Another Day in the Arctic Circle

When it is a sunny Saturday and the temperature is above freezing in February, that means one thing is certain… I am off to climb the glaciers and stand at the edge of the world. It’s kind of an annual pilgrimage and today was the perfect day for it. The sky was blue and the air was crisp. There was no one on the ice today and it was so quiet — not even any wind. There is such a beauty in looking across the vast expanse of frozen water and seeing the sparkling ice meeting the distant horizon. There was just a bit of haze so the space between water and sky was blurred.

Where the water meets the beach, there is a natural building up of ice and snow called shelf ice. These mini-mountains of snow have sharp peaks and deep valleys, carved by the wind and water. Everywhere you look there are thousands of  balls of ice that have melded together along the waterline. Shelf ice is a really fascinating thing, but you have to be very careful when you walk out there. You can go out pretty far out before it drops off and then you see the frozen water of the great lake.

I always marvel on days like this (even though winter is not quite my favorite time of year) of the brilliance and quiet vastness of the open space. When all is quiet and the only thing you can hear is the crunching of snow under your feet and you are breathing that cold air into your lungs, a certain peace and calm comes. For me it is a certainty that all this is just an indication of much better things to come, and the One who did all this holds so much more for us in His hand. I can’t wait to see it.

Indeed, the Lord has blessed me to be able to be in such a place to go hiking up massive sand dunes in the middle of winter and experience His creation on the edge of  the world.