Everything Is Broken: Ice Along Bald Eagle Creek

A few weeks back when we were trapped way down deep in the deep freeze, almost all of our local creeks and rivers froze over. They were covered in thick sheets of ice, which jammed up everywhere when the big thaw arrived and set them free.

The roads were clear on this day, and so my husband and I took my new car out for a spin. We picked up some hoagies, potato chips, and Ritchey's milk at the little gas station in Port Matilda, then headed for a favorite wetland with some railroad tracks along Bald Eagle Creek.

We sat in our chairs and enjoyed a tiny picnic along the creek, near the place where we spotted a mink that one time, where I once went for an accidental skinny-dip on a beautiful sunny September afternoon, and where my husband took my photo, as I sat beneath my butterfly umbrella in the rain.

We each ate half a hoagie - a club sandwich for me, with turkey, ham, and roast beef; and a classic Italian for him - and we wrapped up and tucked the other halves into a mini-cooler. Then we stood up and walked around to see the ice.

This was the largest block of ice I saw up close and personal along the creek on this day. It was probably 10 feet wide at the biggest point, a pretty impressive block of ice, and one I could not have lifted, or even pushed, myself. It's hard to even imagine how loud a sound it made, and what a force it created, when it all broke free.

As we strolled back up the creek at the end of what turned out to be just a tiny adventure, I joked that we'd get back to our chairs to discover the cooler missing; the mink having found and stolen our leftover hoagies, and taken them to enjoy along the creek bank somewhere out of sight.

But it turns out there was no mink, and we found the cooler with all its contents intact. How fortunate we were! And better luck next time to the mink.  ;-)

The song for broken ice, and for everything else that's broken: Bob Dylan, with Broken.