Siberian Spring has Sprung!

April 3, 2008

April. The first real warm day of the year—the kind of warm in which you can finally walk outside, with a little courage, without a coat. The streets are crowded with people doing just that, walking here and there in jeans and dress shirts, or in even shorter skirts and slightly lighter leather boots (let’s not forget we are in Russia), kicking around soccer balls and hackey sacks, or sipping beer and licking ice cream cones (those these happens all year round). I decided to walk to school today, taking a roundabout sort of route to have a better view of the river. I ended up on a dirt road lined by quaint—though often dilapidated—wooden houses, dogs sunning themselves, and babushkas stripped down to wool vests sitting on stools by the side of the road. Though still criss-crossed by streams of melted snow, the dirt was relatively dry, baked by a few days of sunny skies. The river, too, is changing. The border of ice on its edges is shrinking, breaking off and floating downstream with the rapid spring current, mini icebergs finally set free. The recently thawed water is a cols, clear turquoise-emerald, like the water that flows under metres of Baikal ice, and is visible at this depths for its purity. Though Russians like to congratulate each other with the beginning of spring on the first of March (I don’t know how by any calculations, especially in Russia, the first of March marks the beginning of spring), I feel for the first time as if, at long last, it has finally arrived. Goodbye wool coat! So long long johns and extra socks! Siberian spring has sprung!