Winter days when the temperatures stays below 32 degrees have become exceedingly rare in my Virginia home, so when I wake up and see frost sparkling outside of my bedroom’s ground-level window, I make haste to get outside.
Frozen only until the rising sun lifts the temperature, frost is fleeting; made of crystal structures so small it’s hard to see them without a magnifier, its beauty is intricate, delicate. What I like most is how it transforms the familiar forms of moss, dead leaves, twigs ends and fence wire into a particular kind of beauty, the kind of art only frozen water has the power to create. No matter how often I witness it transform my world, frost always strikes me as an original and unrepeatable event.