2 February 2024
Today I took my usual run along Minihaha Creek.
We are in the midst of an unusual warm spell. It is not unusual to have a few days of above-freezing weather in January – enough to melt the top layer of snow and ensure that in a few days everything will be a sheet of ice through Februrary – but this is different. It reached the fifties yesterday, and came close to that today. Almost all the little snow that we’ve gotten is gone. The brown grass is showing hints of green, and the bare trees have visible buds visible. Any more of this warmth and bulbs will sprout and buds will burst, and then cold will return and kill them.
Whereas normally I have to be careful of snow and ice on my runs, now I have to be careful of mud. I ran early enough today that it was still half-frozen, it gave beneath my feet but was not melted enough to be slippery, except in sunny spots. It’s interesting to look at. The trails, like palimpsests, show the traces of their users. Here is a cyclist, weaving along on thin tires. Here is someone walking their dog. Here is a cyclist on one of those fat tire bikes. And here, in a warm place, it appears that a racoon crossed the path last night.
The creek has open water in the middle, and ducks navigate it, or sit, carefully spaced out, on the ice ledges that project out from the creek’s banks. Where there is ice, it has clearly melted and frozen many times. Much of it is an opaque white, due to the repeated freezing. In other places, where the ice is thinner, the surface has become rough, with ridges and peaks formed by the re-freezing. These catch the low morning light, and the miniature peaks glitter across the shelved surfaces.