The sheets of ice break off into interesting, predictable patterns. Later they will smash into one another and become jumbled and craggy icebergs, sometimes dangerous and sharp. But when they first break loose, it is clear that they are being removed in a pattern. It would suggest that they were also formed in a pattern from the very beginning, but we can’t know that for sure since we do not see the pattern until the ice is undone, never when it’s being done.
There appears to be a perfect mathematics to it all. Indeed, we know that ice crystals are
hexagonal in nature, forming and fitting together into whatever container holds
their final shape. But how is that shape
formed and then unformed when the container is just a river and its winding banks,
a river that is constantly moving? Where
do the straight lines come from when the ice begins to recede?
There will be a scientific explanation for this, but I think
we can all agree that it’s Jack Frost.
As an important minion in the army of the Lord of Winter, it is his job
to lay down the ice and then pick it up.
As the artist that he is, it is his job to create the feathery patterns
on our windows. Jack Frost thinks and
moves and acts in patterns. What he has
done in the winter, he is now undoing in the spring. And like any artist, he is being
temperamental about it.
 |
| Jack Frost was here. |
