Sometimes snow on the ground and snow in the sky mix. Sometimes clouds are traversed by rainbows. Sometimes the panorama becomes uniformly white. The reflected light is reduced, landscapes become absent and shadows fade away. The background disappears as it merges with its opposite. As horizontal and vertical lines coincide, one is blinded by a totally flat clarity. The sense that usually dominates elsewhere, the eye, admits its powerlessness. The other senses waver. (…) Ice disorients. It imposes itself by abolishing most of the usual responses and indicates a temporary failure of the analytical mind. Familiar ways of apprehending time and space are neutralised.

(Thinking Like an Iceberg, pp. 58-59)