The thaw

Spring here is mostly a matter of mud. The snow goes grey, then granular, then retreats to the north side of everything, and the track down to the shore turns into something you cross in rubber boots or not at all.

The ice goes last and it goes badly. It darkens first, as the meltwater soaks into it, and for a while it looks more solid than it has all winter while being entirely rotten. Then one windy afternoon it breaks into plates that pile up against the eastern shore with a noise like someone slowly unloading a lorry of glass.

The birds do not wait for any of this. The cranes came over on the twelfth, high and very loud, and there has been a pair of goldeneye on the one patch of open water by the stream mouth for a fortnight.

It is not a pretty season. It is the one I would least like to miss.