Ice, Stone And Flow

Day 51: In my hand is a dog-chewed, yellowed, taped, and altogether cherished book entitled "Water Wonders Every Child Should Know," by Jean M. Thompson, published in 1914. It was my mother's when she was a child, and I came to love it long before I understood the science. In fact, it was my introduction to the fantastical frozen world I later sought out as a mountaineer, that realm where ice takes form as complex crystalline structures with a beauty found otherwise only in the arctic lands. In my climbing years, I saw ice-coated rocks, each face bearing an entirely different series of shapes: curls, coils, bubbles, prisms, columns and the like, and whole mountaintops blanketed in long feathers of wind-etched rime. I first met snow-rollers in those pages, and only later discovered them on the high slopes of Mount Rainier and other northwestern peaks, and in some alpine meadows as well, where conditions favoured their formation. In the depths of crevasses, I found perfect hexagonal plates, seemingly pierced through their centers, arranged on a central spindle of ice like tomatoes on a shish-kebab skewer. I will not say that I have seen all the wonders described in Ms. Thompson's book, but I have had a fair sampling.

Even though my tolerance for cold is growing less as I age, the magical kingdom of frost and snow still fascinates me. Stiff in layers of wool and fleece, I may still be found on my hands and knees at the base of some small fall of water, admiring Nature's most impermanent art.