Skipped A Breath or Two
Reposted from my January 2024 newsletter, edited for this platform.
OH. MY.
On first glance of Portage Lake, a frozen glacier lake surrounded by iconic Alaskan mountains rising out of the water to near 4000', that's precisely what my brain thought.
I might've skipped a breath or two.
Having a 6" thick ice covering, January 21 was the first day Portage Lake was deemed safe to be on. You know what that means? "Hey everyone, grab your skates and lets go!"
So, with my husband, a visiting friend from home, and a couple of friends from Anchorage, I joined the hundreds of others taking advantage of this quintessential Alaskan day.
So many skaters! So many families with children of all ages out there, on a frozen glacier lake, playing and having fun in 9ºF! What a state of joy and amazement this put me in!
Our group was short one pair of skates, so I gave mine up to another. The plan was, with a lengthy head start, I would walk across the lake and meet them at the face of the glacier. After all, it was only about a mile. Or so I was told.
Still in a state of absolute joy, as I began walking I pulled my brain away from the landscape and looked down onto the ice.
What I saw next evoked a different emotion.
A sense of awe hit me hard when I saw small, white round(ish) structures covering the surface of the ice, like a terribly large collection of dust bunnies, but much more attractive and stunning in its structure.
At a distance, they sort of looked "whispy" and delicate, yet not affected by the stiff breeze.
Getting down on my knees for a closer look revealed tiny clusters of ice that followed a similar growth pattern as some fern leaves!
They are delicate, indeed.
Called Ice Feathers, this is a type of hoar frost. The American Meteorological Society defines ice feathers as "single columnar ice crystals".
Typically, hoar frost forms on the windward side of terrestrial objects. For my friends back home, we see this on top Mt. Washington and other mountain summits in NH.
These crystals were not on land, though; they were on top of a frozen body of water. One resource explains it this way: "hoar frost is the result of dew, where ice feathers form from melted water carried on the wind".
This would explain why they covered the ice surface and not the exposed trees along the shore. The NW corner of the lake drained into an open stream that wound its way to Turnagain Arm.
That same resource also says "the crystals form when moist air, wind, and cold surface temperatures combine to create a kind of artistic statement". I think that's beautiful.
As usual, the more I learned, the more my curiosity deepened. That's called a rabbit hole. I went down one and found that the study of ice has a name: Glaciology. Ha! I had a more general understanding of what Glaaciology is. To find that what I was observing is connected to Glaciology is so cool!
When I reached an article titled Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans, that's when I backed out of my rabbit hole. I learned enough to enjoy these stunning structures for what they are, an arresting phenomenon of nature that produces something incredibly beautiful to look at.
I need to point out another phenomenon of the Alaskan winter: the colors in the landscape.
There's so much blue! Subtle shades of blues everywhere! The sky and clouds, the snow, the mountains. The kind of blue you see depends on the light in any given moment.
The color swatches on my journal page indicate that four blue pigments – payne's gray, french ultramarine, cobalt, and cerulean – plus orange were used in various combinations to come up with the variety of blues I saw in the few hours I sat on the ice.
Oh, back to that. Yes, I sat on the ice in the middle of a massive frozen glacier lake to sketch what I saw. I still can't believe this is my life right now.
I walked and walked and walked until I realized the glacier was much further away than what I was told. Turns out the glacier is actually about 3.5 miles from the west shore where we started. So I plopped myself down on the ice right there and got to work, using whiskey this time!
Everything about this experience was experimental: I had never explored this location before; I walked on a frozen body of water (another little fear of mine); it was 9º, with a stiff breeze; I used whiskey instead of water to work with my pigments.
I am so glad I said yes to it all.
If you can, zoom in on the mountain sketch to see the little human figures I dropped in, and the photos to see the beautifully intricate ice feather structures.
Then enjoy a short reel I created for Instagram about this experience.
What is the most awe-inspiring winter phenomenon you've seen? I'd love to know. Just hit reply to tell me about it. :)