#295: The Ice on the Station Window
The patterns formed when nature meets humans
There’s ice on the window of the train station. It is beautiful and shines in the sunlight, one of the many natural objects that mark the turn of the seasons. It crackles across the surface and says, it is well and truly winter.
Ice forms in many shapes. Feathers used to spread across my attic bedroom window, whereas in the station it appeared to form in little crystals, creeping down the glass.
Many of us are familiar with the idea that no snowflake is the same. Flakes form in different shapes depending on the temperature and humidity of where they form.
Ice, however, forms its patterns across glass because of the glass itself. The ice crystals branch out differently due to imperfections in the surface, such as scratches and specks of dust. The interaction of nature and human-made materials causes art to sweep across the glass’s surface.
Another pattern created by ice is the lines formed when ice cracks, like spiderwebs shattering across a clear surface. The effect is so entrancing that glass blowers replicate it by repeatedly placing hot glass into cold water. The effect is called ice glass, or crackle glass. Here a human-made effect tries to mimic nature.
When I was researching this blog post, it seems that most people’s concerns regarding glass and ice were for how to clear their windshields as quickly as possible, the bane of many commutes. The ice on the train station window, however, though blocking the view through the glass, made a poem painted on the window stand out even further. Nature interacted in harmony with the human-made words.
With no real need to see through the glass, I was free to admire the beauty of the ice without immediately needing to remove it. I had the privilege of being able to witness nature without being hindered by it.
I won’t be admiring the beauty of the ice on the ground that frequently causes me to slip on the way to work, or any forthcoming snowy sludge that makes it difficult for me to get about, but for a moment, in the train station, I could see the beauty in the patterns in the ice and wonder how they were formed.
