It is as fragile as fine crystal, as clear as frozen sky. Winter’s first ice is a delicate magic woven of still water and cold air and the slow spinning of our planet. It is always a surprise. One morning, in a quiet backwater where even the wispiest of winds cannot reach, where there was only open water yesterday, there is new morning ice. A thin layer inching forward from the safety of shore with an endearing shyness, tentative and uncertain, the first steps of the dance.
With the touch of mid-day sun, or a gust of wind, it may be gone, or beyond all expectations it may hold on encouraged by the shade of a shoreline tree to be almost imperceptibly thicker tomorrow, a lesson in uncertainty and perseverance. A metaphor, if we let it be. But the ice itself would crack under the weight of such presumption. It is that thin, that fragile, more the thought of winter than winter itself.
In just a few weeks, the ice will congeal into something completely different - thick and heavy with the weight of regret. Any leftover beauty will find itself hidden beneath the monotone of snowdrifts, but for these first few mornings the new ice puts a sheen on the world that makes the very lake stones seem like gemstones set in the first breath of winter.
— Jeff Rennicke (all photography by the author unless otherwise noted)
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Thank you Jeff, for putting my similar thoughts on first ice into such a beautiful photo and words. You are such a talented photographer and wordsmith!