My buddy, CJ, cross-country skiing out in Harriman Park with the Tetons in the background.

Ice and snow must be on my mind today -- likely due to 4 days of a heat index hovering between 100-110 degrees -- because when CJ sent me this picture, I knew I had to post it. Breathe in ice and snow, exhale humidity and heat!

In keeping with this theme, I am in the process of completing the book The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule by Joanna Kavenna. This book is fantastic and I've been mesmerized by Kavenna's writing and travels through Shetland, Iceland, Norway, Estonia, Greenland and Svalbard. Loaded with readable history and beautiful passages, it has been a delicious way to pass time in the heat.

Here is an excerpt taken from her musings on Iceland:

"The road turns to rubble at times; it passes through lush green valleys; it rises into grey mountains, past lunar slabs of rock in pastel shades. The mountains become multi-tone--the whiteness of the snow stark against the orange sand-cones and the dark ash slopes. At the coastal towns everything is coated in mist and the dull shapes of farms loom from the whiteness. The road runs past the silver waters of lakes, over the table mountains. When the mist falls away, there are rivers and a few slender firs, clinging to the rocks. There are hotels, surrounded by baroque basalt pillars. The mists swirl across the plains. When the light dwindles, patterns begin to emerge from the lava, the piles of rocks like stacked-up coals, the deep blue river carving a channel through the valley, the conical peaks jutting out of the uneven ground. The lowland plains are coated in grasses, scattered with boulders; the mountain slopes are delicate layers of ash rock, with snow dusting the higher peaks. All these cracked slopes stand with the clouds casting shadows across them, the empty road winding under them" (p. 94).

Snow Cone, anyone?

Yellowstone Lake before the thaw...courtesy of CJ.