Feb 2, 2026by: Curtis Hoff No Comments

ICE – Janice Anne Wheeler, Sparring With Mother Nature

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*** Thanks for SPARRING with me on what feels like a slippery slope! ~J

If you’ve just joined our engaging little community, please read SPARS & SPARRING, my introductory piece.….and share it, if you are so inclined….that works wonders.

ICE

The beauty not the beast

Janice Anne Wheeler

Feb 1

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Each day there is frosty artwork on the outside of STEADFAST’s temporary shelter; these are two stunning examples. Is it the dust particles that create such stunning designs? Is it Mother Nature’s remarkable gift to me? A tradeoff, perhaps, as she slows progress and offers only downright treacherous conditions to do what needs to be done?

Water is our planet’s most precious resource in its many forms: liquid, solid, gas, salt, fresh, brackish; 85% of me is water as I pen this musing about the impacts of something so prevalent and accessible for some that it can be taken for granted, while others walk miles each and every day for mere survival, not for showers or luxury or houseplants, but for subsistence. Although it is salt water which flows in human veins, fresh is what we must partake of to survive; a couple was found lifeless last year, their raft adrift atop the salty Atlantic while, ironically, the fish below would even more quickly perish in a sea of fresh. There are fine degrees of difference in the water all creatures need, but need it we all do.

This flock of assorted seagulls was gathered, I think, to fend off the impending ice. They did not prevail.

In parts of the U.S last week, Mother Nature bestowed all forms of the sometimes controversial, hard-to-manage stuff; inches of intricate, delicate crystals were topped with freezing rain resulting in a crusty coating causing gridlock, cancellations, photographic opportunities and one more lesson about the powerful natural forces that control our lives.

Now, she is maintaining temperatures low enough to keep that solid state remarkably slippery and impenetrable. Each day sunshine slicks the surface, mimicking relief, only to refreeze again when the day ends. As a child I skated on the ponds of Upstate New York but never really took to the uncertainty of it all, a counterintuitive activity that encourages movement on two skinny blades of steel. In Colorado my younger self would don harness, grab axes, challenge the ice falls of Ouray to revel in the beauty and adrenaline. The final time I chose that activity a shard broken loose by my own hand crashed into helmet, nose and cheekbone, dripping blood on the crystal clear surface. My crampons may still be tucked somewhere, perhaps in my brother’s North Country basement, (they are an essential tool for winter ascents of the Adirondack Mountains), but the helmet and axes were retired. I try not to repeat too many SPARRING matches I cannot win.

Beauty and the beast.

There is still no safe way to navigate the hundred yards from where STEADFAST is entombed to our boatyard office. Yacht Maintenance Company spent a day removing the five or so inches of clear, glaciated water from in front of their main entrance. Folks build entire hotels out of the stuff! Such a stay is not even remotely appealing to this thin-blooded girl.

That same blood boils when I hear about acts committed by some members of the U.S. government entity with the same name as Mother Nature’s treacherous essential.** May this debilitating ice and that wayward ICE quickly be transformed into something less menacing and far, far kinder.

See you next week.~J

I hope you value SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE. My friend Switter has a view of the world that always broadens my own, which I find incredibly valuable: Do partake.

Switter’s World

Some Women

Pamela Leavey left a thoughtful note on Substack that triggered my own memories:Some women don’t get to live soft lives. They get handed chaos, grief, betrayal, and they have to learn how to bloom anyway. They become the ones who know how to carry others when their world falls apart because they remember what it was like when no one showed up for them. They’r…

6 months ago · 26 likes · 14 comments · Switter’s World

Some men don’t get to live soft lives, either. I strive to always appreciate mine.

REFERENCES:

** In case you’ve decided to stay under a large rock for the last year (not altogether a bad choice in these aggressive times), the current President of the U.S. created Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The majority of citizens do not agree with their tactics and some are blatantly illegal as well as immoral.

-For more commentary on water’s impacts, I recommend John Lovie’s ‘Stack

MOSTLY WATER.

I so appreciate your support of my work. Have a wonderful week!