Frost flowers

href="http://www.savepic.com/freepicturehostin...">heaviest snowfall of the season. The temperature has risen to near freezing, but is expected to turn cold again. A chickadee allows me to approach within a few feet. If I took food to the park I could attract them to feed from my hands. Snow on the trunk of a Manitoba maple highlights its strange deformities.

January 13. The temperature is falling again, but I go for a long hike upstream along Lilac Way. Sunlight slanting down the slope of the ridge causes sharp contrast between the flat surface and a trail of footprints. The sharp wind tugs off my cap and nearly blows it away. Some freezing rain must have fallen before the temperature fell last night, because the top boughs of all the trees glitter in the clear light, but the ice is not heavy enough to damage anything. The sky is blinding blue. I hike as far as the train trestle. The black willows on the bank creak and groan with cold.

January 14. The plummeting temperatures in the past two days have yielded some of the strangest ice crystals (more images: 1, 2) yet on my bathroom window. They look like braided threads, algae or coral. If a simple molecule like water can form such organized structures, is it any wonder that life evolved in the Earth's primordial seas?