I Picnic On Ice

Here…

...and it was so beautiful. Imagine! 

There are landscapes I’ve never been in before, and this was one. A high lake in Sweden, frozen to 40-50 cm thick of ice. But not frozen as a single sheet, not as a block-lid, but made from layers and layers, built up over what has been a particularly cold winter and changing now that spring is coming. 

The top lake layer: remnants of recent snow, the morning's recent frost, some places a sheen of water depending on where sunlight has fallen. In places, near the edge and under the tree canopy, there are scenes of broken glass crystals, like the perfect fall of a precious chandelier, and in others, slews of glistening ice caviar. 

This lake surface is flat-with-rising-places. These are mini alpine mountains, where expanding ice has pushed itself into Mont Blanc-resonant peaks to alleviate the pressure that comes with expansion. There are fissures too and in some places, there are small portholes to the next layers down, and these are mysterious with interlacing crystals and thin pastry layer accumulations. 

We sat, P, L, and I, and talked of rootedness and our lives (which, I've just thought, add up to a small-large 188 years). We ate and drank, looking outwards. It was peaceful, and there was a white silence as backdrop to these connections. 

And all the while the sun warmed us without the interruption of a single cloud.