The Laughing River

 

                             The Laughing River   

The other night when I got home from work, I opened the door to my car and heard a sound that was very familiar, though one I hadn't heard in months. It sounded like distant applause, or maybe a sitcom laugh track.  Then it realized that it was just the river, unbound from its icy tomb for the first time since November.  When I heard the rhythmic sssh-sssh-sssh music coming from the backyard, I knew that the large field of ice that had been quickly melting over the previous two weeks had finally floated off downstream. The Colorado River was indeed a river once more, and all vestiges of the ice skating rink we'd enjoyed all winter was gone.  There is no more definitive measure marking the transition from winter to spring I know of than the river ice melting away.  It happens slowly at first, then all at once. 

  This is an important seasonal marker where I live, for twice a year the river goes from being a huge asset in our lives to a liability, even if just for a short  time. Those two periods occur just after Thanksgiving, when the river ice is frozen but not yet thick enough to stand on, and in the spring, when it looks sound but is unsafe.  We have several labradors who consider our backyard and its adjacent waterway their territory, and during those two short periods of unsafe ice we can't let them into that space which is otherwise their slice of heaven, and mine.

 

  Late fall and early spring is also when another phenomenon occurs, river ice circles.  Ice circles usually appear in December and March, in a few specific spots.  One is just below the boat ramp at Cottonwood, and if you stop to watch, you'll see circle spinning slowly, like an album turntable.

  This winter past was pretty ordinary and normal, which is to say, wonderful.  Here on along the river corridors, it was a pretty lean year for snow. In Eagle, we got the Ice Castles, a temporary collection of water frozen and shaped into various tunnels, caves and passageways. Water, along with the air we breathe, is one of the two most essential components of the life.  When people use it to create something beautiful, even if it only lasts in our memories, its a reminder of life's fleeting nature.

Our house isn't in the mountains, but it is surrounded by them.  Along the river itself, we got a few small snowstorms, but nothing I couldn't clear off the river with my doublewide snow shovel.  As a result, we had almost three months of safe, smooth ice to skate on.  There were a few large cracks that formed, but they were obvious if you kept an eye peeled for them.  There were a couple of times I didn't, usually at night stickhandling a throw stick while being pursued by a pack of baying labradors.  Hitting those cracks at the wrong angle meant flying through the air ending with a hard landing, followed by a long slide across the smooth ice.  I'd look up at the night sky from my back, do a quick mental inventory to check if I broke anything, then have my reverie broken my five enthusiastic tongues licking my face.

  But now those days and nights on top of the river surface are over for now, and its time to back into the river.  The time has returned to begin cracking the bedroom window open at night, to let that sweet river music into our home and into our ears.  Today I went and got my dory, and its in the backyard now ready to be eased into the river, to resume its station tied to my dock.  Once its out there, I can just jump into it anytime I want to backrow upriver for a quick float involving no shuttle, or trailer, or any complication beyond unlooping my bow line.  Sometimes I'll take a dog, or two,

 or five, or the cat, or my wife, or maybe a neighbor.  Other times, I hop in after work and go for a twenty minute float, just because I can, and do it by myself to remember why I live here. If I've earned a happy spot in the afterlife, and it involves being in a boat on the Colorado River in perpetuity, I'll be fine   with that.

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Its only the second day of March, and as such too early to predict what kind of season we'll have this year on the river. The snowpack is just OK, around normal, though there's still plenty of time for it to build up some more.  March is usually the snowiest month in Colorado, and my favorite time to ski.  The river is low and clear in my yard, and I've already seen a few riseforms from sipping trout.  But upriver, there is still a lot of ice in the river yet to melt.  If we don't get our "normal" March snows, and who is to say what is normal weather anymore?, then we might be in for a low water spring as the reservoirs are refilled.  This means that the fishing in May and June might be quite good of the runoff is subdued. However if our next "normal" weather pattern, the summer monsoons come late, then the river might get too warm to fish in July.  Of course being the first week of March, its way too early to speculate about any of that.  Right now I'm just extremely grateful to see the river back once more.  Although it never left, its sometimes easy to forget that it was there all along.  In January, it got so cold that the river froze all the way across, something it doesn't do every year.  For a few weeks, it was just a frozen wasteland, and seeing a polar bear trotting along its edge wouldn't have looked out of place.

  The story of the Colorado River for 2025 has yet to be written, but its a tale I look forward to having some small, supporting role in.  The river is awake and alive and laughing again, as soon we'll be while floating, swimming, fishing or just sitting beside it.

  Jack Bombardier