, but on the cold branch of the tree, it sticks. On the blade of grass, the chill of the air turns it to ice.
At first, where there is snow on the ground, water is absorbed, and snow turns to slush. A cat scurries from shed to barn shelter, and its paws mark the wet snow. But in the shade, where the chill deepens, a hard crust forms. The paw prints stop. To a later passerby, it will look as if the cat flew the last few steps.
On the wires, the first drops freeze, and the next run downward until they too turn solid. Tiny icicles form the whole length, and every centimeter of the icicle catches the falling rain until a thick fringe runs the length of wire from pole to ice covered pole.
On the apple tree, the falling sleet becomes a coating, thickening hour by hour. The weeping willow becomes an umbrella, an almost solid canopy. There is no shelter though as wind whips beneath to coat the grass with ice. On the pine and spruce, each needle collects droplets, and branches get heavier, and heavier, pulled lower and lower by gravity.
On the cattails, the standing stem is coated, and the brush turns from brown to silver. As the coating thickens, the weight would be too much, but the stem has been strengthened by solid ice.
From inside the house when there is a pause in the falling sleet, I ponder whether to venture further than the barn. I do not leave but instead watch as an east wind presses more and more freezing moisture onto the ice covered trees. A spruce begins to lean. The weight of ice on thousands of needles pulls it down. I wonder if it will recover when warmth eventually comes.
When the falling ice-rain pauses, I refill the bird feeders. Ruby-headed kinglets flock from hiding in the pines, and mourning doves return. A red-winged blackbird and a robin come for food, not what they long for, but something that will tide them over until the true warm rains of spring return.
Where I live, last week's freezing rain thinned early, but not all were so fortunate. On many maple and ash, alder and elm, the gravity pulled the heavy branches until they cracked at the trunk, white scars left to show the loss.
Pine and spruce standing beside hydro lines leaned. As the cold coating thickened, branches could not hold. They came down and hit the ice-laden wires. Where a pole leaned ever so slightly, gravity gained the advantage, and the moment came when something had to break.
With a cold night and a bright dawn, sunrise made the ice-covered world sparkle and shine. Where the warm light shone directly, a small amount sublimated, moving from ice to air. But when the wind came, most of the ice remained, making heavy, brittle branches vulnerable to nature's next whim.
It was only another day until the air warmed just enough for the ice to disappear more quickly than the crust came. Some trees straightened, but the ground was littered with broken branches; large boughs created bridges from trunk to ground, and white scars on tree trunks will testify to the damage for weeks to come. Many were without hydro for days.
Weather forecasters predicted this storm. Did we believe how much cold ice would encrust our world? Not that we can stop what happens when warm air collides with cold. But I have been thinking about other cold things that freeze our hearts, encase our lives--hatred, anger, discrimination can build hard layers as cold as ice and harder to thaw. And grief can encase us in a hard shell. Illness can weigh us down to the breaking point.
But ice storms in our lives can be prevented. Openness and equity can prevent the freezing. Love and grace are as strong as summer sunlight. Gentleness and forgiveness can bring a thaw and heal the scars.
Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister and writer living near Walters Falls.
