An Accumulation of Details

From a certain perspective, you could almost believe that this picture was taken on a cruise among the glaciers in Alaska.

But it's actually a congregation of thousands upon thousands of minute ice crystals that formed upstream in the White River, floated down to our position on the water then joined with a bunch of neighbors to form what appears to be a sheet of solid ice.

But it's not, at least not today.

When we first moved here, we were ice novices. My hometown growing up had lots of ponds, lakes, marshes, and some mountain streams. But no rivers. So my experience of ice is the formation of sheets that get progressively thicker as winter progresses then thin out as March approaches.

You would think that water is water and ice formation would be the same but living here has convinced me that water is truly the most magical of all beings. And yes, life on a river will convince you that H2O is very much alive.

Ice forms in two ways here. There's the coagulation along the shore or around objects—stones, trees—in the stream. But most of it starts as the ice crystals I described above. And this doesn't happen just because it's cold. It happens more on cloudy days than sunny. It can be too cold to form ice. As the days go by, these "slushies," as we call them, get caught in currents and spin into free floating discs that grow until they fill up whatever nook or cranny they find themselves in. Then they stop spinning and settle into bumpy ice that increases with the passing of winter.

This stuff, if there's enough of it, hisses as it floats downstream. This is particularly noticeable at the end of winter when the ice breaks up into massive chunks for ice out. As you walk by, the chunks clunk and thump against one another while the slush hisses among them.

And it all begins with tiny ice crystals, just like all change. We often fall into the lazy habit of believing that change has to be massive to be effective. But change is the slow accumulation of one detail laid on another.

Think about that. If you want to change something about yourself or your way of living, the way to begin might be to alter one small part of your morning routine or the route you take to work. If you want change, you need to invite it in.

In order to do something you've never done before, you must open yourself to the new.