I hate ice. And fear it. When there is the least possibility of ice, my steps slow to a timid shuffle, and if there’s another human being in reach, I will lean on him or her. Perhaps aggressively. As if in fear for my life. Which is approximately true.

So here in the kitchen sits the container of fruit and vegetable peelings full to overflowing. And there… there… out the back door and maybe only twenty feet away… across a sweep of stuff that used to be snow, that still looks like snow but is now actually shiny, deadly ice… is the compost bin.

It might as well be on Mars. I manage two steps, slip like crazy, and dive for refuge back into the kitchen.

I decide to wait until Dan gets home and get him to empty the compost container.

Then I picture him coming home after an exhausting day of work, in his dress clothes and smoothly leather-soled shoes; and I cannot ask him, even in my imagination, to do this chore.

Suddenly, I remember: I have foot chains!

I retrieve them from my closet: brand new “Yaktrax”, and I slip them over my boots. I find that I can crunch solidly and firmly over the deadly, shiny ice — more firmly than I can, in fact, walk inside my house. I empty the compost container into the bin with exultation.

Now I know how Hannibal must have felt when he managed to get all those elephants over the Alps.