aBe PaZoS SoLaTie

Ice

Sun Nov 28, 2010

Image

Today the sun was shining, so I went to the beach. Many other people also went there to enjoy the beautiful day. I walked on the frozen sea. I heard a fisherman say the ice is about 8 cm thick, and that it gets 1 cm thicker every day if it’s -10ºC. Some people walked, others skated. Two even had ice boats that moved quickly over the ice without making any noise. The ice was perfectly flat, like polished, and with no snow on top of it. Like a thick glass full of art inside. I spent some time studying it closely and its beauty surprised me. I can’t think of anything similar in nature. Different areas had different shapes. Sometimes it was full of something like spiral worms made of air, just a few millimeters long. It was like looking at cells in a microscope, but on 3D. I could move my head to one side or the other and observe how the floating shapes rotated. I also observed collections of non-parallel translucent planes. The best description I can think of is… imagine you have a hundred sheets of paper made of glass in your hand, and you throw them up in the air. When they are all floating, you take a 3D photo. That’s what I saw below my feet. As I moved, and depending on the angle, these sheets reflected the sun light for a very short period of time. Something very special.

Amazing in a different way was to see some people walk voluntarily into a hole in the sea (called Avanto) and go for a short swim, then walk back to a warming room. I observed the ritual from a safe distance dressed like an astronaut.

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Categories: photo Tags: frozen ice snow Places: finland