Another American Adventure: More about ice

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

More about ice

Just because there's no snow, it doesn't mean that you're home free. Getting around can still be a challenge. It's easier to walk through a foot of snow than make your way across the ice in the field above.

I also found out about "black ice". When the temperature is just around freezing and it starts to rain, the blacktop on the road will get shiny and become a sheet of ice. You can't even walk on it, much less drive.

This is looking down at the icy ground:

3 comments:

BarbaraJanuary 5, 2011 at 2:23 PM
It is easier to walk on snow (or drive on it, for that matter) than on ice. I usually walk alongside rather than on well-tred paths because the latter inevitably are icy.

Black is unavoidable. You just have to assume it is there. For me that means being particularly cautious around stop signs. I give myself sliding room, if possible.

Much of the snow we had around here is gone. We have only had a dusting yesterday and today. The worst is a rainfall followed by a quick freeze. My driveway is slanted downward and it can be extremely difficult to extricate the car from it on such occasions. I park on the street instead.
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BarbaraJanuary 5, 2011 at 2:23 PM
I meant Black ice is unavoidable.
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beth cioffolettiJanuary 6, 2011 at 6:32 AM
We're getting our dusting this morning, Barbara. I'm always a little worried about driving when it's snowing, but no one else seems to be. I'm afraid it will turn into a blizzard and I'll get stuck somewhere. I'm still trying to avoid the black ice!
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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.