Something wonderful happens when a rapid drop in temperature follows wet weather. Its freezing hand transforms open water barriers to ice avenues and firms up soft snow so we can walk where ever it suits us. Last night the temperature dropped to 11 degrees F. on Chicken Ridge and close to zero out at the Glacier. Taking advantage of the resulting firm tread Aki and I pass over hard crusted snow in the moraine and then drop into the slough country that borders Mendenhall Lake.

Here frost feathers decorate each blade of dead grass, every bare willow limb, all newly frozen water courses. They all sparkle in the low angle sunshine that illuminates the glacier and her mountain guards. It sounds as if half of Juneau is on the lake skating past the thin ice warning signs or sledding on the steep sloped sand dune near the visitor center.  Like the ravens, I’m attracted to shinny beautiful and click picture after picture with a right hand quickly stiffening in the cold. Aki stiffens too and uses telepathy to convince me to move on. My favorite subject is a tiny backlit block of translucent ice come to rest on a mud bar then decorated by hoar frost.

Eventually hard dog looks and people noise from the lake drive me out of the sun to the young moraine forest. Here we follow a trail winding through willows and cottonwoods thick enough to offer  privacy and silence. We find sparkling beauty here too, but in smaller doses. The sudden cold snap caught the moraine moisture unawares—-freezing to crystal little bags of rain about to drop to ground and transforming water on the trail to a solid state as clear as window glass. All glows in the low winter light as does a sagging of Spanish moss caught in the act of drying by the sudden return of winter.