Whenever I
have learned of such things, I wondered how those people and creatures and
things got themselves cryogenically preserved without the aid of Bird’s
Eye. Did a glacier overtake them from
behind? Did the temperature suddenly
drop when they were underdressed? Or
were they buried in snow by some stone proto-plow?
(I read
somewhere that Clarence Birdseye came up with the idea of deep-freezing fresh
vegetables during an ice-fishing trip in the Yukon. But I digress.)
I found
myself speculating on these frosty aspects of our natural history when I saw a
report showing cars encased in ice while parked alongside New York City streets. Apparently, they were buried in snow plowed
off traffic lanes. Since the weather
between snow- and ice-storms hasn’t remained warm enough for long enough for
snow to melt, today’s snow is piled on top of last week’s layer, which in turn
was dumped on the previous week’s accumulations—which turns to water from the
pressure, then freezes.
If I
correctly recall what I learned an ice age ago in the one and only geology
course I took, those benighted Buicks and unfortunate Toyotas were caught up in
a process identical to the one that forms glaciers. The difference is, of course, that plows
don’t push new snow onto the old:
Instead, the snow that’s turning to ice is blanketed from above.
If we are
indeed entering a New Ice Age, will some future hiker of climber find fenders,
hubcaps or even whole cars englaciated in the remains of our urban lanes and
country roads? Or will they find
tri-spoke wheels and frames that look as if they were designed by Salvador Dali
tethered by a rusted Kryptonite lock to the pole of a parking meter encased in
an ice cube too big for a glass of artificially colored and sweetened fizzy
water?
