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86 Monster Sky From the air, you can hardly see the change. White snow on every field. White snow to every horizon. Dark, meandering ribbons of riparian trees intersect beige lines of gravel roads, section roads, as straight as an assayer’s dream. Ice on every river, every lake, every pond. A calendar picture of winter. But this is the middle of March, and the colors have changed. River ice, no longer hard and perfect white, morphs into yellow and gray, the snow and ice starting to merge with the water below. Field snow melts and then refreezes as ice, reflecting blue sky less brilliantly, more like a mirror. Trees and buildings grow a darker brown. In neighborhoods, streaks of black reveal where snow has melted in alleys and backyards. Plow-built walls on the boulevards are dirty gray, the sand and gravel coming together as the snow and ice melt, exactly the same process that built every glacial moraine. In miniature there are icefalls and bergschrunds and seracs at every bend in the river. If you look closely, you can see something happening. Not just here or there. The whole landscape changing, the end of winter on the northern prairie . Blizzards and lethal cold are still possible, even expected. But as I walk around the airplane, the preflight inspection, I step over puddles of meltwater . I fold my jacket into the backseat. In April and May I would smile at this weather and declare it a fine and lovely day. The sky is bright and clear and warm. Yet here is a strange thing about living on the northern prairie. Too warm, too early, is the start of disaster. —————————————————— One thousand feet above the North Dakota farmland, it’s possible to see the world shimmer and tremble in the sunlight. Words like alpenglow and Monster Sky 87 pearlescent would work this afternoon. The Red River is still frozen, as is the Sheyenne. The sky is bright blue and the sunshine enormous. The fields are still snow covered, but the ice is compressing and melting away from the bottom . It’s all the same. It’s all completely different. From the air, city streets seem fluid as cars and trucks splash through curbside puddles that reach out toward medians and centerlines. The world is becoming fat, I think. Swelling. Like the bottom of Lake Yellowstone . Like the side of Mount Saint Helens. Just a few days ago, in Japan, an earthquake now measured at 9.0 moved the coastline eight feet. Tens of thousands of people are dead or missing. Tsunamis , rising as high as one hundred feet in harbors and bays, rushed ashore and then pulled the unattached and the unready back out to sea. Nuclear reactors are burning and venting radiation. The earth has shifted four inches on its axis. Just a few weeks ago, a New Zealand earthquake measured 6.3, killed at least 166, and brought down the spire at the Canterbury Cathedral in Christchurch , where just a few months ago I lit a candle and then climbed the stairs to see the city at sunset. Just last weekend, a Dakota blizzard came down so hard it stranded hundreds on the highways. New Jersey is flooding. Tennessee is flooding. At North Dakota’s Baldhill Dam, just a few hours ago, the drawdown of Lake Ashtabula was finished, and the valves were closed enough to match outflow with inflow. We all know what’s coming. I turn the airplane north and then west, following country roads and the paths of creeks whose names I have not learned. It’s a beautiful day. The sky is everywhere and bright. Enveloping. There has to be a word, I think, a word that gets to the heart of this feeling and this sight. Beautiful and apprehensive come to mind and then fade away. Both words are too easy, too gentle, too soft. There needs to be something more about the size of this air. The weight of that size. The potential of the enormous. Then it comes to me. Monster. I am flying in a monster sky. Huge and complicated . As likely to love as to kill. —————————————————— Spring in North Dakota, especially in the eastern part of the state, can often disappoint. The Sun climbs higher in the sky each day, but the winter snow cover and a persistent wind from Canada often make spring a dream that never seems to come true. When the snow finally melts and you...

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