Friday Ramble - Melt

This week's word has been around since before 900, coming to us through the Middle English melten, Old English meltan, mealt and gemæltan all meaning to liquify and (or) digest. It's cognate with the Old Norse melta and Greek méldein meaning much the same thing, then the Proto Germanic meltanan and West Saxon gemyltan meaning "to make liquid". All or most of the forms in existence spring from the Proto Indo-European (PIE) root form meld meaning "softness" or "to render soft". The study of word origins is a fine thing.

Strange as it may seem, the word malt is also kin to this week’s ramble offering. In the malting process, barley is soaked, softened and drained to release enzymes used in brewing beer, and the result is called malt (or wort). The curious relation between melt and malt can be explained simply by the fact that both involve softening. On the other hand, the similar sounding verb meld "to dissolve, blend or mingle" originates in the Old High German melden, "to announce" and the Old English meldian, "to make known", and it is not kin. The term is used mainly in card games, particularly canasta.

In recent days, we watched hopefully as icicles depending from the eaves of the little blue house in the village melted away, little by little. We grow some fabulous icicles up here, and a favorite springtime exercise is wandering about with the camera and photographing them as they dwindle at their lofty moorings, turn skinny and then disappear into the earth, drop by shining drop.

There are tiny worlds too numerous to imagine in the icicles dangling over our heads and in the streams below our feet. The greater world around us and its multitudes of miniscule universes are complete within themselves and teeming with life and enchantment, all wrapped up together and happy with the arrangement.

Sometimes melting ice holds the doddering photographer and her camera. Other times, it is filled with sky, clouds, bare trees and tiny sprigs of emerging greenery—all are expressions of this madcap season when vibrant new life is coming into being. The Old Wild Mother (Earth) creates finer "stuff" than I shall ever be able to dream up, but that is quite all right. I just wander around and chronicle her doings with lens and notebook and a perpetually stunned expression.