Ice Dances

Tuesday, February 13, 2023

There’s no rule, per se, that you have to make some sort of peace with winter to live happily in a northern city like Spokane. But it really helps if you at least concoct an aphorism to explain it to yourself—to justify it, rationalize it, or even better, to jump full-on into it like you would a polar plunge. Then you can happily announce you’re a “four seasons” kind of person.

Having moved here from the tropics in my twenties I took up cross-country skiing, even a bit of ice skating, and snowshoeing to get myself into it and through it. There’s nothing quite like working up a sweat on a subfreezing day to feel like you might just make it to spring after all.

Increasingly, though, my answer to winter involves hiking with my camera to try to experience and photograph the beauty of the season.

Among other things, I pay attention to ice, and the conditions that can make for beautiful ice. From mid-November well into March there is a good possibility the overnight temperature will fall below freezing, and then reach or surpass the freezing mark by mid-day. This almost daily phase transition has ways of creating possibilities, especially stream-side, for new masterpieces of natural art.

I try to find them; find them before they melt, or get washed away.

—tjc