You are alone, but it's the good kind of alone; it's a stillness and an untouched expanse of mountain, and you have hit your stride. There are no distractions, no hushed muttering and talking from men, no one to argue about the location, the quality of the tools, the method of packing, or your take of the profit. It's just you and the ice, and the practiced rhythm of swinging, sawing, shaving, lifting.
It is good to fill your lungs with cold air, to hear the crunch of snow beneath your feet, to smell mountain pine and sweat and glacier water, to feel tension burn in your shoulders and legs.
You can let your body take over, let the memory of moving muscle do the work for you, let your mind wander.
You've learned a few things for this business – by trial and error (lots of error, actually), by listening, by watching, and by years and years of doing. You know the more ice you harvest in the winter means less mountain traversing in the summer, and more time for selling instead of cutting. You know ice with the least amount of imperfections – clear, no cloudiness or internal fractals – sells for a higher price, melts slower, and packs better in summer icehouses (where it is less likely to crumble). You know that if you get behind and can't find 'good' ice, you better hurry to be the first at the morning market, where merchants and fisherman who only need a daily top off will buy it from you if someone hasn't beaten you there.
The weather is something to consider also – has it been a good ice year, or will it be an open winter? Is there enough snowpack in the mountains to ensure there will be enough glacial water to fill the rivers and lakes? Have the winds been warm, or has the summer unusually long and hot? (Not this year: check.) Ice needs to be almost 50 centimeters thick to harvest safely; will there be enough?
These are the rules of the trade and the rules of the sale – they are the things you keep in mind when scouting for a good location to mine, or when deciding whether to contract with a company or guild for a few weeks or a season. This has been your life for 13 years; you understand the subtleties.
You keep notes to yourself in a small leather notebook, its formerly crisp binding bent in the shape of your pocket, the pages lined alternately with neatly printed ledgers and receipts of sale and scrawling field notes, scribbled hastily from the seat of your sled.
Ice harvesting isn't glamorous or easy, and harvesters themselves – while filling a critical function of 'civilized society' – are not exactly renowned or even particularly appreciated (do they realize, clinking their glasses full of purest, chiseled table ice, that it took you a week of just looking for that lake, then four days to mine then load and then bring it down from the mountain, and another two to sell it all?) but that's fine by you, since your opinions as to what people you do and do not spend your time with are well developed.
Everyone (okay, the trolls, Sven, Anna sometimes) says you don't like people, but that's only partly true – you like some people very much indeed, especially if they have strawberry blonde hair and freckles – but really, you just prefer the company of those who won't lie to you, or try to swindle you out of a good harvesting spot, or cheat to make a sale. That narrows down your pool of acceptable company.
When it's all said and done, harvesting and selling ice just gets it done – enough for new gear when you need it (usually – you can't blame a guy for getting caught without an ice pick in July), enough for a hot meal most days, and a place to sleep on the nights you can't make it back to your cabin.
You slide the last block into the back of the sled, and look at the neatly packed squares with satisfaction. You still need to pack in some of the loose powder so things don't slide around on your way back into town, but the hard work is done; your back and arms are loose and pleasantly fatigued. This is the part when you feel most alive.
There's no question that you'll never be royal (not that you care to be). You're reasonably certain that no one is going to congratulate you on the perfect 90 degree angles of each block, or give you a passing thought when they sip their frosty spirits. You're okay with that. Sometimes it is good to be alone. And sometimes being an ice harvester feels like the best occupation in the world.