Several days ago when a heavy snow started in the morning, I put on my crampons and walked along the paths that were sheer ice beneath new snow (treacherous for anyone else, but not me!) The snow came down in huge clumps of flakes and I was totally covered in snow within a few minutes.

I put my precious camera in its own hat to protect it between camera shoots and ventured down to the river, where I saw the ice forming on the river from the snow that fell on it. The ice made long, meandering films called grease ice because the film looks like a layer of grease on the surface. It will thicken and become stiff, but to start, it is just like a greasy film on the water’s surface, moving with the waves…

Sometimes, depending on what else is in the water, the grease ice will turn a kind of brown-yellow and form what to me looks like curtains of pale yellow drapery floating on and just below the surface of the water.

And when it’s all done, it will have created a new sheet of ice extending from the river’s shore…