The flip side of spring flooding is open water. We’ve been waiting for it to flow again for months. We’ve watched and wondered when the ice would go out.

We’ve dreamed about the feeling of floating.

When it does finally give way, we are reminded it is not one event, it takes days of breaking up and jamming together again. Mornings are motionless, afternoons are alive.

The temperature rises and falls, and we keep waiting and watching.

The ice officially started to move in Marine last Sunday at 5 p.m., according to a local resident who kept official track for the city’s ice-out contest. Jamie Flaten had the closest guess.

Twice, I was alerted the huge sheets of ice were starting to move, and twice I ran down with my camera to try to record this fleeting annual event, the brief moment of break-up. Both times, the ice had jammed itself at slight bends in the river, locked up again.

Eluding my observation, over the course of a couple days, the floes broke down small enough to move, and the river was in motion again.

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