Snow's retreatreveals some treats

The snow began its retreat weeks ago but it gives ground grudgingly, like a well-trained and stubborn army which does not believe it is beaten.

This seasonal recession is for me one of the many thrills, modest yet pleasant, reserved for people who live well north of the equator.

Snow refreshes familiar objects by the clever trick of hiding them for a couple of months.

By way of an example, a chunk of granite borders a patch of lawn in our backyard. It is not a particularly conspicuous stone, and although I suppose I look at the thing several times every week during the warmer seasons, my eye at that time never lingers on it.

Yet when, on a recent sunny afternoon I noticed that a fin of this rock had breached the surface of the shrinking snow, I felt a little twinge of unexpected gladness. It was the sort of sensation you have when you come across some item you had forgotten — when, for example, your fingers brush against a 20-dollar bill wadded into the pocket of a rarely worn coat.

This feeling gains strength, naturally, in years such as this one, when the snow has lain deep and long.

The other day when I came home for lunch I saw, as I walked past the rock wall I assembled last year, a plastic garden sprayer. I used the sprayer to moisten the dry mortar that holds the wall together. The nozzle, despite its being immersed in snow since before Christmas, was still smeared with grey splotches of the stuff which, as I learned after tussling with it, deflects even a stiff blow from the sharp edge of a trowel.

With just that glimpse of the sprayer I immediately recalled, with the clarity the clings to a relatively recent event, building that wall on hot and still summer afternoons. I remembered how green the grass was, newly seeded that spring. I remembered how the cool mist caressed my face when I sprayed water into the wheelbarrow where I mixed the mortar, and how sometimes a miniature rainbow appeared in the ephemeral patch of humid air that hung above the wheelbarrow.

I enjoyed this reminiscing. A person achieves, I've noticed, a particular satisfaction in remembering some piece of work that was completed without emptying a checking account or fracturing a finger.

The transition to spring brings annoyances as well as delights, of course.

As snow erodes it reveals imperfections which I would rather remained hidden. When I see for the first time in many weeks a corner of yard which I neglected last summer to rescue from the weeds, I wish the fleeting snow of the valley would mimic the obstinacy of mountain drifts. I'd gladly give over parts of my place to a group of tiny glaciers, which would glisten in the sunshine and would be, I'm certain, more attractive than the unkempt sections of my property which I have neither the skill nor the patience to properly groom.

In the main, though, I'm eager for spring to arrive. I am ready, after the long fallow season, to gouge into the fecund soil and yank the starter cord on the lawnmower.

Probably I'd better round up the Christmas lights first.

Jayson Jacoby is the editor of the Baker City Herald.