Ice on the Mountains

ESSAY Ice on the Mountains Barbara Weddle I am preparing to return to Wisconsin from an impromptu Christmas visit with my Air Force son at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia. The night before, Mother Nature, in a capricious thrust of fury, hit much of Tennessee with a vicious ice storm. This morning, however, 1-75 is declared safe for travel, so immediately after reveille I leave as planned. The drive from Valdosta toAtlanta is uneventful, and the sun isbright in a clear sky. North of Atlanta, however, the sun quickly fades and the temperature begins to drop. I drive on in a chilly gloom. Near Tennessee, I begin to notice the mountains. Indistinct and in the distance yet, they appear to be covered with a hoary frost or dew, even though it is midday. As I approach the mountains, large patches of ice begin to appear along the shoulder and in the median. As I climb, it slushes out onto the macadam. Soon, the road is visible only by the tire tracks of the slowmoving traffic ahead of me, and I now see that what I had thought to be frost covering the mountainsides and tops is, in fact, ice. At the higher elevationthe ice ofthe previous day's stormhas notyetmelted. I consider turning back, but there is no where to make a turn and so I drive on. Soon, the ice spreads in every direction, becomes heavier, until, at what I guess to be one third of the way up, it lays upon every tree limb and every blade of grass so thick and cylindrical that they look like lengths of copper tubing, only white. Pine trees, their branches hunched and rigid from the weight of the ice, droop to the white blanket of the forest floor. Skinnier trees, broken in two, lay splintered down the mountainsides like pick-up-sticks. At intervals, trees line the shoulder on either side of the road. Nearly doubled over by their heavy white finery, they appear to curtsy as I drive by. There is only a thin metal rail between the road and careening off into the valleys below. I feel a sort of vertigo from the dizzying height, claustrophobia from all the tons of ice smothering the mountainsides and valleys to my right. I take a deep breath and slow my car nearly to a crawl. "Don't look down," I tell myself. But I can't pull my eyes away. Midway up, I come across a huge rock face, see a tractor-trailer rig jack-knifed up against the side of the rocky precipice to my left, the cab part twisted grotesquely back in the direction of the trailer, like some 52 living thing whose neck has been broken. I crawl around it, breathe a sigh of relief, then move on. I am near the crest now and starting to worry about my descent. When the car phone rings, I do not pick it up. I need to focus on my driving. Then, suddenly, I have reached the summit, and thrust out around me as far as I can see, mountains rounded and encased in ice to their crests, where Mother Nature has staked her undeniable glacial claim. It is as though she has been expecting me. Her valleys are utterly quiet and waiting, tables clothed in white, and set with her finest crystal, her peaks and mountainsides chandeliered with shiny tubes of ice. In Wisconsin I have seen awesome winters. But nothing has quite prepared me for the panoramic beauty spread before me now. I forget that I am at nosebleed height on a treacherous, icy mountain top in Tennessee. I forget that I will have to descend, that there are other mountains to cross. For now, I am surrounded in a pristine wonder of ice-covered switchbacks and ridges that cross and re-cross. For the moment, time is inconsequential, the world miniscule and far away. The climb up the mountain has been nerve-wracking, slow and fraught with danger, but the reward has exceeded all the peril and, for now, I just breathe deep and let my soul and the mountains become one. Thaw Her husband...