Ice to water

Sandwiched between last week’s days of snow and the coming week’s promise of clouds sat a perfectly blue-skied day.
We drove an hour north, up the highway, while hawks sat on every occasional tree, wire and fencepost—sentinels watching this resting farmland and Big Darby Creek.



The dark, cold water runs swiftly, several inches below the ice--now capping only the rocks and rims of the creek.


In the finest lace--an image of the western sun

whose rays reveal the sandy shore.



The melting droplets hesitate--

unsure if they belong as ice
or water.

Click previous image to enlarge.
Ice sculptures formed beneath.

“The Darby Creek watershed is the healthiest and most diverse aquatic system of its size in the midwest. It is among the top five warm freshwater habitats in the nation. The Darby Creeks wind through a landscape that includes remnant prairies and savannas once part of a tallgrass prairie ecosystem. The quiet waters of Big and Little Darby harbor 103 species of fish and 38 species of mollusks.”

Excerpted from The Nature Conservancy