The croaks and moans of the river can be heard for miles. When the huge chunks of ice shift the ground vibrates. She radiates her pain through the night. It's a quick pain, it will pass. I imagine that my dear friend, the Yukon, is not so much breaking apart, but more so coming together. She cries out in the same motherly gasps of a woman in labor. As the ice breaks and shifts, tearing holes in the landscape, the river is being born. The pain is hard to watch. I must be one of the few people who can look at a river breaking apart and feel it's overwhelming sense of hurt. The way the sharp jagged edges move across her hurts me. And yet, when all the pain passes something wonderful happens. Water flows. For the first time in seven months the blue streaks of waves will be seen and heard. And out of the slow, yet quick, process of a winter river vanishing, comes a summer river filled with life.
