Melting

The ice is melting.

At Pretty Colour Lake, the snowmelt from the hills runs into the lake, which overflows onto the trail, filling it with puddles and deep mud. Streams of cold clear water come trickling down the hills that surround the lake, shooting right across the trail. The ice on the lakes is melting fast now, but a big expanse of light blue ice still floats on the west end of the lake, with thin clear ice forming near the edges on cold nights. This lake is famous for its deep green colour, but this time of year, the pale ice reflects sky, and the lake is streaked with blue.

As my husband and I took a walk around the lake yesterday, we passed a bunch of kids playing in the mud. "Hey, you know what I discovered?" said one kid to his friends. "It hurts to put your fist through ice. It's sharp!"

The air was still cold in the shade of the cedar trees, but whenever the trail wound into the sun, I would unzip my fleece. How good the sun feels at the end of winter. We found a bench in the sun so we could sit and talk, looking out over the lake that was melting, melting, melting even as we watched.

At the far end of the lake, where the beach is, we heard a bunch of teenagers laughing and applauding as two of them stripped off their clothes and went running into the icy water. I have done that kind of thing many times myself so I just imagine how it felt. There is something exhilarating about plunging your whole self into ice water: every nerve ending tingles, every muscle feels like it's just been massaged, and body awareness crowds out all rational thought.