It takes guts.....

It takes guts to walk on ice. Not the ice that crusts on the sidewalks on the way to campus. That’s just sneaky double crossing ice that throws you on your butt in front of your friends before you even saw that it was there. Neither are we talking about the ice that covers lakes. That stuff is so thick and trustworthy that you would trust it to take your girl out on a friendly date and not make a move. I am talking about the kind of ice we found up Dry Creek Canyon. When the conditions are right, this rambling stream will partially freeze, resulting in a thin layer of solid ice bridging the shores, while cold water continues to flow underneath. This is the kind of ice it takes guts to walk on.
The ice on a lake never double crosses you, the stuff on sidewalks attacks you without warning. But these ice bridges across the creek wait for you to come to them. They wait silently for you to reach down and summon the courage to step out onto them, to trust them implicitly. This ice holds no guarantee to support your weight, no promise to deliver you dry on the other side. They only beckon, emitting an unmet challenge simply by their existence.
Your buddy says its probably not worth it. Cold wet frozen pants four miles from the trailhead, the six hundred dollar camera in hand, and no way out but the snowshoes on your feet say the same thing. But whatever it is inside you, maybe its guts, maybe its pride, says step on the ice. It says, “It’s not about if the ice holds you or not, its about you taking the step, whether or not the ice held you.”
Two steps in, I am at midstream. I snap the photo. The ice held.