River talk

A frosty fantasia

By SANDY LONG
Posted 2/2/22

I climbed into my car one nippy winter morning and found myself instantly enclosed in a capsule of crystalline feathers, ferns and flowers. This unexpected enchantment felt like I fell away from …

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River talk

A frosty fantasia

Posted

I climbed into my car one nippy winter morning and found myself instantly enclosed in a capsule of crystalline feathers, ferns and flowers. This unexpected enchantment felt like I fell away from reality and into a breathtaking frosty fantasia.

In the world of wintry wonders, this one is a type of frost with a plain name—window frost—that belies the wild beauty of its magnificent forms of expression resembling ferns, flowers and feathers.

Wikipedia defines frost as “a thin layer of ice on a solid surface, which forms from water vapor in an above-freezing atmosphere coming in contact with a solid surface whose temperature is below freezing, and resulting in a phase change from water vapor (a gas) to ice (a solid) as the water vapor reaches the freezing point.”

Frost

Feathers, ferns and ice

flowers fleck the glassy globe

of a frozen car.

©Sandy Long

Window frost is one of several forms of frost, but arguably the loveliest. Others are hoar frost (with variable names like air hoar, surface hoar, crevasse hoar and depth hoar based on where the frost forms), advection frost (formed by wind), white frost, black frost and rime. Each is interesting in its own right. Visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost to learn more.

Science has a way of stripping the magic from such things, but poetry can put it back in. Keep watch for the wonders of your everyday world.

winter morning, chsytalline, frosty fantasia, frosty window, science

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