Ice skating: an overanalysis

 “This is a nightmare,” I said to my boyfriend as we walked up to a skating rink in El Dorado Hills, California. The “Family Friendly Winter Wonderland” was in a shopping mall surrounded by faux-Tuscan mansions, and the rink was packed from barrier to barrier. Pete promised peppermint bark and beer if I stuck with […]

Creating With Nature: Ice Ornaments

If it is still freezing hard during the night where you live, you can try this easy and fun art project. Find some paper plates, cups, tupperware containers, anything with an interesting shape that you can get ice out of in one piece pretty easily. I like the paper plates because you can kind of […]

Breaking the Sea Ice

About the same time I was laid off from my last magazine job, I found out that I’d gotten a gig in the Bering Sea. A photographer, Chris Linder, had a National Science Foundation grant to go on a series of voyages to very cold places and he needed a writer to go with him. […]

Guest Post: I Walked Across the Hudson River

Several times a week, I drive over a Hudson River bridge to pick up my daughter from her school in Troy, NY, and bring her back home to the Albany side. Back and forth I go, and every time my eye wanders to the frozen surface below. Even when it’s dark and there’s nothing to […]