Easter

“Best wishes for a joyful and meaningful holiday weekend, whichever one you celebrate.”

--Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein, in an email

            To this non-religious observer, Easter Sunday and Passover share a spirit of renewal, of re-emergence. No coincidence, I suspect, that these holidays occur in Spring, when the earth is renewing itself. It was time for another renewal, and Kim and I got into the spirit of Passover, Easter and Spring by liberating ourselves from our condo and our homebuilding concerns to drive north to Mackinaw City to photograph the blue ice. Spring apparently did not get the Renewal Memo – high of 25 on Easter, with 8-12 inches of snow in the forecast for Tuesday. This may be because Sunday was also April Fool’s Day, a holiday of sorts.

For you non-Michiganders, this is the Mackinac Bridge, joining the Lower and Upper Peninsulas.
For you Floridians, this is ice.

We were there to see the ice formations that pile up where Lake Michigan flows into Lake Huron.

A lot of the ice is blue. Why is it blue? Because that's what color it is.

We we were drawn to the dramatic angles.

Here's how we got these photos.

Iceberg

Think of the forces involved in piling up these masses.

We witnessed a dramatic winter sky - almost as if the sky had been Photoshopped.

At times the sky was momentarily darkened by snow clouds.

Smithsonian.com says, "Blue ice isn't actually blue, it just appears that way . . .." Whatever.

No, this was not our Christmas Tree, or Easter Tree.

Snow Bunting, photographed near the base of the bridge.

But seriously . . .

       George Leshkevich, physical scientist emeritus at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, explains that blue ice happens "because of three processes. One is that water absorbs other colors of the spectrum, the second is the lack of bubbles in the ice, the third is the ice thickness and density. And they're all factors in what causes this phenomenon." Through the process of selective absorption, the water absorbs blue wavelengths, and the lack of bubbles in the ice allows the wavelength to penetrate further. Light reflected from the ice then appears blue.