1/9: on ice

I grew up with cold winters in the mountains of western Pennsylvania, but six years in Los Angeles and ten years in Arkansas have made cold, snowy winters mostly objects of memory. It does get cold in Arkansas (witness this chilly week!), but it rarely snows and winter doesn't settle in for months as it did in Pennsylvania. Because this week has been unusually cold, thick-ish ice has formed on some lakes, and this afternoon Chris and I visited the almost entirely iced-over Lake Bailey on Petit Jean Mountain. We initially stopped at the lake because a flock of Canadian geese had landed on it--I wanted to take some pictures. Then we saw people walking on the ice. I hesitated: I used to ice skate on lakes, but in my senior year of high school I fell through the ice on a pond and haven't been out much since. Today the appeal proved too great. I eventually moved from the frozen ground of the shore to the ice at the edge of the lake. I didn't go far into the lake (after all, it wasn't completely frozen), but I did have fun sliding on the surface and taking some close-up pictures. Who knows when I'll next be able to walk on water and snap ice photos in Arkansas?