124 The Life Worth Living 



crouched among them, and one of the boys 

 snapped the camera at us. 



It was a day never to be forgotten, and it 

 will be many moons before we see its like 

 again. 



It was the harbinger of the greatest freeze 

 Tidewater Virginia ever saw in its three 

 hundred years of English history, and the 

 geese knew it was coming. 



Some winters ice does not form at all in 

 these waters. As a rule, it freezes for two 

 or three days in February and then thaws 

 quickly. Sometimes, once in ten years 

 perhaps, the bays will be frozen for a week 

 at a time. But now the mercury suddenly 

 dropped to nine degrees below zero, turning 

 a rainstorm into hail, and freezing our 

 soaked sails as hard as a rock. In three days 

 the bay was frozen solid and the ebb and 

 flow of the tides began to pile the ice against 

 every obstruction in its path. It trimmed 

 our blinds off as smoothly as though a big 



