End of Winter

Around the middle of March winter started to lose its grip on the lake. The end came quickly, the ice broke up just as fast as it had formed, a single sheet one day, broken up the next, almost precisely on the solstice.

For another week great sheets and chunks of ice blew around, gathering on the shore in the evenings and then drifting out into the lake to melt during the day. Toward the end it looked like someone had emptied countless bags of crushed ice into the lake.

The snow melted away around the same time. The weather turned warmer. The sun started to linger longer in the sky. Only on the shores, the edges, was there any sign of winter.

And then winter came roaring back, dumping fresh snow overnight.

The world oscillated for about a week. Snow came, snow melted away later the same day. Then the day it last snowed fell farther and farther back on the calendar. Rain replaced snow. The world turned to mud, the lake was again free of ice.