In recent years, winters in Jasper have become an icy affair. Childhood winters seemed softer, snowier and more forgiving in terms of traction. These days, late autumn snows bring thin mantles of whiteness to the barren landscape and just as quickly thaw and refreeze leaving the landscape and town streets in a winter-long casing of ice. Two years ago I had the misfortune of falling on an icy sidewalk and spent 72 hours laid up in the local hospital on a chest tube waiting for my collapsed left lung to reinflate. For this reason I have little to say for Jasper's hazardous predilection for ice except for one thing - outdoor skating. This year, an early season cold snap flash froze our lakes and backwaters into vast, pristine skating rinks like this windswept scene of one of the secluded Snaring sloughs about 20 kilometres east of Jasper townsite. Walking among the grassy slopes surrounding the slough one afternoon this scene looking north up the Snaring River valley evoked a painterly feeling of distance and isolation mixed with eager anticipation of good skating opportunities ahead. Two days later I laced on a pair of skates for the first time in fourteen years and teetered about with measured success. As I made five exhilarating rounds of the frozen slough, I came to terms with my fear of falling and at least for that one day, ice became my friend.