Winter on the water

It was nearly a week ago today that I feared for my life on the way to work. The setting is dark. There is no one on the street (because most sane people are cozy in their houses at 5:25 am), and it is cold outside. It had snowed enough the day before to last through the night. The continued cold and nocturnal precipitation had layered a dangerous sheet of ice over the crunchy snow so that when I placed my foot on the top step I found, for the first time, that our handrail is intended as a stabilizing feature, and not merely a leaning post. What is generally a three minute walk was drawn out to ten, as I gingerly slid from step to step with a growing certainty of an immanent fall which would cause me to break my wrist. Fortunately, however, I made it to work with nothing worse than a mark in the tardy column in my personnel file.