It's been years and years since that's been true in our little slice of the Mid-Atlantic, but winter actually arrived for work this time around. With March around the corner, it's all starting to melt now. The gurgling and burbling of downspouts over the last week sounded like a benediction. Patches of grass remade the acquaintance of the sun, and it was all lovely. I've been eager for the snow to make its departure, and it's taken its sweet time.
I was meditating on this while walking the pup one morning this week, when the moist earth's return whispered a thought into my ear. When rain falls, and falls all at once, the soil can only drink so much. Get a three quarters of an inch of rain all at once, and much of that runs off. The water table beneath gets a sip or two, sure, but the rest flows off down the watershed.
But get the equivalent amount as snow, and that melts off gradually. It's a slow and steady drip line, saturating and then continuing, like a long, soft, soaking drizzle. Like a dripline laid across an entire region, that timed release would improve aquifer uptake, more completely quenching the thirsty ground.
It's so obvious, of course.
But I'd never had that thought before, and it made the long melt feel less like an imposition and more like a blessing.
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