I always wanted to ski a glacier, somewhere in Alaska, maybe Greenland, then to be home in time for supper. To suspect it is my attachment to the farmhouse and its supper that has kept me from being a world traveler, never mind the money was better spent at the John Deere dealer … OK, OK, Service Motors.

It is the divine right of every child born in Wisconsin to dream of glaciers since this place we dwell in was born of glaciers, if less skiing glaciers as picking their rock. The Central Sands, or Golden Sands, are both mild descriptions to paraphrase that horrid long afternoon of ill-tempered ice.

I find it intriguing that the glacial epoch was brought by a mere 5 degree temperature differential, the flip side of global warming; to think this planet a touch temperamental.

On my farm’s east flank is a hem of hills, if more technically correct, a moraine, the residue of those glaciers.  The ice may be gone but my morning light still filters past this ghost.

It was December ’09, rained the night previous, 1-1/4 inches over cold snow, another quarter inch fell on Christmas day. We stayed home that Christmas, not necessarily by choice. Not that I minded, a chance to enjoy a long, slow breakfast, we sang carols between the mushroom omelet and the toast.

She said this was nice, I thought she meant the romantic mood, she meant another day to clean the house before the family herd invaded. Secretly I hoped the ice to remain longer and the roads to remain impassable. Silent Night is to be experienced, not just sung at.

As for the Christmas thing, it came and went. This when she said, let’s go skiing. It’s glare ice, I whined. Let’s do it anyway. Funny how after some practice in this marriage thing you know what’s not a request.

The wind that morning was robust and due west. As soon as I put on the skis I knew our one option was to head due east and at a pretty good clip. A skier will tell you there are klisters for old snow, klisters for cold snow, crystal snow, fresh snow, near freezing snow.

I don’t know if there are klisters for museum quality glare ice. Old Birkies can of course resort to muskrat pelts wrapped around their skis, which at this point, why not just go with muskrat pelts? Skiers are goofy sorts.

We didn’t ski so much as sail. The ice wasn’t just glare it was galvanized, it was stainless, hard as diamond. To wonder what is the Norwegian word for snow rock? It was less skiing as plummeting. The ice that hard, the field that flat, the wind that robust, downhill without the bother of the hill. I asked my wife out loud if this counted as wind surfing. Surely this counted as glacier skiing, never mind the glacier was only a half-inch thick.

Eventually it did dawn on us we might like to stop our trek somewhere short of Waupaca County, to the end we just sat down and eventually ground to a halt. This when she inquired, how do you propose we get home? I had no idea since this was all her fault anyway, was her idea to go skiing in the first place. We can crawl, I said.

Seriously, she said, how are we going home?

To admit crawling seemed ridiculous, still more direct than walking the long way through the woods, despite the gain of some traction in the woods. Half-mile one way, two miles the other.

She did see the logic eventually never mind how silly it looked, we on our hands and knees, now crawling our way across this not quite extinct glacier. To mention here that skiing a glacier is off my bucket list. And that there are times when it is a wise and good thing to be a country person, living the remote life somewhere on a country road. Because sometimes you find yourself doing stuff you don’t want to be seen doing. Crawling across a glacier is one of those things.

To add, there are several things you can do to cocoa to spice it up. Peppermint is one. Jameson works. Schnapps is nice. But the best tonic for cocoa, a Christmas cocoa at that, is crawl across a glacier.

That was 2009, funny how you remember some Christmases more than other Christmases.