Ice Field

There’s a vacant lot on 6th Street in Lincoln where Arctic Glacier stores ice chests of the kind one finds outside convenience stores, and the chests look like they’ve been there a long time. This might be because of the surrounding snow, or it might be because fewer convenience stores sell ice now, and some of the chests really have been there a long time.

Places visited out of season fascinate me. Hampton Beach in wintertime, or the Mount Sunapee ski slopes bare in summer, long meadows running up the mountain with unused mechanical chairlifts strapped to the peak. In the rush and thrill of the season, we forget this is what these places really look like. So much goes unused for so long, and we miss it.