Winter is Coming
We’re walking in the woods beside the Little Beaverkill and I ask my daughter why moving water won’t freeze. She thinks about it and says, “It’s too busy.” Which is an awful answer, so I send a note to her science tutor asking for our money back. But she responds that it’s not a bad description at all: Still water freezes at 32F, but moving water wants to freeze and can’t, because the movement stops the water molecules from organizing into crystals. So in a way you could say it is busy. Which is also a bad answer. What’s this about water wanting?
So we come across another section of very still, unfrozen water at the base of a beaver dam and I ask my daughter why that water isn’t frozen. “Too lazy,” she says. Which makes perfect sense. Busy water. Lazy water. And water that just wants to get somewhere.
