The Ice Storm

“It’s like we’re high,” said my friend Eileen, and I laughed because she was right. We had headed out for a walk in my neighborhood but it was impossible for us to move forward, everything was wrapped in a sparkling clear layer of glassy ice and we needed to look all of it. Twice. Up close. We gawked at the little black berries on the hedge that lines the west side of my yard — they were like eyeballs on stalks. We gawked at the leggy stems of lavender, the remaining buds in little knobs at the top of each glass encased stem. I gawked at Christmas lights, still tied on fence posts, and at little white flowers, and at poppy seed pods and tall grass and buds on the ends of tree branches, and Eileen did the same and we oohed and aahed our way up the block, stopping to snap photos every few feet or so.

I had never seen an ice storm before. The front window of my house had become translucent privacy glass. The monkey puzzle tree across the street was a shadow, the houses were nothing more than a smudge. It made me feel claustrophobic, a little, because I couldn’t see the sky, only a grayish white opacity. We left the house via the back door because the ice on the front steps was too treacherous. In the alley, along the fence, there were perfect little raccoon paw prints and slick depressions from the tracks of neighbors who had four wheel drive and a certain fearlessness.  Out front, the lawn was smooth and shiny, like a sheet of white plastic, and it merged into the street over an invisible and hazardous curb line.

We walked up the hill and saw roses frozen into pink icy confections. We saw a skier slide by, and another, and we saw a girl trying to convince her gray muzzled golden retriever to join her on a sled. At the park, we saw kids fly down a hill, joyfully, into an open field. We saw dogs wearing sweaters. My glasses fogged up and I took them off and cleaned them, and then, they fogged up again. We walked in the middle of the road, except when a car would come, and then, we would stand well out of the way and watch, cautiously, as they navigated the ice and snow and unpredictable surface of the neighborhood streets. People cleared their sidewalks with garden shovels; neighbors dressed in winter boots and ski gloves stood around talking to each other on those same sidewalks.

Two blocks away there was an elaborate castle made of snow bricks and next to it, a dragon, a full dragon, and while he was not breathing fire, he was beautifully convincing with pointed scales along his spine and a face just like the dragon on my Chinese tea pot. There were snowmen, many of them, wearing hats, with stick arms and forced smiles and the ice made them smooth on the outside. My coat was covered in a fine layer of water, too cold to drip off me until I reentered the house and then, immediately, I was a great soggy puddle.

While in the house, we cooked, meal after meal, during the snow and ice. The ice clicked on the glass, little white pellets of ice like a giant beanbag in the sky had been torn open. It was continuous, and built up on the front window, and wrapped everything in transparent glass. Meanwhile, we baked brownies and sauteed noodles with bok choy and made a Swiss chard quiche and some Parmasean and rosemary scones. I grilled some salmon and we ate leftover roasted potato and garlic soup and we made an apple pear crumble which we ate for dessert or lunch or breakfast, even, because it had oatmeal topping and that’s okay, right? We played a board game and we talked and spontaneous sessions of napping broke out during which everyone would retreat to a different corner of the house for an hour or so, and then, we’d have tea and more brownies and think about what we could make, or should we walk to the store and I wonder what is open in the neighborhood, anyway?

A bus was abandoned on the hill between my house and the supermarket, and there it sat, flashing its blinkers while two boys ran around it, shirtless. “It’s a competition!” they explained, and shouted after their friend who’d wandered off with their jackets. It was bitter cold, and still, and there were so few cars out so it was quieter than usual. “That bus, it’s been there since three this afternoon,” said a woman who appeared from behind a garden gate. The ice made shiny wind chimes out of leafy rhododendron plants, a great stand of bamboo keeled over, blocking part of the sidewalk with slick icy reeds. Trees glowed from underneath, I stood under canopies of frozen branches, they were like giant silk spiderwebs made of cold glass, lit yellow by the streetlights.  Grassy plants were like fat sea anemones, they held the shape of underwater tentacles, only they did not sway, they were stopped in a single moment of this frigid receding tide.

I was enchanted. Each little stalk of growth that punched through the snow was packaged in a quarter inch of pristine glazing. Every little needle on the pine trees, each tiny striving branch on the miniature apple trees out in front of my house, the white strings of laundry line drawn across my back yard, even the fallen snow, everything, encased. My little neighborhood had become the realm of the White Witch of Narnia, of Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen. It was beautiful and dangerous and slick and magic and everywhere I put my eyes there was something breathtaking to see.

Eileen was stuck, we refused to drive her to the airport and anyway, her flights kept getting cancelled. She had to stay another day. At night, it rained and washed away the dragon and the snowmen and there was the occasional whomp of a big lump of snow sliding off the roof into the yard. In the morning I watched long stiletto blades of ice drop off the power lines into the street below and I watched the shiny beads that held tiny little sprigs of juniper disappear. The roads cleared, mostly, save for dirty slush piled along the gutters and at corners, and the dreamlike white city of winter returned to gray and green. I was glad that my guest could depart, she wanted to go, her family was waiting, but I’ll admit it: I was — I am — sorry that I did not have more time with the ice.

Lower photo by UJ Sommer. That’s me in the window. I took the top photo, it’s a fern leaf encased in — you guessed it — ice.