Creek Running North

This is beautiful, Chris. I love how it captures stillness and motion together. The essence of an icy creek.

For a moment, I thought you had discovered the mystical source of the world’s aqua de arroz.

The famed and mysterious Horchata Cataract.

One of the great secret pleasures of life is to be able to have the time and patience, and the extreme cold tolerance, to witness these processes.  There is nothing more magical than watching a creek’s cataracts freeze.  Even after years of ice climbing, i had still not had the experience, until a little more than 30 years ago in Spearfish Canyon in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  That afternoon changed my life forever.  It helped that the temperature dropped from 27º F to -12ºF in less than an hour, but still seeing the splashing water freeze as it lighted on any surface, and then build up and encase the remaining falling water, finally freezing completely by the sheer will of cold and pressure of the ice.  The beauty of it all, watching the crystals dance across the surfaces, my oh my.