The Petrified Forest

After a week of very pleasant temperatures and some very heavy rain, we have dropped into a trough of bone-chilling cold. The freeze was so rapid that the trees had no chance to shed the water with which they were saturated; many are sheathed in ice, and some droplets froze like giant gemstones on the needles.

In places, the boughs of the red pines are welded together by ice. Many leaders simply snapped off under the ice load. Vulnerable branches, some quite large, tore away from the trunk and littered the path this morning. It was -20.3°C at 6:30am, and as I walked the crust shattered with a sound like breaking glass.  

 The Grove was thickly glazed and the trees sparkled in the low, cold sun.







Panama blazed with light, the sun trapped and reflected in the iced-over trees in the clearing.