We here in Rhode Island had a mini-blizzard in the middle of February, which dumped two feet of snow. A lot of it melted right away. But some of it remained, in big chunks and drifts on the roadside.
It melts, bit by bit, and the streets and sidewalks get wider and wider, thank God.
Have you ever noticed what happens when mounded snow melts? It almost always leaves debris behind, like this:
Flashback to the last Ice Age: the glaciers pushed all kinds of debris (rocks, etc.) out to their limits, and then they receded.
What did they leave behind?
Why, Cape Cod and the Elizabeth Islands!
Cape Cod and the Elizabeths are the fringe of debris - the “terminal moraine” – left behind by the last glaciers.
The last Ice Age left behind all kinds of debris in southern New England: the teardrop-shaped islands in Boston Harbor, the big chunks of stone dropped at random throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut and Rhode Island (“glacial erratics”, and (most especially) the line of debris that created the ridges of Cape Cod and the Elizabeth Islands.
Debris. What a terrible word. Let’s just call it “landscaping.”
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