Paddling, hiking, and bicycling with other like-minded folks can be a richly rewarding experience. Sharing heightens the pleasures associated with nearly everything outdoors. It even adds to the fun of the post-trip debriefing. Paddling, hiking, and biking in company is also safer than going it alone, and this is especially true on any Big Trip. But what about less ambitious jaunts? It’s easy—too easy, perhaps—to offer the familiar advice: “Never go solo.” It’s not so easy to find the right partners, however. Like fast-moving rivers, the deep waters of interpersonal relationships are roiled by conflicting currents.

No surprise there, I’m sure. You’re lucky if your paddling partner is a spouse, a relative, or a close friend. Such partnerships can work out very well indeed. Of course, success isn’t guaranteed. More than one marriage has foundered on the rocks of a turbulent river, and lifelong friendships have ended in disputes over who gets to paddle in the stern. Still, if your partnership first blossomed elsewhere, you’ve got a head start. A very different state of affairs arises when a casual acquaintance asks to come along on a trip. What then? Do you embrace the idea enthusiastically, glad to have any opportunity to share your love of your avocation? Or do you reject it out of hand, fearful of the prospect of shepherding a novice—or worse, someone whose confidence exceeds her competence—through her first days? Or maybe you steer a middle course, making tentative plans to meet up in undemanding conditions, on some warm and sunny afternoon, sometime in the indefinite future. In any case, it’s never an easy decision, but it’s one that every paddler has to make sooner or later. Read more…

 
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You can always count on finding ice in the Adirondack Mountains during the winter season. Ice isn’t welcome when it coats electric transmission lines, roads, or sidewalks, and ice storms are among the most destructive of natural calamities. But in more benign circumstances, ice is fascinating stuff, and perhaps that’s why I was attracted to ice climbing when I was young. When your life depends on the few millimeters of contact your points make with a frozen waterfall, you gain an appreciation for ice’s brittleness or “stickiness.” Some ice shatters into shards when struck by an ice axe, while other ice grabs the point with a satisfying CLUNK. Ice climbers learn to handicap the integrity of ice by its color. Blue ice is really nice, milky gray ice can be difficult, black ice is full of tiny particles that makes it hard and brittle. And so on.

The physical properties of ice at the molecular level are fascinating, too. When water hardens into a solid—ice—it becomes less dense, and this sets ice apart from other natural substances. It’s also why ice floats over the top of liquid water. If solid water was like other solids, it would be denser than the liquid form, and ice would sink. Think how much different our world would be if ice sank. Bodies of water could freeze solid. The geologist in me enjoys ruminating on the physical properties of water and ice, but the artistic me likes ice because of its beauty.

With my new DSLR along for winter trips I’ve had plenty of chances to shoot pictures of ice in its many forms—crystals of ice drifting in the cold breeze, solitary small icicles, soldierly parades of icicles, skim ice on stillwaters, bulgy ice on mid-river boulders, ice-slicked trees at water’s edge, and frosty tree limbs in the misty cloud kicked up by waterfalls and rapids. What follows is a sample of the many forms of ice I’ve found this winter. I think you’ll agree that for photographs, at least, ice is nice.

 
Nearby ice

 
You don’t need to go far to find ice. These icicles grew from the snow covered south-facing roof, until their weight began to pull ever so slowly on the snowfield above. Eventually the snow avalanches off the roof, clearing it for the next storm’s burden.

 
Rank and file icy stalactites

 
Melting snow drips down the sides of a steel structure and freezes in its march to the ground, but new melt eventually joins up with the shallow stream below.

 
Ice crystals on the wind

 
As the thermometer struggled to rise above zero, a bright sun made airborne ice crystals wink in the light breeze. I could feel them as tiny prickles on my cheeks. Photographing them was a challenge, but here they are highlighted against the dark maple trunk.

 
Wavy icicles

 
The day warmed up to just above freezing, but melting snow dripping froze onto the pine limbs in shade lower down a tree. Look closely at these pencil-thin icicles and you find bubble trails, wavy reflections, and subtle colors.

 
Stopped in their tracks

 
More small icicles, this time on the very ends of pine needles. See the bubble tracks?

 
Clear view

 
I can’t resist these small icicles. More air pockets and bubble tracks.

 
Crystalline drapes

 
However much I liked shooting photos of the small icicles, The River’s rapids called out. Every limb at water’s edge was coated with a layer of ice, some thin, others thick.

 
Cold River

 
Across The River, rapids roar and kick up spray to coat every living and non-living thing in a thick crust of ice.

 
Reflections

 
Back to The River, ice grows across the areas with slow current, but a boil prevents thickening ice from forming. A brick building reflects warmly in the open water.

 
Reflect on this

 
And here’s the same building reflecting in a different part of the troubled water, but ice persists in extending further toward the retaining wall. Eventually the ice will win—for now.

 
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