The roars of March, brought by our first hard rains in months, emanated from my backyard early this week — one a constant, soothing roar, the other sudden, violent and threatening, like a bear trying to chase off Old Man Winter; one welcoming spring, the other expelling winter.

The continuous roar was the brook that has lain dormant since December, always flowing gently under ice and two feet of insulating snow which prevented it from freezing. Even during frigid days and sub-zero nights, never once did the steady flow stop as it did last snow-starved winter. I remember marveling several times this year at the stream’s determined flow through deep, sporadic openings, riffles visible, rattle clear, like dogged passion that could not be killed or restrained. By Monday afternoon, the stream had swelled, turned brown and carved open a continuous, central, snake-like channel sluicing through the icy constriction. I knew the surface would soon be consumed and washed away in big, dangerous chunks, widening the stream out to its banks. And sure enough, upon returning from work at midnight, I could hear that first, unmistakable, cold, dark purr of March, the sound of spring purging winter with a calming fury. Again, like untamed passion, it’s wise to stand back and observe from above, afar. Even a experienced whitewater man riding the torrent for the joy of it could be decapitated by an overhanging branch or vine, maybe dumped, washed away and snagged in a morbid tangle among hidden, undercut roots and debris. Only fools take lightly nature’s overwhelming power.

The quick, thunderous, bear’s roar came from a closer source; it was a slate-roof avalanche tobogganing the final, stubborn pile of shaded snow off the north woodshed ell and crashing it into the wall of a stubby kitchen wart across the slim, square alcove. I jumped up to see if there was damage. No. Everything fine. The resulting snow pile stood high above the windows at its peak, had filled the space with chunky sheets of dense, icy snow that reached all the way up to the opposite wall’s windowsill. Any higher and it would have blasted out the glass and ruined my day. Had a rugged, beefy man been standing in its way, he would have been chopped in half; like the raging stream, long-held snow shooting off a slate roof is nothing to fool with.

It’s funny, the more I read and heard about collapsing roofs this winter, the more I worried about that ominous pile of snow deposited onto the woodshed roof from the one above. It was piled so high and heavy atop the ridge and against the house that it had filled the eight- to 10-foot gap between the perpendicular roofs and I could step from one to the other. When a friend recently told me he was raking in 100 bucks an hour removing snow from central and eastern Massachusetts roofs, I uttered a wry chuckle and informed him that, although I understood his clients’ concerns, I had chosen another route. The way I looked at it, my old buildings have survived worse winters over parts of four centuries, so I wasn’t going to fret about 2011, no matter how determined newspapers and nightly newscasters were to terrify me. I guess my instinct served me well, saved money. No roof collapses and, miraculously, not so much as a drop of water leaking into the house, barn or sheds beneath slate roof extending almost the length of a football field.

Yes, the old tavern made it through another cold, snowy New England winter just fine, thank you, and will probably weather many more, friendly spirits smiling from above. Soon the bushes will be blooming, the turkeys will be gobbling, the kids will be fishing, Tim Duprey will be walking my roofs to replace slates now lying atop tall snow piles, and I’ll find the right contractor to build and install a copper roof for the barn cupola. It’s never-ending, yes, but sure does keep life interesting.

A redeeming element of tough winters is the way they enhance spring-fever euphoria, an annual affliction that raises spirits and rivers, and often caused me problems in my younger days. Undaunted, I welcome spring with enthusiasm, not fear.