Out of the way

Let sleeping giants alone, some say.

If you wake them too sharply, they can be the death of you. On the other hand, if you could rouse one safely, it might make interesting watching to see how it rises from its bed.

The giant wakened last week was Spring, or something like it. Iit smelled like Spring. When I crossed the Mill Brook Bridge on Main Street in Kentville, the Mill churned over its rocky bed with more splash than usual, bloated with rain and melt water. Giant sheets of ice were skimming towards the Cornwallis. If they had been smaller, they would have spun like Frisbees. Instead, they ricocheted from bank to bank as the rush of water torqued them seaward.

Further downstream, half an hour later, some of these sheets of ice had caught against the banks and wedged against each other across the brook, which was brimming with water. Smaller chunks of ice continued to careen around the bend. Their speed was such I expected each one to flip on top of the jam, from sheer velocity, and rasp to a halt. Time and again, though, a chunk would bump into the jam, bump again—with a sound more whispery than the rush of a curling stone across a sheet—then dive soundlessly under the jam, as if something had tugged it down, as if it were sucked into an undercurrent.

In the space of 10 minutes, the brook was choked with ice as far as sight in either direction. Further upstream, some of the larger sheets were being forced upright against the opposite bank. Powerful forces were evidently exerting themselves, but the only sounds were the sigh of ice against ice and the drip of rain.

The whole mass swelled against the sides of the Mill, cresting the bank of the opposite shore, in a movement like that of a giant swallowing a deep breath. Just as quickly, something shifted, the ice rubbed into new wrinkles and the whole began to slide along like a snake goaded away from its spot in the sun on a cool day.

Another illusion was perfectly convincing: it felt as if I were moving westward with the bank, but, really, it was the water, liquid and frozen, slipping and bobbing out to sea. In less time than it takes to tell, the giant had cleared its throat. The brook had fallen six or eight feet and was back in its proper bed again.

Awesome.

A puzzled geologist once insisted to me a river would always “seek its bed,” at a loss to understand how such a deep river bed would allow water into my basement. He came from a warm country, without Fundy tides. I’m still at loss to understand the forces at work just a few feet from my back door, though I’ve lived with both ice and the rhythm of ebb and flow all my life.

I’m relieved the giant is asleep again.