January Thaw

The sky is clear tonight and the air is still. The moon is high above the house, moving toward full, and the stars are bright. You can stand out on the upper deck and listen to the stream running down the hill, flowing hard from last night’s storm, into the quiet harbour. It is a Nova Scotia January thaw.

Last night’s storm was a good one. The wind blew hard and buffeted the house. Rain poured down through the night and cleared off much of our snow. Then the storm moved on and tonight the air is cooling. And it is still. In the morning the ground will be crisp.

It was afternoon when the sky began to clear after the storm. The sun shone through, and it felt like spring.
So we went to Sailor’s Point (known to others as the Look-off at Herring Cove) to walk on the rocks and look at the sea. No one else was around. The waves roared in and crashed on the granite coastline.
I could never quite catch the biggest plumes of spray with the camera, and it can’t record the thudding and booming as the waves smashed into the bluff below the cairn or the roar of the torrents pouring down off the rocks after the big ones hit.

There was some ice left in a few pools after our storm, but most was gone. And the smashed mussel shells were a reminder of the height of the tidal surge when the last storm went through. There were also chunks of fish floats and uprooted trees above the path and pieces of the embankment torn off and washed up into the bushes, reminders of what a good storm can do.

But these storms pass, bringing January thaws for a day or so, and sometimes the air is quiet behind them. Like tonight.