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March 1. The park's stillness often has an expectant quality. Now it is intense as ever. Expanding puddles flood slushy islands in the gutters. The ice and melded snow on the river, recently pure and austere in whiteness, soften to a glazed, pockmarked bluish-grey. New music is in the air, like the cheerful, wheezy song of the house finch. The chickadee interrupts his excited chattering and utters a seductive pee-bee. A larger bird makes an unfamiliar call across the river. A squirrel or woodpecker has scattered bits of bark and tufts of lichen from the top of a willow. Every day of the year, nature seems to await changes with quiet tension, but now the excitement is greater than ever.
March 2. Rain fell all yesterday afternoon and snow is rapidly vanishing from the streets. A sheet of soft ice still lies on the river, covered with wide, quiet puddles and a broken reflection of maples on the far shore.
March 3. A friend's online journal this morning showed photos from Eastern Ontario of water standing in muddy fields. It inspired me to walk further afield in search of similar vistas, but my futile search accentuated how much more snow fell this winter in the Guelph area, a large portion during the January 27 storm. On the high field beside the Turfgrass Institute, corn stubble still pokes through a white landscape. The waterfall beside Victoria Road bridge caught my ear from a considerable distance. Large openings have appeared in the white ice sheet, but it hasn't started to move downstream yet. The rapids have opened entirely. If it weren't for warm urban runoff, I believe most of the watercourse would still be frozen solid. I found evidence of ancient higher water levels, too: erosion has excavated shallow caves in the limestone cliff east of Victoria Road. In summer these would be mostly obscured by foliage. Finding them makes me curious to explore further east along the higher cliff that is completely hidden behind tall trees and undergrowth. A work crew has cleared woody plants along the sides of the railway line. I would like to see the machine which tore these shrubs, saplings, branches and even small trees. It looks like savage beast the size of an elephant went through in a frenzied rage. The cleanup was necessary, and cutting is preferable to the chemicals used until recently, and yet the aspect of technology's violent efficiency is unsettling.
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