The Singing Ice

Ice is fascinating stuff. Our April day trips to the cottage every spring are enhanced by the beauty of the ice along the shoreline.

 

 

Ice can be noisy. We all know that. Ice cubes clunk in our glass, icicles drip from our eaves, and we weren't there to know for sure, but I'll bet ice made an enormous crash when it moved huge boulders and broke supporting boards under our dock at the cottage last spring, rendering the dock unusable until repair can be had (we're still waiting)

 

(These photos don't do justice to the crazy angle that dock has. Hard to walk on, impossible to sit on. Difficult for mooring or accessing a boat)

Ice at rest in a frozen lake makes other sounds, less well-known. 

Photo: Jonna Jinton

Jonna Jinton, a young Swedish woman jewelry-creator and artist also makes videos detailing her simple life in the wilderness. As a YouTuber, she has more than 4 million subscribers, all enthusiastic about her very special videos. Recently she won YouTube's 2021 Streamy Award for cinematography. I highly recommend her channel. Jonna Jinton. Also, you can find out more about her at Jonna Jinton Sweden.

Anyway, back to ice. Jonna has invested a lot of her time in collecting ice noise and editing it into yearly videos. This 10-hour video took days to upload to YouTube. (at this point I'm remembering the difficulty I had uploading the 3-4 minute videos of my 2018 hike. Apparently, you need a high-speed connection which, living in the country we don't have so I have no idea how Jonna manages)

I'm not suggesting anybody watch a 10-hour video, but you could taste a piece of it and as suggested, use it for meditation or for a sleep aid or even as background "music" for whatever activity you're engaged in. Also, it's just fascinating to hear the sounds of ice in situ. Reminds me of whale noises. Enjoy!