Not-Winter
Winter had not yet arrived by the first of December. Cold days and humid days were never simultaneous: the “missed connection” in the local paper’s classifieds would have read - got here but you were already gone.
Instead of wanting a break from winter during Thanksgiving, we went higher to try and find it. To the Uinta National Forest where a few extra thousand feet means more and early snow. But instead, we drove on a road normally closed for the season. The only traffic was people coming to cut their Christmas trees.
But that open road meant we could visit a few frozen ponds and a small waterfall on a roadside pullout. It turned out that not-winter’s magic was busy dancing a tune in the form of ice formations born of more-freeze thaw from higher temperatures.
Ice patterns that were a chef’s kiss to the geometry coming from sheer chaos. Triangles created of temperature-related entropy. Straight lines in artistically rendered arrangements that could have originated in a human mind.
But instead, they came from the natural. From snow melting upstream, that water tumbling over fallen logs, droplets then shot in the air by hitting a submerged rock then landing just so on a raft of already-forming ice at dusk. Then turning slowly, achingly, into a crystal when the sun left the day behind.
The not-winter was lovely.
Not in the way Greek goddesses are described, but in the terraformed strength of a scar well-healed. In the way eyes can see through the filter of a broken heart. In the way a body can only process beauty after having been robbed of breath on the ascent to a windblown, rocky peak.
It's likely that winter will come soon and along with it the snow that will cover all these ice constructs. I’m glad it took it’s time – long enough for me to get to see them.
Inspired by events in the Uinta National Forest, Utah.