Notes & Queries response: Why is frost so beautiful?
This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 22nd January, 2023.
The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site, so it is appearing here instead.
This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use.
It was a Sunday afternoon in July, 2022. That unbearable sweltering summer. Kirsty Briggs, Yvonne (I don't know, or can't remember, her last name) and Erik Malin walked into the village to see if the shop had opened. Earlier that morning when we went, the door had been locked and the interior was darkened. We loitered by the rail, overlooking the showy Victorian river stairs that protruded from the slimy brick foundation of the watermill. A rose-petalled cornucopia of ponybit spilled from the gaps in the mortar. The dark, horsey roots trailed like a coarse mane, dangling a few inches over the white-water, where they ensnared the plentiful morsels of spindrift.
The sound of the working river – no longer set towards any meaningful purpose since the closure of the mill – was a turbid reflection of the sound of the wind in the trees. Our sticks flew down Wolf Weir, where they were launched into flecks of spray at the end of a short weedy drop, and then caught by the addled current as it righted itself. Impossible to see who won the race. After the junction with the main channel, just beyond the old bridge, a big silver tanker was sowing immature trout into the plough-lines of the canal barges.
We turned on our dusty heels and headed for the countryside, in single file along fenced-in footpaths, the soil fissured by the developing drought, the back sole of Yvonne's right sandal flapping up and down ahead of me where it was coming unglued. Eventually we located the meadow with the sprawling elm that John Polland had photographed two years before (he was too immersed in his PhD to join us on this excursion).
The sun was past its southern zenith when Kirsty and the other two rose to their feet, brushed the dead grass from their clothes, and announced that they would be leaving the pool of shade for the village.
“You're all mad,” declared Paul Peak. He was lying on his back, staring into the branches. Small pieces of bark and twig had rained down on the black T-shirt that covered the low rise of his belly
As the voices of the outgoing party receded, I heard Yvonne wondering out loud whether she would be able to obtain some pineapple juice. It didn't seem very likely in such a small shop.
They were gone for well over an hour, and they must have walked in a circle because they reappeared on the brow of Playford Hill.
For a while there was a stand-off. Them at the top waving for us to come up. We at the bottom unwilling to rise from the shady spot, and undertake the arduous climb with the sun heavy on our backs. Finally, Lillian Simons got to her feet and began to pack things away. One by one we all reluctantly joined her. The grass had left a raw imprint in the reddened skin of my left elbow.
The wayward trio led us excitedly towards a copse that crowned the next hill over. I am fairly certain that it occupied private land. The rationale behind our mutual act of trespass was a big secret that simmered in the mouths of our guides.
“I hope its a giant aspirin because I'm nursing a headache,” said Ann Hinson.
In a clearing, in the middle of the copse, a circle of frost covered the grass. It was about three feet in diameter; its circumference roughly half a foot thick. It was sustained (in the height of one of the warmest Summers on record) by the root system of a ring fungus that is so efficient in drawing heat from the soil, that it is able to preserve a small girdle of winter throughout the year. A one litre carton of long-life pineapple juice was standing upright in the centre, like an object of worship. We gathered around the ring as if it was a campfire, revelling in the chill that emanated from the frozen ground.
An exploratory creeper from a nearby bramble had departed from the tangle. It had crept like a semi-flexible cable across the boundary of the circle, where a few inches of it had succumbed to the same fate as the grass; bristling with an icy cluster of crooked spikes that had been turned the colour of amethyst by the underlying skin of the tendril. A thick band of frost outlined a serrated leaf, highlighting a section where a caterpillar had paused to eat.. The heavy aroma of fermenting fruit filled the air.
Eric knows all about the rings: How they form and where the largest of them is located; the battle to save it from being absorbed into the scar tissue of the HS2 railway line, as it carves a passage of destruction northward across a great swathe of the nation. He says that the frost, that forms itself around the ephemeral scaffolds of grasses, wildflowers and small plants, imitates physical structures within the human brain. When are beguiled by its beauty, we are responding to the beauty of our own cognitive architecture, as if we are seeing it reflected in a mirror, seeded with trampled-down glitter that reflects the light but also holds it close.
He claims that the frost sometimes forms itself into constructs that we recognise as memories, and that, if you meditate on these forms, they will imprint themselves on your brain and become your personal memories, inseparable from the real thing. When he was nineteen, he spent the winter exploring the countryside, filling his head with recollections that did not belong to him, and that had never belonged to anyone, but had been encoded into the ice by happenstance. By the time the season turned, he was irrevocably changed; a different person; one who had led a phantom life pieced together from remembrances that melted under the morning sun.
The frost rings were a source of stability. They offered him, and others like him, an opportunity to share group memories – literal common ground.
He had marked the death of his old self by visiting a nearby church. A 700 year-old founder yew grew against the crooked perimeter wall, its questing roots extending all over the graveyard, dismembering the skeletons and drawing the bones into the ossified ground underneath its trunk, like a giant octopus snatching sailors from the deck of a ship.
It had been a cold morning. The old burials plots, now absent their headstones, which had been cleared to the outer wall of the church, were outlined in frost. He lay down on top of one of the graves and soon after arose from it new man.
I hope this is of help.
The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site, so it is appearing here instead.
This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use.
~
Why is frost so beautiful?
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| image generated by Craiyon |
The sound of the working river – no longer set towards any meaningful purpose since the closure of the mill – was a turbid reflection of the sound of the wind in the trees. Our sticks flew down Wolf Weir, where they were launched into flecks of spray at the end of a short weedy drop, and then caught by the addled current as it righted itself. Impossible to see who won the race. After the junction with the main channel, just beyond the old bridge, a big silver tanker was sowing immature trout into the plough-lines of the canal barges.
We turned on our dusty heels and headed for the countryside, in single file along fenced-in footpaths, the soil fissured by the developing drought, the back sole of Yvonne's right sandal flapping up and down ahead of me where it was coming unglued. Eventually we located the meadow with the sprawling elm that John Polland had photographed two years before (he was too immersed in his PhD to join us on this excursion).
The sun was past its southern zenith when Kirsty and the other two rose to their feet, brushed the dead grass from their clothes, and announced that they would be leaving the pool of shade for the village.
“You're all mad,” declared Paul Peak. He was lying on his back, staring into the branches. Small pieces of bark and twig had rained down on the black T-shirt that covered the low rise of his belly
As the voices of the outgoing party receded, I heard Yvonne wondering out loud whether she would be able to obtain some pineapple juice. It didn't seem very likely in such a small shop.
They were gone for well over an hour, and they must have walked in a circle because they reappeared on the brow of Playford Hill.
For a while there was a stand-off. Them at the top waving for us to come up. We at the bottom unwilling to rise from the shady spot, and undertake the arduous climb with the sun heavy on our backs. Finally, Lillian Simons got to her feet and began to pack things away. One by one we all reluctantly joined her. The grass had left a raw imprint in the reddened skin of my left elbow.
The wayward trio led us excitedly towards a copse that crowned the next hill over. I am fairly certain that it occupied private land. The rationale behind our mutual act of trespass was a big secret that simmered in the mouths of our guides.
“I hope its a giant aspirin because I'm nursing a headache,” said Ann Hinson.
In a clearing, in the middle of the copse, a circle of frost covered the grass. It was about three feet in diameter; its circumference roughly half a foot thick. It was sustained (in the height of one of the warmest Summers on record) by the root system of a ring fungus that is so efficient in drawing heat from the soil, that it is able to preserve a small girdle of winter throughout the year. A one litre carton of long-life pineapple juice was standing upright in the centre, like an object of worship. We gathered around the ring as if it was a campfire, revelling in the chill that emanated from the frozen ground.
An exploratory creeper from a nearby bramble had departed from the tangle. It had crept like a semi-flexible cable across the boundary of the circle, where a few inches of it had succumbed to the same fate as the grass; bristling with an icy cluster of crooked spikes that had been turned the colour of amethyst by the underlying skin of the tendril. A thick band of frost outlined a serrated leaf, highlighting a section where a caterpillar had paused to eat.. The heavy aroma of fermenting fruit filled the air.
Eric knows all about the rings: How they form and where the largest of them is located; the battle to save it from being absorbed into the scar tissue of the HS2 railway line, as it carves a passage of destruction northward across a great swathe of the nation. He says that the frost, that forms itself around the ephemeral scaffolds of grasses, wildflowers and small plants, imitates physical structures within the human brain. When are beguiled by its beauty, we are responding to the beauty of our own cognitive architecture, as if we are seeing it reflected in a mirror, seeded with trampled-down glitter that reflects the light but also holds it close.
He claims that the frost sometimes forms itself into constructs that we recognise as memories, and that, if you meditate on these forms, they will imprint themselves on your brain and become your personal memories, inseparable from the real thing. When he was nineteen, he spent the winter exploring the countryside, filling his head with recollections that did not belong to him, and that had never belonged to anyone, but had been encoded into the ice by happenstance. By the time the season turned, he was irrevocably changed; a different person; one who had led a phantom life pieced together from remembrances that melted under the morning sun.
The frost rings were a source of stability. They offered him, and others like him, an opportunity to share group memories – literal common ground.
He had marked the death of his old self by visiting a nearby church. A 700 year-old founder yew grew against the crooked perimeter wall, its questing roots extending all over the graveyard, dismembering the skeletons and drawing the bones into the ossified ground underneath its trunk, like a giant octopus snatching sailors from the deck of a ship.
It had been a cold morning. The old burials plots, now absent their headstones, which had been cleared to the outer wall of the church, were outlined in frost. He lay down on top of one of the graves and soon after arose from it new man.
I hope this is of help.
 |
| image generated by Craiyon |
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