Tags
Beauty, Canada, creation, hillside beach manitoba, humour, ice, ice crystals, Lake Winnipeg, nature, photography, reflections, travel
Is there too much colour in your life? The only vivid colour in winter on the prairies is blue – the amazing crystal clear blue sky and brilliant sunshine. The view of the sky is unblocked by annoying trees and mountains from which so many other locations suffer. But all else is white, grey, or very subtle browns, yellows and reds of dormant branches.
This winter landscape opens the eyes to subtlety of colour; appreciation of horizontal line; sharpness of contrast.
Thank goodness it’s over for another year! The real problem with the prairie winter is its length.
Still a little cool by the lake last Sunday but today Friday it is 30c
As we walk along the beach next to the remaining ice, we hear tinkling sounds. It’s like a room full of crystal chandeliers blowing in a breeze from an open window. As we look we see beautiful shards of ice being knocked over by gusts of wind or gently moving ripples in the lake. It’s a magical sound and a mystical sight with so much ‘crystal clear ice’
As the pack-ice melts it forms into cylindrical crystals which beak into shards
The crystals are strong when pressure is applied straight down, but very flimsy when pressure is applied from the side. The wind knocked these over creating a wonderful tinkling sound.
The ice shards form hundreds of abstract sculptures on the beach.
We look across the lake and see areas of open water and waves still frozen in time.
The crystals reach dramatically towards the sky
They stand out against the clouds
The lake is returning to its liquid state. Notice the bright colours of the stones caught up in the waves then frozen in place
Remains of a frozen wave and deposits of snow. The green patches in the background around the pools of water are tops of ice crystals reflecting colour from the lake bed and sky. When the crystals are moved we find they are actually crystal clear pea ices of ice., as seen in the images above.
These moments of ice sculpture don’t last long, often just a few days then it’s summer again. Today we are wearing shorts and basking in the summer temperatures. I think there is a large red switch somewhere that is turned on to change from winter to summer. Who needs spring? It’s so good to hear and see the birds again. Yesterday there were no leaves, today dozens of trees are burst into leaf. The amazing season of growth has started again.
Reflections in Puddles 
Stunning ice closeups, Rod, chilling and real and astounding. Beautiful, but I would not want to be climbing or hiking around it. I love snow, even a very heavy snowfall, but a ice storm will keep me inside.
Luckily at this time of year there is lots of bare sand on the beach so we can get very close with our having to risk climbing on the ice – unless we want too 🙂 It’s hard to resist picking up the crystals.
They are quite beautiful
A little change from last week to this and the ‘wall of heat’
🙂
Wonderful ice breakers, Rod. I’m happy you have thawed out. It sounds almost tropical now.
Your winters put ours to shame, Rod. We complain a lot, but they really do seem more brutal on the prairie.
I would love a little time with those fantastic ice shards. We get some nice hoar and rime frosts here but nothing quite like those icy weapons and no music to them either. I believe those could pass for daggers.
Excellent daggers and they leave no fingerprints after you stab someone. Oops now I’ve done it. Cats out of bag Drat
Yeah. I remember a comic book when I was a kid had criminals using bullets made of ice. Seems like they would have melted before getting very far but then it was just a comic.
Stunning, so beautiful. I love a winter landscape (in very small doses).
My favorite thing, when I was little, was to find a puddle that had just frozen over, so the surface was like a sheet of glass, and when you stepped on it, it shattered with a most delightful crystal-breaking sound. Come to think of it, that’s still one of my favorite things. About six weeks ago, I found a bunch of those puddles in the parking lot, and couldn’t resist running around and breaking them all.
You can take the girl out of the … Sounded like you had a lot of fun.
So true. Sometimes its important to NOT care about the answer to the question, “what will people think?”
I had a laugh when replying. I’m using my iPhone so suffer from fat fingers. My first effort to say “Sounded like you had a lot of fun” came out “… a lot of gin”.
Glad I checked that before sending.
LOL — I never drink gin first thing in the morning (which is the only time you can find that kind of ice on puddles).
It is difficult to fathom how long the winters are in Manitoba. Ice like glass. Better than wind chimes, I’m assuming. The lake has got to be too cold for swimming but I reckon there are die hards that take early dips. The photos are excellent, Rod. .
A bit nippy yet Yvonne. But within a month our shallow lake will have warmed up to around 70f. It’s a great lake for summer swimming, canoeing etc. with lots of waves when the wind picks up. We go from ice age to high summer over night. Right now I am listening to all the geese pairs honking as they protect their nesting territories. Soon there will be dozens of goslings being herded around. And that’s in the city.
Unbelievable pictures – especially that frozen wave – never seen anything like that before. What a contrast to Mexico, Rod!
It is a rather fantastical winter scene. We do feel colour deprived when we first return. But in the last week the colours are returning. Green grass and trees and the bulbs are blooming. Everyone is scrambling to the garden centres to plant annuals why the perennials start to emerge again.
I hope to get back to the lake this week and take an ‘after the thaw’ series in the same location as last week.
Rod, this was a wonderful read. I had no idea that it was so cold where you live. No wonder you were excited about being in Mexico! The penny has now finally dropped! Your photos and descriptions are marvellous, I’ve never seen a frozen wave before. The shards of ice look lethal but so beautiful. I love the idea of a big red switch being turned on to create a dramatic change in the seasons. Do you really not have Spring? My imagination is now in overdrive and I have loads of questions.
Spring here is more like a brown month of no snow and waiting for the grass and trees to turn green. Yesterday it reached 33c (91f). So we go from frozen to baked over night. That was a record yesterday but not unusual for late May. It’s a fascinating climate. The growing season is short but energetic. Sprinkle the seeds then stand back as the emergent plants leap out of the soil (there must be a little Irish in me I think 🙂 )