Spring Thaw

By David M. Carroll
From: Trout Reflections: A Natural History of the Trout and Its World

(Editor’s Note: I have borrowed from David Carroll’s writing liberally in the past, and now that spring is upon us, I thought I would resort to the book of his that I haven’t quoted from yet. I recommend his books to each reader. Enjoy).

Thaw: 5 March

The day goes down in stillness and sharp cold on rose-colored snow. An ocher late-afternoon light briefly warms the landscape before it pales to winter white and then to a quickly darkening sky. With the sun’s descent the snow stiffens, and the sound of my footsteps changes. Trees go black along the brook; winter stars will decorate the sky. However chill it has been, daylight has lingered surprisingly, and its gain of three minutes for the day does not seem a true accounting of the advance. There will be another two minutes added tomorrow at sunrise, a minute or two at sunset. These measuring of the season have been in effect for some days now, though lengthening days tend to go unnoticed until a startling accumulation is achieved. But the brook has taken notice of these fractions since the longest night of the year. No time seems to pass, nothing seems to happen, but there are constant progressions and the brook today is not the same brook it was yesterday. Differences register in the knowing possessed by all things within the brook and along the brook. The water itself seems to have a knowledge. Spillways at the beaver dam have a louder voice than at my last passing, and trickling silver laces the lowland alder stands where I marveled at crystalline ledges only days ago.

The season is astir. I am perplexed by the at once cyclical and ever-advancing nature of this and all seasons, the way they seem to circle and return, and yet each that has passed has moved somewhere out in time, as though analogous with the manner in which the planets circle the sun and galaxies wheel, while ever moving outward in space and time. For this moment I depart a winter wood and its snow-bound brook, knowing I ride a wheel toward spring.

Ice Scour: 17 March

After a walk along a high, wooded bank I look in on the river from a narrow two-lane bridge. Cloud shreds streak the sky, and the calls of restless crows break down from the higher ridges. Snow holds on all but the south-facing slopes. The chill first day of spring draws near; the equinox is at that strange turning of some dark corner far out in space that works with and light, and will return, in barely perceptible installments, day’s advantage over night.

The river comes to life, sections of it roar. After a winter of strange groanings in the night, imitations of whale songs and gunshots, the great bed of restless ice breaks free. Huge chunks of ice, loosened by fingers of sunlight that would seem too feeble yet to effect such great work, spin slowly as they ride the water-rush I look down upon. The bridge shudders with the crushing impact of these ice cakes. Impeded for a moment, they ride up over one another, grinding and crushing, breaking away blinding white edges that go gray in the black water’s embrace.

The gradual inclination back toward the sun by the northern latitudes releases winter’s store of snow and ice, some as harmless trickles, some as violent scours and floods that threaten the lives of the stream dwellers.

The passing winter has been one to favor ice buildup, and spring breakup will make the river, and all it tributaries, all but unfishable. Ice scour is perhaps the greatest peril faced by trout of rivers and streams. As floods of frigid water bearing crowbars and mauls of ice surge downstream as they thaw, they can shift boulders and rearrange the very streambed.

Entire year-classes of eggs and alevins can be lost as the scouring flood churns it way through the spawning gravel. Older trout who have taken refuge in floodplains and their tributaries can be crushed or suffocated by the collapse of thick spans of accumulated ice and snow, or become stranded when temporary sanctuaries of backwaters entrapped by ice dams are suddenly drained as these dams are torn away. A waterway’s entire food chain can be ripped away by the forceful surge of the thaw, and take seasons to recover.