BREAK UP!
Two small words to warm the heart of any Canadian! I believe the same is true for many of our Southern Cousins too.
You see, break-up for us “Northerners” is a yearly event which marks the passing of winter. The Thaw, Ice Out, Break-up … all of them regional sayings for when the local river or lake frees itself from the icy shroud which had covered it for the past 3, 4, 5 even 6 months!
The pool out back of the house – shrouded in ice for the past 4 months
Break-up is a lot of things to a lot of people. In my past, it would mean the Fraser was free and the log drive would start up shortly. For others, the Thaw means road restrictions for trucking. For some it means they’ll have to soon round up the ice fishing huts.
Up in the Lac St-Jean region of Quebec, the local radio station runs a lottery for the date/hour when the lake will lose its ice cover. Way back, it would be the AirCanada pilots transiting over head who would evaluate the ice cover. Nowadays, they have satellite and radar data.
I figure there are hundreds, if not thousands of similar contests around North America (and beyond). Year after year, we mark the date of spring break-up on calendars or on the back of the pantry door. You’ll find such scribblings in note books or journals in cottages and camps in most outback regions of the North.
It is the start of the countdown. Other signs are noted too:
- The arrival of the Snow Geese;
- The blooming of the willows;
- The greening up of the alders, then the birches, then the aspens;
- Then Opening DAY!
For me, the fishing season ends in late October and I don’t go ice fishing (I’m not a good enough caster to get the fly into that little 8 inch hole in the ice!!!) This means that the coming of spring is also the arrival of a new fishing season. At about the same time the river ices out, there should be ample room on the shore to start some casting practice.
There new rods to be tested, old ones to be re-checked, lines to be stretched and leaders to be attached. The new flies which were “invented” over the winter need to be cast, swung, swam and flung. Just to see if there behave like we hoped while we were hunched over the tying bench in the dark and cold of winter.
We usually get one last blast of winter before the buds open and the Mayflies dance, but we can see that spring is truly just around the corner.
Saturday afternoon, the ice sheet out back of the house in the back eddy started to slowly rotate up and away from the near shore. Liliane and I cracked a beverage, sat back on the porch in a wonderful March sun and watched the winter gently crawl to an end.
Christopher Chin – Proulxville Quebec.