The Re-Discovery of Ice
An Apostle Islands postcard
It is one of the greatest opening lines in all of literature: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
An afternoon walk along a frozen shoreline in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore may seem a world away from the the fictional town of Macondo, Columbia, the setting of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, but in those opening words lie a constant reminder that each step on the lakeshore this time of year can be a journey of discovery, the re-discovery of ice.
Find a shard of lake ice. Tip it up on edge and lie on your belly to take in the world through its lens — its pureness, its innocence, the way it swirls the sunlight and distills the blue of the winter sky into colors so pure it seems you could taste them on your tongue. What is so common a thing as ice that it can hold such magic? What alchemy is this that can transform simple lake water and cold into such beauty?
By the time you stand up again and brush the snow from your jacket, the ice will have worked its magic. You now remember what a gift it is to live in a place where such a re-discovery of magic takes, not the facing of a firing squad, only a simple walk on a frozen shoreline in the company of miracles.
— Jeff Rennicke (all photography by the author unless otherwise noted).