Glacier Ice

Another morning with the thermometer on my deck reading minus eighteen, much lower than normal. Every morning when I get up, I record it, and again when it appears high for the day. In the table below, I compare the normal highs with my actual highs for December 7 to 14. All of my daily highs are far below normal, the greatest difference being twenty-five degrees.

.............High for the day ........... Mean high
..............per thermometer .........for the day
Date .....on my deck ....................per US data

12/7 ........10 ......................................21
12/8 .........0 .......................................21
12/9 .........2 .......................................20
12/10 .....-5 .......................................20
12/11 ...... 0 .......................................20
12/12 ...... 0 .......................................10
12/13 .....-8 ........................................19
12/14 .......2 ........................................18

After a normal stop at Sandy’s, I headed west into the wind, along the Blue Ox Trail to Fifteenth Street, followed it to where it ends, then across the open field to Highway 11. After that, it’s not far through the Rainy River Community College campus to Super Value Foods, nearly an hour in all.

My mystery bicyclist did not show me his tracks today, and I know he comes this way. Maybe the packed snow is getting too slick even for his knobby treads. It is almost too slick for my coil-clad boots.

Since no snow has fallen in many days, and none has melted during the cold snap, any snow left on streets and parking lots has remained, pressed down under enough tires to compact it into hard, almost ice. In some places it is ice, having that clear, shiny, dangerous surface. I take to the woods and fields more these days to avoid it.


Ten thousand years ago in these parts, snow was being compressed under its own weight, and the ice so formed was sliding slowly, grinding rock and mixing the grindings with ice to form a dark mass like what I see on streets today. When the glaciers melted, their non-water load was left for us to interpret. In a similar way, this dirty snow on the streets carries its own modern load—cigarette butts, dog droppings, brown leaves, and a mix of sand and chemical placed there to melt the snow, but which has been captured by the snow-ice it tried to melt. All things falling on the ice will reappear.




Meanwhile, in these modest but charming houses on Seventh Street, residents worry that not enough snow has fallen to insulate the ground against penetrating frost. They fear their pipes could freeze. And in the cold mornings I see jumper cables trying to start cars. But jovial Larry, from his stool inside Sandy’s, pulls a clicker from his pocket, presses a button, says, “Now my car is started.”