Rings in the Ice

Ice rings formed in a frozen puddle.

During my morning walk, I was taking a photograph of some ice formed from a puddle and noted the concentric rings. I know I’ve seen this before but today I wondered why they were there.

When I was home, I went online to find an explanation. As with too many things, a clear explanation was not found.

A seemingly scientific explanation is that the lines are a product of change in flow created by the prior ice sheets formed. This was describing rings found around obstacles such as rocks in a river. My example was just a puddle, but I read on. The surface current creates viscous friction, slightly melting the outer areas of the prior sheets in the process, making a ring line where the currents are going around the obstacles.

There was no flow in my puddle. No big rocks. So why rings?

There are not only ice rings but also ice discs, ice circles, ice pans, ice pancakes or ice crepes. All are a natural phenomenon that occurs in slow-moving water in cold climates.

Ice rings in a river

No clear explanation for my ice-ringed puddle but I do like the image it formed. It reminds me of a topographic map.

The way a topographic map shows elevation looks like the ice rings – the river rocks are like hills and mountains.

Drawn to Water

I have always been drawn to water. I’m not alone in feeling this pull.

Perhaps there is something to that lunar pull that moves the tides.  The “lunar effect” is usually defined as a real or imaginary correlation between specific stages of the roughly 29.5-day lunar cycle and behavior and physiological changes in living beings on Earth, including humans. Examples of this belief have been found in ancient Assyrian/Babylonian writing.

There have been plenty of studies to consider any effects on humans. Some studies have found no correlation between the lunar cycle and human biology or on our behavior. One that I found seemed to indicate that there seems to be an effect on humans based on the amount of moonlight rather than tidal pull. An ancient belief that survived into modern times was that the monthly cycle of menstruation in women was lunar based, ut that is now considered a coincidence in timing without lunar influence.

I don’t feel any monthly pull to water, but like Ishmael in the opening of Moby-Dick, I do find myself drawn to the ocean several times a year.

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.”

Maybe Ishmael was suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). As someone who grew up with time at the Jersey Shore every summer of my life, I find that “high time to get to sea” more of a spring event than a November one.

My most regular pull to water is to local waters. There are brooks and creeks in the woods where I frequently walk that I am always drawn to visit.  There is something in the tumbling water that I find very appealing.

That is magnified when I visit waterfalls nearby, from the small Hemlock Falls that was childhood destination to the Great Falls of the Passaic River. (Take a look at the Great Falls.)

There is science to this attraction. The dispersion of water from waterfalls, waves, or even lightning and water evaporation from plants, create hydrogen ions by splitting water molecules. The negative electrons join up with other free positive electrons in the air neutralizing their electrical charge. That is why people buy air ionizers (negative ion generator) which uses a high voltage charge to ionize air molecules and generate negative ions. Negative, in this case, is a good thing. A trendy, new-age version is the Himalayan salt lamps that are sold.

Naturally-occurring negative ions are said to have health benefits including enhancing the immune system, increasing alertness, productivity, and concentration. There are claims that you can get relief from sinus, migraine headaches, allergies, and asthma attacks.  Some tests have shown that negative ions can stabilize alpha rhythms in the human brain. (Alpha waves usually occur when we are awake and relaxed.)

I would consider water therapy as effective as “forest bathing” and other get-into-nature therapies.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink,” is a common English proverb.  It’s an old one, going back to 1175 in Old English Homilies: “Hwa is thet mei thet hors wettrien the him self nule drinken” which is translated as “who can give water to the horse that will not drink of its own accord?”

You can lead people into nature or to the water, but they may not drink in its benefits. You have to be drawn towards it on your own.

As a child, Cub and Boy Scout and independent hiker and walker of the woods, I discovered early on that I was attracted, like other animals, to water. Animal paths made by deer and other creatures inevitably lead to a water source. Another quote from Moby-Dick, talks about this attraction to water and not only the sea.

“Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries–stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.” 

As I wander in the woods, naturally-made paths do lead downhill because they were first worn by rainwater and then by animals making their way to a pool, pond or stream.

We are drawn to water. And that is a good thing.

Loneliness and Solitude

Solitude is not loneliness. Though both might be defined as that internal feeling that comes from a lack of companionship, solitude is usually a choice and may have positive benefits, while loneliness is viewed as negative and usually not a choice.

I wrote yesterday about a kind of solitude beside a pond that appears in writing as both negative and positive. Solitude can be fertile and a way to boost our creative capacity. Loneliness is empty and destructive.

Thoreau, a transcendentalist beside Walden Pond, might have viewed loneliness as a kind of depression, melancholy, or a restlessness of the soul.

Olivia Laing explores in her book, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, the loneliness of being in a populated place like a  city – or being alone in a crowd.

Laing also wrote a book that talks about that beside-the-water solitude: To the River, In that more Walden-ish book, she walked from source to sea along the Ouse River where 60 years before Virginia Woolf had drowned herself. But that’s just one small bit of that Sussex river’s history.

And in another of her books (which I have not read yet), The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking, I suspect solitude and loneliness both have a place.

But her discussion of this city loneliness and some of her word images, such as someone standing by a window alone at night high above the city street and people, made me think of many paintings by Edward Hopper.

Edward Hopper’s now overexposed and often parodied Nighthawks is a painting I thought of before Laing even brought it into her discussion, where she says:

There is no colour in existence that so powerfully communicates urban alienation, the atomisation of human beings inside the edifices they create, as this noxious pallid green, which only came into being with the advent of electricity, and which is inextricably associated with the nocturnal city, the city of glass towers, of empty illuminated offices and neon signs.

That diner is a sealed chamber,”an urban aquarium, a glass cell.” Laing makes the psychological physical.

What does it feel like to be lonely? It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast. It feels shameful and alarming, and over time these feelings radiate outwards, making the lonely person increasingly isolated, increasingly estranged. It hurts, in the way that feelings do, and it also has physical consequences that take place invisibly, inside the closed compartments of the body. It advances, is what I’m trying to say, cold as ice and clear as glass, enclosing and engulfing.

Laing feels that true loneliness,is “an especially American trait (or privilege, or curse, depending on who you are)”, and one that may be best described not by words but through art. That’s an idea also found in “Loneliness Belongs to the Photographer” by Hanya Yanagihara.

“At the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

And that river talk makes me think of Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It,” his novella (made into a movie too – but read the novella). I find some hopeful comfort in this retired English professor who at 70 was still “haunted by waters” and wrote this small classic.

The novella is usually collected with a few other stories and together they cover his beloved fly fishing, logging, fighting forest fires, playing cribbage, and being a husband, a son, a brother and a father. It has sold more than a million copies, so it connects with something in many people.

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”  – Norman Maclean

Ions, Water and Health

Have you ever thought about why we feel so good walking in the woods, on a beach, or near a river, breathing fresh air in the mountains, or just breathing the air after a rain shower?

The air around us is filled with electrically charged particles. Positively or negatively charged, they are called ions. Both positive and negative ions occur naturally in the air. However, the environment we live in today has far more sources of positive ions than in the past, creating an electrical imbalance in the air and our bodies. They are also called free radicals.

Free radicals are highly reactive, imbalanced molecules that are the byproducts of normal metabolism. They are associated with the degenerative aging process. Free radicals steal electrons from healthy cells to neutralize their own charge, and thereby cause cellular damage.

Free radicals (the positive ions) are produced by the discharge of voltage in high-voltage networks, heating and cooling systems, TVs, radios, transmitters, radar systems, computers, exhausts, cigarette fumes, smog, radiation and many harmful chemicals and toxins.

Water generates negative ions. Despite the connotation of the word “negative,” negative ions are the good ones for us.

It has been discovered that the dispersion of water from waterfalls, waves, or even lightning and water evaporation from plants, create hydrogen ions by splitting water molecules. The negative electrons join up with other free positive electrons in the air neutralizing their electrical charge.

The breaking of the surface tension of water (waves, waterfalls or evaporation)  releases negative hydrogen ions and their ability to stick to different free radicals is very beneficial to our health.

Negative ions of hydrogen are more concentrated in the fresh air. Water being sprayed and dispersed releases hydrogen negative ions that purify the air kills bacteria and increases our energy level. That after-rain aroma in the air or after a thunderstorm on a sunny day is a good example. When it occurs in the presence of the sun, the effect is increased.

Negative-ion treatments are given to patients for bronchial conditions.

Negative ions have also been used to treat depression, which is our nation’s most prevalent mental health problem. Supposedly, about 15 million Americans spend about $3 billion a year on drugs to fight depression.

Most medications target either serotonin or norepinephrine (the brain chemicals which are neurotransmitters).

Low serotonin levels are believed to cause many cases of mild to moderate depression and symptoms of anxiety, apathy, fear,  insomnia, and fatigue. High levels of negative hydrogen ions in the air were discovered to increase serotonin levels in the bloodstream.

A closed room with several people will have a decreased level of negatively ionized air. That may be a large part of the “sick building syndrome.” Homes and workplaces are built much more airtight with less fresh air and heating and air conditioning systems cause friction which depletes the negative ions.

Naturally-occurring negative ions can have health benefits. Claims are made for them enhancing the immune system, increasing alertness, productivity, and concentration. There are claims that you can get relief from sinus, migraine headaches, allergies, and asthma attacks by increasing lung capacity.

Some tests have shown that negative ions can stabilize alpha rhythms in the human brain. Alpha waves usually occur when we are awake and relaxed.

If you feel sick, tired or depressed and wanted to try negative ions as a “therapy,” what could you do?

It’s not my place to be a health expert, but I do my research, and I pass it along. Here are some suggestions.

Try to avoid spaces with no fresh air – especially where you can’t even open a window. Even standing in your shower with the window open and fresh air can be invigorating. You have felt that, haven’t you?

Some people would recommend an indoor waterfall or a salt lamp for closed spaces.

An air ionizer (or negative ion generator) is a device that uses a high voltage charge to ionize air molecules. Most commercial air purifiers are designed to generate negative ions. Air ionizers are often used in air purifiers. Airborne particles are attracted to the electrode in an effect similar to static electricity. These ions are de-ionized by seeking earthed conductors, such as walls and ceilings.

The computer notebook producer ASUS even introduced air ionizers in their computers.

But, pretty obviously, the best thing to do is to find spaces in nature where the moving water is creating those ions. Get to a beach, waterfall, or river. Get into the sunlight.