An Early March Walk Along Wascana Creek

A sudden thaw in early March: a false spring, perhaps, since prairie winters last into April and you’ve seen heavy snow at the end of May, but still welcome after February’s bitter cold snap. The ice that’s covered everything since January’s cycles of freezing and thawing, bone hard and slick, has softened; your shoes slush into it, each step leaving an imprint which will harden after sunset but melt again tomorrow if the weather forecast is accurate. You feel the sun’s warmth on your face, on your dark jacket—not a winter coat, since the weather’s this mild—and you smile. You take a deep breath. It’s still cold enough that the air carries no scent. The smells characteristic of spring in this city—a winter’s worth of melting dogshit and the lake’s sulphurous exhalations from months of anaerobic bacteria digesting goose poop under the ice—have yet to arrive. Gravel peeks through the packed snow on the path along the flood-control dike beside the creek. The ice is soft, you can tell, even though someone is playing fetch with his dog there. Every spring someone almost drowns trying to rescue a dog that’s fallen through. All along the creek giant culverts are debouching meltwater on top of the thinning ice. The city’s posted warnings. You walk cross the bridge at Elphinstone Street and walk back east on the creek’s southern bank. Sparrows chatter in the caragana along the pathway. Puddles, here, and pavement. You stop to talk to a colleague walking her puppy: the young dog is quiet, grave, either well-trained or naturally serious. So many people are walking or jogging or cycling, with dogs or children or without, celebrating this surprising late winter warmth. You climb the steps onto the bridge at Albert Street, crunch though the coarse sand on the sidewalk and turn west into your neighbourhood. Where parked cars shade the sidewalk, the ice has reformed, and you walk on the balls of your feet like a penguin shuffling on a glacier. So many friends have fallen, their bones held together with screws and plates; you’re trying to be careful. You imagine your right elbow, suddenly arthritic this winter, stiff and sore, held together with pins. You worry about that happening, or a broken hand or wrist, your guitar in its case, your writing silenced, while it heals. And then you’re at your front door, the key in the lock, the cats trying to push past your hands and run out into the world, but it’s a busy street, and you’ve already lost one, years ago, run down and left on the front steps, so you’re cautious about this, too, and you shoo them back inside. You take off your jacket, fill the kettle, sit at the table. Write something every day, you’ve been told, and you know that’s good advice, so you open your computer and begin.