Ice comes in many forms over at Col. Sam Smith Park. The pond is frozen over, and several people are out skating today. Along the shore of the lake, we can see where water has sprayed up against driftwood, creating strange formations.

West of the yacht club, there is an undulating formation of slush and ice just out from shore. Nature has created thousands of circular forms pushing against one another in the harbour. If this cold continues, the solid ice will extend further and further out from shore. For now, it is mostly slush, undulating with any wave action.

I find these formations to be hypnotic. Each time they are different, and each time, strangely compelling. Watching this one, I thought of the first line of 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Do you remember it? About discovering ice?

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice”.