How much attention do you pay to ice? Maybe you’re sick and tired of all the ice around you this time of year, but what about taking a closer look — even if it’s just in your freezer? Ice is a menace on the road or sidewalk and can damage our beloved trees, but have you ever considered ice as an art form? Listen to find out more about this simple form of water that we usually either take for granted or curse. (Bonus topic: why do Americans use so much ice in their drinks?)
A huge thank you to Tuula Ahde, who contributed some lovely audio descriptions of her spectacular ice photographs, as well as the feature photo.
A few resources:
Tuula Ahde photographer (website)
The bizarre but true story of America’s obsession with ice cubes
Ice sound clip from https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/search?q=NHU05100199, recordist Stephen de Vere, Antarctica 1992
Music: Jens East — Daybreak (ft. Henk) www.soundcloud.com/jenseast
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution V4.0
Listen on Podbean:
Listen on YouTube:
Transcription (remember, this is a direct transcription of what I said and is not actually how I write!):
Welcome to 9 Minutes of Wonder. I’m Betsy Hedberg. I hope this podcast will help you rekindle your sense of wonder for this awe-inspiring world. If you like what you hear in the next few minutes, please subscribe and share.
One of my goals with this podcast, especially where we are right now in early 2025, is to do a little bit to resist all the icky crap that is going on in my country and in the world. Because this is our world, and it’s beautiful and fascinating and it deserves a few minutes of our attention. And you deserve a few minutes away from whatever’s troubling you. So here goes.
What is this obnoxious sounding noise?
[sound clip of cracking ice]
Yeah, because of the title, you probably guessed that is ice. That’s actually ice that was recorded creaking as the tide pushed against cracks in ice in Antarctica.
Maybe you’ve heard the sounds of ice too. Maybe you’ve walked through a frozen puddle and it broke and then you could hear the ice crack. Of course, you’ve heard ice crack in your glass after pouring yourself a nice drink.
And I remember one time walking around a frozen lake in northern Wisconsin and thinking that there was somebody drumming on the other side of the lake. And I thought, “How cool, drumming, that’s fun. I want to walk around and see if I can find the drummer.” But no matter how much I walked around the lake, the drumming seemed to be coming from different directions and I couldn’t really place it. And then I realized it was coming from the ice. It was a very cool sound.
My friend Tuula Ahde lives in Finland, and she takes incredible photographs of ice outdoors near where she lives. She kindly shared some of her thoughts about ice that I’m going to include in today’s episode.
Here’s a little bit of what she said:
“I love winter — the freezing cold, soft whiteness, darkness, and muted sounds. And the eerie noises ice makes on a frozen lake, as if the lake is trying to stretch, to express itself in the stillness of winter.”
I love that image of the lake trying to express itself. And maybe that’s what that drumming was kind of sounding like to me.
I know that it’s early March, and so maybe ice and, you know, winter ice is not on your mind, or it’s on your mind and you want to get it out of your mind because you can’t wait for spring. Or maybe you live in a place where you never see ice outdoors. But a couple weeks ago, I was in Chicago and it was really, really icy. Like Lake Michigan had these chunks of ice really far out. Actually, when the plane landed, we saw ice a long way out on the lake. It was some of the most severe ice I’ve ever seen on Lake Michigan. That’s when I conceived of this idea to record an episode about ice, but I’m doing it today. Anyway, you may still have some ice where you live, but it’ll go away. I promise.
In my mom’s apartment building is a woman who swims in extremely cold water year round, and I saw her on one of these incredibly icy days. It was like minus 11 Celsius, which is about 12 degrees Fahrenheit. And she was indoors at the gym, but she really wanted to go swimming, but she couldn’t get out because of the ice. And I asked her if it was too cold for her to swim. And she said, “Oh no, no, no, it’s not the cold. It’s just that I have to walk over the ice to get to the part of the lake that’s not frozen, and I’m afraid that I’ll cut my feet on the ice, even though I’m wearing these swimming shoes.” And of course I’m thinking no way would I be going in anywhere near that water today! Well, yeah, I would with my boots on, not with my swimsuit. So she is extremely brave.
And even though it was that cold, we went to a restaurant, and the first thing that happened, actually multiple restaurants, the first thing that happened when we sat down is we were served large glasses of water, full of ice, American style, huge ice cubes, right? And it’s freezing outside and it’s still kind of cold inside. And I’m not in the mood for all this ice, one of my little pet peeves about American restaurant service. But anyway, that’s what we got.
So as another little aside, I thought I would look into what is up with this tradition of using so much ice in American drinks, even in the middle of winter. They don’t do this in other parts of the world, by the way, or in Europe if you get ice you usually have to ask for it, and then you’ll get like one ice cube. And Americans traveling in Europe complain about this, but it’s just how they do it.
What I learned is that in true American style, the ice cube phenomenon was the result of marketing and business. I found an article on epicurious.com, which talks about this guy whose name was Frederick “the Ice King” Tudor. He lived in Boston, and he had an ice harvesting business that made him one of the nation’s earliest millionaires back in the early 19th century. They would ship ice from the icy ponds of New England to warmer parts of the world, like the Caribbean, but also as far away as India.
Over time, they improved methods for storing and shipping ice and made huge profits on the ice. And at first the ice was meant to preserve food and medicine, but then, cleverly, this Ice King and other people who he worked with began to market ice as something that could chill drinks. And at first that was actually considered rather strange. But then of course, people got used to the chilled drinks, they lived in hot places, and then their preferences changed. And lo and behold, they started to market these icy drinks in the United States as well, and people got hooked.
So Americans started to expect ice in their drinks. So it became considered a necessity rather than a luxury for Americans. And then of course, in the 20th century, it became possible to electrically freeze ice and other things in your home and in restaurants.
So there we are. If you’re in America, you’re used to the ice, you probably expect it year-round. If you’re in Europe, you probably find the ice in America really weird if you know about it at all.
Of course, ice isn’t just for drinks or for keeping things cold. You may have heard about the Ice Hotel. There’s a famous one in Sweden, and I went to an ice bar — the whole thing was made out of ice, and the drink glasses and the bar itself were made out of ice. And I think there are some other hotels around the world, other structures.
There’s a music festival that I learned about that has instruments made of ice, and the whole stage is made of ice. And I’ll share a link to that place or to that festival in the notes here. This happens in Norway, and the musicians play drums, guitars, trumpets, all sorts of instruments that are made of ice. And they actually sound incredibly like the real instruments, except they’re a bit softer in tone. And it’s hard to play the guitar or any of these instruments when you are, you know, when it’s freezing out in Norway and you can’t wear gloves because it is not helpful for you to play. So that would be an interesting music festival to go to.
Let’s return to the beauty of ice, because it’s really beautiful. And if you look at it closely, even if you just look at an ice cube in your drink, they are not all the same, right? And they have these fascinating properties. They’re like little pieces of art, and each one is different.
So what makes ice so beautiful? Let’s hear again from Tuula talking about her ice photography:
“Ice is fascinating. Macro photos truly show the beauty and diversity of ice: details, figures, and entire mystical, frozen worlds trapped in small pieces of ice — constantly changing, almost alive, responding to shifts in temperature and light. It just amazes me and sparks my imagination.
There’s also that interesting contradiction: if you touch ice, it kind of burns your skin.
I also know ice in winter isn’t guaranteed anymore — not even here in Finland. My photos are my way of honoring and documenting it while it’s still here.”
Thank you to Tuula Ahde for so beautifully describing her connection with the ice that she pays such close attention to in her gorgeous photographs. And I will share a link to her website in the program notes, so you can all take a look at those photos.
And she’s right, of course. We can’t take ice for granted, at least not the kind we see outdoors in wintertime or on the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, which is a whole other story.
But if you still have ice around where you live, even if you don’t want to (and maybe you can’t wait for it to go away) but maybe you can take a closer look at it before it does.
And if the only ice that you can find is in your freezer, you might want to spend a moment and realize how impressive it is that we can keep frozen blocks of water in our warm homes.
So I’m going to go pour myself a tall glass of water, no ice, and I will talk to you next time.