Ice

On Friday afternoon, the wintry weather mix predicted earlier in the week swept in and, over a series of hours, coated everything with a not unsubstantial layer of ice.

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I am no stranger to ice; my hometown gets more of it, the evil shapeshifter cousin, than snow.

Where an evening snow falling creates a hush, a sealed capsule of silence, an evening sleet is percussive - at times sounding deceptively like rain, at others, a hiss that is the embodiment of its peril.

The winter before I turned 16, I fractured my leg stepping onto some ice from a sidewalk halfway between my and my carpool driver's house.  One moment I was vertical, the next, horizontal. I tried to stand and couldn't; I watched, helplessly, as the water bottle from my lunch bag rolled down the street. It was rather comical, really; especially when my savior arrived in the form of a passing motorist, a man many decades my senior.  I had had no idea there was any ice on that corner - it was the refrozen remnant of an earlier icing - but this invisible sheet instantaneously taught me what it felt like to fracture a bone. Because I knew it was fractured, even before the ER doctor grasped it, even before they X-rayed it.

Eight years later, a freak ice storm derailed me from a plane trip and stranded me in St. Louis. The next morning, I laced up my hiking boots and (very cautiously) trekked to Queeny with my camera. Because, though insidious, ice can nevertheless make the ordinary extraordinary. The day after the storm was a dazzling day; a couple of daredevil cross-country ski enthusiasts even tore past me on the trails.

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Friday night was dark and cold; I battened the hatches with beer, frozen pizza, and a book.

Saturday was even colder. The roads were relatively clear but everything else - grass, trees, roofs, cars, mailboxes, signs - was coated in icy shellac. The temperature hovered below freezing and my small town laid still well past noon. I practiced yoga alone, read my book, then practiced yoga with a friend and stayed for dinner with her family.  On the way home from her house, a thin veil of clouds covered the sky, allowing the moon to cast a corona.

For the first time this season, I am feeling winter in my bones.

This morning dawned gray and cold. I read for a bit, hoping the forecast was correct and the sun would break up the grey clouds. The sun, she did not disappoint. By mid-morning, the sun was out, trying her mightiest to melt the ice remnants. I bundled up appropriately for my first and only run of this week.

And what a fine run it was.  The air - still below freezing, but dry and calm - shimmered with cold and reverberated with the sound of ice sliding off roofs and hitting the pavement as it melted from tree-tops. My breath rose in clouds but my feet soldiered on, five miles, ten miles, twelve miles.

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Times like this morning, when my mind is wandering the earth at a far faster speed than that of my body, words cease to have meaning in their traditional sense. Piecing the experience back together for this blog, for posterity's sake, it a bit strange. Cumbersome.

I've been writing this post for several hours, taking breaks to thumb through notebooks of quotes, to look out the window at the rising full moon. I stumble upon this:

" 'What do I love?' musing on it. 'Very little. The earth. The stars. The sea. Cool classical guitar throbbing flamenco. Any colour under the sun or hidden deep in the breast of my mother Earth. [...] And storms...and the thunderous breaking surf. And the farout silent waves....and o, dolphins and whales! The singing people, my sisters in the sea...and anything that displays gentle courage, steadfast love. The still brilliance of garnet, all wine, water of life and bread of heaven and grave shimmering moon...' " (Keri Hulme, The Bone People, page 423)