Fire and Ice

It is a vexingly teasing human puzzle that the time of year with deadlines to reach places of significance has weather most guaranteed obstructive. Iced roads of contoured glass make the struggle hard to win. So parties are depleted, trains freeze up and planes are grounded. The whitened cold world is against us. Hard and impervious, the ice-lock slows and stops our tracks. The way good people can get anywhere isn't easy at all. So striving passion meets implacability. We are forced to respect the overwhelming forces on which we must depend.

Some huff and chuff, how this can mean global warming? But remember the poem:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate,
To say that for destruction, ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Fire and Ice < by the aptly named Robert Frost

I like the deadly simplicity of this, though I don't think of hate as ice-cold, I think it one of the passions, so more akin to flame or boiling rage. To hate, one has to have cared, hate is the thwarting of love.

Ice, on the other hand, is powerful but is sheer, universal indifference - a natural process - inexorable and inevitable; beyond man's capacity. Arsonists may spread forest fires, no-one can freeze a landscape.