Ice Opera

Alaska’s long, frigid winter often plays with the flowing water of creeks, with cold snaps building formations and sudden thaws molding them into new shapes. Nowhere is this process more otherworldly than beneath the ice itself. I found these fluted and intricate shapes one January along Campbell Creek in Anchorage. A collapsing shelf had opened a view into a dark cavern above the surface of the water and below the covering ice. The icicles resembled stalactites, but with the elegant lines of lathe-carved spindles.