<p>The complexities of ice have filled the imagination of writers across genres and across time, resulting in a body of material that shows both fascination and perplexity. A comparative sampling of salient literary examples with scientific discussions of ice is revealing. Ice is (and does) many things: ice preserves and kills; is static but moves; is cold but burns; evokes both joy and sadness; seems both permanent and fleeting; and so on. In some ways, to understand ice means to feel it and its complexities. This article extends our intellectual feeling for and visceral understanding of ice by showing the many (sometimes contradictory) layers of our experience of it. The argument throughout is that comprehensions of ice really only take form through experiences of it, experiences that science and literature struggle to convey: the sight and feel of it in its beginnings and its endings; the knowledge of how it preserves and how it destroys; and the sheer wonder (sometimes horror) of it, among other things—and it is somewhat urgent that we start understanding better because the increasing rapidity of the disappearance of global ice is having dire consequences.</p>