The End of the Ice

It’s March 17, and a small patch of ice remains afloat on the 1860 Reservoir in Wethersfield. Just two days ago, 80% of the pond was covered with ice but now, finally, the ice is vanishing.

The pond first froze late in January, when high temperatures dropped below freezing for several days and overnight temperatures fell into single digits. After a brief thaw, the pond froze again in early February. People were still walking the ice early in March.

The pond has a stillness about it when it’s frozen. There’s very little motion, no ripples or little swells. Occasionally, maybe, a bird. The bare trees sometimes catch the wind and wave, sometimes violently, but often there’s just a little wind, just enough to blow up some snow off the surface of the ice. It’s desolate on the pond, not fear-for-your-life desolate (in 15 minutes, you can walk the ice to your neighbor on the other side), but not exactly alive and secure, either.

In February, the ice was thick enough to walk on without fear. It was solid, and your senses just told you that it was walkable. Sometimes it is possible to see several inches through the ice and into the water beneath. Just glimpses, but still, you could see the thickness. When the water at the shore is still mushy, it’s a sign that the ice isn’t as thick as it seems.

When no one else is out, it’s quiet. Seriously quiet. Sometimes silent. Sometimes with only the faintest hum of life. Sometimes the silence is broken by a passing vehicle or a barking dog.

Stillness everywhere, except at the open water. The open water was an oval opening in the ice maybe 30 or 40 yards long, running north and south, just off the backyards of houses near the bottom of the Robeth Lane cul-de-sac. It was probably 20 yards wide.

The open water never froze, not once during all of the cold we had this winter. It kept getting smaller as the cold persisted, but it never froze over.

The pond is spring-fed, springs that once fed small streams that flowed to Goff Brook and eventually the Connecticut River. Earthworks were erected in the nineteenth century, and the spring water accumulated behind the dam to create the 1860 Reservoir. The springs flow all year long and continue to feed the reservoir. The spring water is warmer than the air, and the flow of the spring water is enough to prevent ice from forming in this small portion of the pond. The open water.

Open water turns out to be life-altering for some aquatic birds. The two mute swans that live on the pond nest here precisely because at least some of the water is always open. The swans need to eat throughout the winter, and they aren’t at their best on land. Thus, they need to find food in the water, and they find enough in the open water to keep them going. And not just the swans. Twenty to fifty geese and some smaller birds drop in late at night or early in the day, looking for food.

The open water is also naturally free from people, so the birds don’t need to worry about the human menace. Free from human beings, because anyone walking carefully toward the open water understands that the ice beneath is thinner and thinner as they approach the water. They never get close to the birds.

In early March the cold broke quickly, and we began a good series of warm days, interrupted by only an occasional cold one. The ice began to melt, imperceptibly for several days, because it was melting primarily from the bottom. Ice that melted on top during the day refroze each night. As those days went by and the ice seemed unchanged, the stillness persisted but without the cold. How thick the ice must have been, to have remained intact after days of early spring warmth.

Eventually the open water was visibly larger than it had been; the ice was receding. Receding only slowly; for days people continued to walk on the ice, including a few ice fishers.

Then it was clear that the March weather was winning, and open water began appearing on the shoreline in some places. Within a couple of days about half of the pond was open water, with only a thin sheet of ice covering the other half. An osprey arrived, looking to fish, but discovered the open water was cluttered with many geese and other birds. With no room to dive for fish, the osprey left. That was yesterday.

This morning, what little ice was left disappeared before noon. The sun was shining. Persistent wavelets rippled across the water. Geese and ducks swam by, examining the shoreline, where water meets the land and where they want to nest. A few ducks, too. Then more birds, swimming and diving along the shoreline, looking for a meal they hadn’t tasted for a month and half. The black and white buffleheads flapped their wings and splashed in the water; they seemed to be celebrating. Probably more than 100 geese were on the pond altogether; a couple of clusters of 20 near the south end of the pond, and dozens more scattered around the north end. Two swans, twenty or so buffleheads, and twenty or thirty other birds. It was an St. Patrick’s Day parade, and a banquet.

Now, as the sun sets and the pond begins to darken, they’re still out there, the swans, some geese, some ducks, quietly foraging and enjoying the moments when the pond returns to life.

The stillness is gone.