Ice Break

Isn’t it funny how a memory comes zapping into your brain sometimes for no apparent reason? In this case, the memory was of a sound like thunder. Though it didn’t come from the sky, it came from the water of the Yellowstone River. I have no idea how old I was at the time of the memory, but from the height of the adults in my mental picture, I must have been in elementary school. I had been out to the ranch with my Dad and we were coming back into town across the Yellowstone bridge. People were gathered along the bridge and cars were parked on either side. I wondered aloud what was happening, and Dad said, “The ice is breaking.”

Think of the “crack” ice cubes make when they hit water magnified by 1,000. Here’s a National Park Service photo of ice block on the Yellowstone…

It doesn’t happen every spring, just during those following long hard winters when the river freezes over completely. Before you wonder about the quality of entertainment in Southeastern Montana causes a crowd to gather on a cold spring day to watch ice, you just have to experience it for yourself. It’s a little bit intimidating. It made me glad my Dad was nearby and that we’d chosen to stay in the pickup listening through the windows.

Ice is a powerful force of nature. It skins mountains, carves valleys and reroutes ocean vessels. It forms around injured hearts; in groups where no common ground is found and in our paths as we try to make progress up slippery slopes of our own development. But when it breaks, it’s spectacular. And when it melts and the sounds of the dripping water add to the sounds of the rushing water beneath it’s spring in an antiphonal chorus. In our country, warmth eventually claims its seasons. Even glaciers eventually regress.

As many of you wait for spring in areas of the country that continue to have one last miserable showing of winter after another, remember spring will come. As you wait to find work or to generate income and you feel the cold weight of fear creeping in, remember that seasons shift and that your time will come. Put a blanket around your hopes to keep them healthy and hold on just a bit longer. And as for the hardened hearts, how will a spring thaw find them? In you of course. You know where the relationships are cold and brittle. You know where one sits in isolation. Go melt ice. Grow goodness. Spring is coming…listen for it.

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