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Monday, December 24, 2012

Standing on Water

They say that as one grows older, the more jaded he or she becomes. Something new no longer elicits the same excitement and sense of wonder that it used to at an earlier time.
I wasn’t prepared to think of anything when today, for the first time in my life, I stood on top of a frozen lake.

Being Asian, having been born and raised in Southeast Asia and now a resident of tropical Hawaii, I am not used to snow. And that is despite both Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii, invariably get snow beginning about this time of the year. Yep we do have snow in Hawaii.

But now I am visiting Mitchell Hegman of Montana, who was responsible for this new experience.

Mitchell Hegman brought me to the edge of Lake Helena and asked me to walk on it.

I stepped gingerly on the lake bank and then planted the other foot on the ice. Well that one recalcitrant foot somehow managed to slip and I ended up doing a split worthy of a Dame Margot Fonteyn. That sure felt like whatever was left of my virginity was compromised.

Fortunately, after pleading with my aching pelvis and thighs I was able to gather myself up until, for the first time, I was finally and firmly standing atop a huge body of water – a frozen lake. Holy Moses! I walked on water!

And it did feel strangely good. Strange because the weight and value I had placed on the experience may not even matter to many. And it felt good because I could still feel good about the whole thing.

After the experience I concluded only one thing: The lake I stood on may have been frozen; I at least was not.


Ariel Murphy on frozen Lake Helena, 12/23/2012
  - Ariel Murphy

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