06
March
Base — 232 cm
Summit — −2 °C
The thaw does not announce itself. It starts as a sound — water moving under snow, somewhere below the path, where three days ago there was nothing at all.
By the middle of March the south-facing slopes below fifteen hundred metres have begun to let go. The snow goes from white to grey to a coarse wet crystal that skis beautifully for two hours in the morning and is unmanageable by noon. Above two thousand it is still winter and will be for six weeks. The valley lives in both seasons at once, which is the particular character of the month.
The meltwater comes off the Bossons and joins the Arve, and the river changes colour — from the clear dark green of midwinter to a pale mineral grey, thick with rock flour ground off the bed of the glacier. It also gets loud. From the second bridge at this time of year you have to raise your voice.
In the garden the first thing to appear is not a flower but the gravel path, in patches, in an order that is the same every year and that we have never bothered to explain.
The kitchen begins to look south for the first time since October. The first asparagus is still five weeks away and will come from Provence rather than from here, but the braising pans go back down to the bottom shelf, and Théo starts talking about herbs.
Elsewhere in the log
Twelve entries so far. The season decides how many more.
Everything the house wrote down this winter, in the order it happened. Turn the spiral to look through them, or take the next entry below.
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