Durant Family Saga
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Trilogy Summary
  • Contact
  • Author Biography
  • Events
  • Copyright

Frozen: Traveling on Thin Ice

2/5/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
I recently had the good fortune to attend an Adirondack Arts Center event at Minnowbrook Conference Center on Blue Mountain Lake, NY in the Adirondacks.

It was freezing  the weekend of the event. The high only reached 10 degrees F.  Blue Mountain Lake was frozen solid. While writing my novel Imaginary Brightness, I did a lot of research on how people traveled in the 1800s during winter months in the Adirondacks. The roads were not passable in the snow and there were no plows around to clear them, so what did people do? They skied, or snow-shoed, or took horse and sleigh over the lakes. It was the quickest route from point A to point B.

This could get treacherous during spring thaw.
I read in one biography about William W. Durant that he demanded his driver travel by sleigh across an Adirondack Lake during this particularly risky time.

As a matter of fact, I hadn't planned on it, but I ended up doing a lot of research on ice and signs of thinning and melting ice so I could incorporate the information into my story. 

I discovered that thawing ice makes a racket. As the trapped air bubbles escape and the ice
expands and contracts during spring thaw, the melting ice makes loud cracks, creaks, and pings. Glacial Scientists actual study the phenomena.

While I was writing my book I tried to describe the sounds that melting ice gives off. So I listened to video tapes of it on Youtube.

Pinging is probably the best word I could find to describe the sound. Maybe you have heard it personally and have your own descriptive word.



Picture
1 Comment
Bobby Foody
2/7/2015 04:41:12 am

I've done a lot of ice skating on frozen ponds and an inlet of the Mohawk.
I would say it's a cracking sound. Sort of like firewood.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Sheila Myers  Professor at Cayuga Community College in Upstate New York.

    Subscribe to blog

    RSS Feed

    Follow me on Facebook or Twitter!

    Categories

    All
    Adirondacks
    Alvah Dunning
    Anne Thackeray Ritchie
    Arpad Gerster
    Awards
    Camp Kirby
    Coffee
    Collis Huntington
    Divorce
    Dr Thomas Durant
    Editing
    Egypt
    Ella Durant
    England
    Gilborn
    Gilded Age
    Giveaway
    Great Camps
    Green Wood Cemetery
    Hell On Wheels
    Heloise Durant Rose
    Historical Fiction
    Hochschild
    Huntington
    Isle Of Wight
    J.P. Morgan
    Julia Margaret Cameron
    Last Of Mohicans
    Lillian Tiffany
    Marketing
    News
    Ozymandias
    Pine Knot
    Poultney Bigelow
    Research
    Sagamore
    Sarah Bernhardt
    Tea
    Uncas
    Utowana
    Vanderbilt
    Verplanck Colvin
    William West Durant

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.