I've always suspected that the popular Christmas song "Winter Wonderland" was so much unabashed "spin."
 Not that I have anything against winter, or even against snow, necessarily.  Certainly there's an undeniable magic to that first winter snowfall: you go to bed one night having switched out the light on bare trees, brown lawns and the last few dead leaves left over from Thanksgiving's yard cleanup.  The next morning you're astonished to glance out the window and find everything blanketed in a luminous white, morphed into something out of a postcard, or better, out of a dream.
 You step outside and marvel at the way the virgin snowfall seems to absorb all sound.  The quiet crunch of it under your feet is all you hear.  The branches of the trees are charmingly cupcaked with it.  You've been transported overnight into what seems like an earlier world, a purer world, a world from before you and I came along.

 The only problem, of course, is that it doesn't last.  By afternoon that unsullied blanket will be as sullied as can be, what with cars, trucks, dogs, snowplows and salt.   And then there's the inevitable thaw that you know is going to come along and turn the world into a veritable slurpee of filth, a slushy mess, as dirty and depressing as before.
 The down-side of snow.  What could be worse?
 Ice.
 Ice, even more than snow, brings out the panic in people.  Let the radio whisper the word "ice" and by nightfall all the milk and bread at the local Safeway will be gone.  Even in Washington, D.C., where the winter is relatively mild compared with other parts of the U.S.,  when "ice" is uttered, panic-buying begins--you'd think everyone expected to be housebound until spring, never mind that common sense and experience tell us that it will be 50 degrees again within 48 hours.  Go out looking for bread and you'll find yourself settling for week-old, whole-wheat pita.  Look for milk and you'll settle for the nearest thing you can find-non-dairy coffee creamer (hazelnut flavor.)

 Despite all of this, if you're the sort of person who's intrigued by phenomena that force you to look at things, really look at them, ice presents a little portfolio of opportunities all its own.  Hence, when I peered out from between the venetian blinds on a January morning recently and saw the landscape outside looking as if someone had turned a fire-hose on a Currier & Ives engraving, and local radio was broadcasting the usual Greek chorus of black-iced highways, power outages, school closings and "liberal leave" for government employees, I was prompted to take my camera and step outside.
 Gingerly.  Like one of those Mount Everest climbers in National Geographic (take a step, take five breaths, take a step, take five breaths...) Because the steps coming down off the porch were as slick as...well, as ice, and once I reached the lawn I discovered that...so was the glassy grass.
 Clutching the porch-railing and walking as though I were in a state of weightlessness and depending upon the velcro on the soles of my shoes to keep me from drifting into space, I managed to swing around and make my way to the back yard, where the sudden overnight onslaught of the ice had turned the trees into a freeze-frame of diamond-droplets, millions of them, each caught-in reality-like that celebrated drop of water cupped in a solitary leaf which, according to his memoirs, inspired the young Nabokov to his first poem.  The wooden railings of the back-porch balcony-on the iced-over wooden table was a frozen ashtray with cigar butt left over from a forgotten summer evening-had become perpendicular glistening rows of tiny stalactites.
 Bracing myself on the top step of the balcony as the frozen rain continued hissing down through the branches overhead, I snapped away as best as I could with my Canon AE-1, trying to "fix" some of these frozen images which I knew fully well would be gone in a few hours.  The radio had said the freezing rain would turn to drizzle by noon; by the time we were finished with lunch, this icicle-world would be once again a world of sodden brown leaves, patchy pale grass, the flattened cardboard box by the chain-link fence.

 I worked my way back around the house, my attention divided equally by the challenge of trying to capture some of these momentary ice-images and the challenge of trying not to slip and break my neck.   Ice had turned the clump of pampas grass alongside the front porch into a mess of glistening Chinese noodles-what a picture.  Grasping the railing with one hand to keep myself from falling over backward and sliding down the glass hillside that the front lawn had become, into the gutter, I managed with one hand to get a shot of it.  Oh, if that one alone turned out well I'd be happy.
 Behind me, on the surface of the steep street, my neighbor's SUV was roaring-in-place toward the top of the hill, spinning its tires in vain.   Time to go inside, put away the camera, be more sensible.
 "What were you doing out there?"  My wife asked as I was stamping my boots at the front door and wiping the fog from my camera lens.

 "Nothing."
 "I just called my office," she said.  "Liberal leave policy is in effect.  I told them I'd come in later if all of this ice melts."
 "And what are you going to do in the meantime?"
 "Stay inside where it's nice and warm, and paint."
 "Good idea."
 "Could I get you to make some nice, hot tea?"
 "I think you might prefer coffee."
 "Why is that?" she asked.
 "Well, I know you like milk in your tea, and I went to the store last night. What we have instead is-"
 "Non-dairy creamer?"
 "Hazelnut flavor.  You can have toasted whole-wheat pita bread with it if you want.  It's a week old."