It’s happening.
Among the islands, breakup is not as dramatic as the Nenana Ice Classic where since 1917 bets have been placed on the exact date and time of “ice out” on Alaska’s Tananna River with the winner taking home over $200,000 in cold hard cash. Still, for weeks, even months, the bay has been a study of white-on-white, more defined by the absence of form and color than any form and color itself. Iceover on the bay can be like a kind of annual sensory deprivation experience, the specter of negative space, a long, white poem of silent syllables.
But now, that silence has been broken. The crinkle and clashing of the ice rings like bells. Leads of open water scroll across the blank white page like exuberant cursive. The lake is awake announcing over and over again the spin of the planets, the truth of the changing seasons.
No, the world hasn’t frozen permanently. Spring will come, is coming, once again to the islands. And it is all written in the breakup of the bay.
— Jeff Rennicke (all photography by the author unless otherwise noted)
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