February 27.
Morning. — Rain over; water in great part run off; wind rising; river risen and meadows flooded.
The rain-water and melted snow have run swiftly over the frozen ground into the river, and raised it with the ice on it and flooded the meadows, covering the ice there; so that you have floating ice everywhere bridging the river, and then a broad meadowy flood above ice again.
The rapidity with which water flowing over the icy ground seeks its level. All that rain would hardly have produced a puddle in midsummer, but now it produces a freshet, and will perhaps break up the river.
It looks as if Nature had a good deal of work on her hands between now and April, to break up and melt twenty-one inches of ice on the ponds, — beside melting all the snow, — and before planting-time to thaw from one to two and a half or three feet of frozen ground.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1854
floating ice everywhere bridging the river, and then a broad meadowy flood above ice again. See February 28, 1855 ("Our meadows present a very wild and arctic scene. Far on every side, over what is usually dry land, are scattered a stretching pack of great cakes of ice. . .”); January 22, 1855 ("Great cakes of ice lodged and sometimes tilted up against the causeway bridges, over which the water pours as over a dam.”)
New and collected mind-prints. by Zphx. Following H.D.Thoreau 170 years ago today. Seasons are in me. My moods periodical -- no two days alike.
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