Ice is cold. We know this. But we should take a moment to appreciate ice’s greatness. I like ice. Ice makes good things better and bad things less bad, which really recommends it. If you haven’t thought about ice in a while then you haven’t been on a boat with a subpar cooler.

Ice is also beautiful. A block of ice is startling in its clarity and depth. It’s self-contained but mysterious and vast, like the night sky in miniature. I never saw a block of ice—you don’t see them often—until I arrived at Libby Camps in the Maine North Woods. Your cabin has a cooler outside and there’s one block inside waiting when you arrive. It lasts as long as your stay.

They cut them from the lake in front of the camp on the first weekend in January. Their chainsaws are dipped in olive oil so they don’t get stuck. Then they fill the ice house with these huge blocks, using the same tongs made by the founder, three or four generations ago. Then they cover the top row with cedar chips. They only lose a row to melting over the entire summer.

Maine is good with ice. Incidentally, LL Bean, about four hours south of Libby Camps, designed their tote bag to carry one large block of ice. This explains a lot and I find this very satisfying. Ice is commerce. In the 1800s clear ice was delivered from New England (usually cut from ponds) all the way to the various parts of the British empire. People made serious money from this ice. Clear ice was more valuable because it was safe to drink and could be used in gin.

The Commerce Inn in the West Village has a block of ice delivered to their bar each night. It’s lovely. They chip off it for the good drinks (the famous milk punch) and the cocktails. A martini must be cold, of course. Gin from the freezer is good, but somehow gin stirred furiously with ice becomes diabolically colder and even better. Miller Lite partisans know the cans must be deadly cold or its already delicate appeal will plummet.

We never had a refrigerator with an ice machine growing up. We used trays. We never had cable television or a microwave, for that matter, these things may go hand in hand. As children we visited our grandparents and they did have an ice machine (and cable and a microwave too). This was mysterious—crushed ice could come shooting out of a dispenser in the front of the refrigerator. Or cubes, as my grandmother preferred. That seemed like cheating somehow, a shortcut we were not allowed.

Is there bad ice? There is. Small squares that instantly start melting. These are often served in plastic glasses on airplanes and nothing will taste good. Or ice with holes through the center. Also subpar ice machines the make ice which comes out in rows that are not convincingly hard. You just can’t trust it.

I’m not too fussy. Though I prefer big, clear cubes. Japanese bars that fetishize ice and leave a clear baseball in your highball seems like a little too much. My dad always claimed the key to a good party was having enough ice. As it’s true that as long as the white wine is still cold then the night still possesses a chance of greatness. By the time things reverts to room temperature people come to their senses, the crowd thins and the night has begun its descent. Once you run low on ice you never catch up again.

I’ve always loved those freezers outside gas stations with large letters I C E in blue or red, starting to fade. This is not, clinically speaking, great ice but the alternative is no ice. These bags are usually for coolers, they suggest summer, grilling, adventures. This ice matters to a lot of people: Campers, outdoor cooks, anglers, drinke

rs. A good group, by and large. Opening a cooler with ice packs doesn’t feel the same as a cooler full of ice. How could it? They merely approximate something real. Ice is simple, elemental, almost invisible, and, in the end, selfless: Ice exists to make other things better and then it’s gone.