Flashes of Panic

Everything in town is etched in ice. A few weeks ago we were enjoying how warm the winter was; now, we’re seeing the downside. Each snowstorm comes with a helping of ice in the form of freezing rain and freezing melt-water. I periodically remember one winter in college when we got a storm in early January, about four inches of snow, followed immediately by rain, followed immediately by a cold snap. All winter we had a layer of white ice beneath whatever other snow arrived. B&G struggled all winter to clear the foot paths, but aside from a few small sections where the paths ran over steam lines we didn’t see bare pavement until nearly April. (One persistent house custodian cleared the twenty-foot front walk of his building and managed to keep it clear all winter, but he was an exception.)

With that in mind, I sometimes wonder if they could save some effort by running all the steam lines under the foot paths, but since the lines cleared the snow quickly, they also gave us the first and greenest grass of the spring.

As I walked and slithered over to the gym this evening, I saw a few limbs down, all from the pine trees. Trees, from an evolutionary standpoint, have all made different bets. The deciduous hardwoods, which are now nicely cased in a plating of ice, drop their leaves in the fall to avoid having to carry a load of ice on their limbs through the winter. They do this at a cost of slowing their own growth, and having to invest in a new set of leaves every spring, but it’s a conservative evolutionary choice they made. The evergreens, on the other hand, evolved thin leaves and flexible, forgiving (and load-shedding) limbs, and bet that winter couldn’t bring them down. Most of the time, they’re right, but in a winter like this one they are running pretty close to the edge, and we see dropped limbs everywhere.

We’ve got similar bets to make ourselves. We can clear the driveway and risk turning it into a skating rink when the next rain freezes, or we can leave the snow and risk having a basement layer of hard, white glacier that lasts late into March. We can shovel for a smooth icy space, or leave the slush for bumpy ice. It’s a tough guess to make. I park nose-out, walk when I can, and wait for mud season.