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IceDecember 22, 2008 Yesterday was sloppy and wet and in the forties. Much of the snow melted: by nightfall the main roads were clear and the pine trees had been relieved of their heavy white burden. While I was at writers' group, the temperature crashed. As we were breaking up, around 9:15, our host's tenant came in to say the driving was treacherous; he'd just come from Oak Bluffs, "fishtailing all the way," he said. Outside the dark driveway was like undulating harbor waters frozen in place. And my pickup doors were both frozen shut. Not quite as frozen as they were at the end of a potluck about three years ago. Then pouring rain at 50 degrees turned to scattered snow at less than 20, and all in a scant couple of hours. Everyone's doors were frozen shut. Several wouldn't open till water was boiled up and poured on them. This time the driver's side door yielded to persistent push-and-pulling, and I drove home without incident. On Old County Road, though, the overhead light came on, along with the dashboard "DOOR AJAR" sign: thanks to the warmth of the cab the passenger-side door had finally yielded to my earlier tug-and-yanking. It didn't swing open but I couldn't see a damn thing with the interior light on, so I stopped as soon as I turned on to Halcyon Way to shut the door. The paved part of the road was dry: my odds of getting under way again looked pretty good. The dirt part was crunchy with ice but I made it home with only a little slip-sliding and a very minor fishtail. Travvy greeted me at the door with a whole-body wiggle. Even better, no trash was strewn on the floor. Best of all, he wasn't interested in going out. I poured myself a beer, did an hour's worth of editing, and went to bed. Morning dawned bright and clear for the first time in several days. The flip side was that at 7 a.m. it was 10 degrees out and the wind was shrieking around the corners of the building. Trav doesn't have to bundle up. I, much less furry, added a fleece balaclava to my usual outdoor get-up, and out we went. Thanks to my determined slush shoveling of the previous afternoon, the deck and stairs were clear. On the ground the frozen snow was rough and not too slippery. Trav's leash, however, soaked from several outings yesterday, froze hard in minutes. Its extended part (a doubled length of clothesline) was suitable for molding into fanciful shapes. Island artist Steve Lohman, who twists wire and, occasionally, neon into wonderful sculptures, might consider adding frozen rope to his media. The walking took extra care but wasn't bad. Travvy behaved himself pretty well on a very loose leash. I watched my Muck-booted feet, and the ice formations under them. Especially marvelous were the puddles, of which there are many many, large, small, and in-between, on Halcyon Way extended and the Doctor Fisher road, which intersects it back in the woods. Most looked like sections lifted from a topographical map, each depicting a hill rising steeply from ground level. Probably it was the rapidity of the freezing that created the concentric swirls in each puddle, and the dirt of the road added shades of tan and brown that could have been colored by a cartographer. It was definitely the Civil War military history I'm copyediting that made me imagine troops holding the top of each hill against waves of besiegers, and the occasional scout riding to the top to see what he could see. A long portion of the trail that runs behind the West Tisbury School floods when it rains hard. This morning it was a slow river frozen smooth, the most challenging terrain my boots encountered. I walked on its edge when there was room, and when there wasn't I crunched through the snowy leaves and underbrush on its banks. Immediately behind the school the playing fields had become a vast expanse of glaring snow, barely an inch deep but unbroken by footprints; a snowblower had created a mounded tumble on the edge of the practice basketball court, but that was it for topographical variety. I let Travvy go. He explored Snowblower Ridge, and the narrow deck that runs along the backside of the single-story school, linking the outside doors of all the classrooms. Then he caught up with me two-thirds of the way across the snowfield, running and dashing and leaping into the air, woo-wooing all the while. Then he took off toward the line of trees, heading (of course) for T-beaux's house, where I caught up with him a few minutes later.
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