We’ve had a very welcomed cold snap for the past few days up here in Maine. For a while there, I was getting nervous. We had a fairly warm November, then a cold week somewhere between then and now, followed by a fairly warm December. Our lake isn’t even frozen yet. Compared to last year, this winter is nothing. Of course, now that I said that, we’ll get blizzard after blizzard for the duration. At least we’d have some snow so all the snowmobile riders can get out of the house.
Up until a few days ago, the stream at the side of our property was running like it always does. No ice. Then, as the cold air pushed in, the stream began freezing up. And as I poked around the area a bit yesterday, I discovered some interesting ice formations. It’s weird when running water freezes. It sort of freezes, then runs over itself and freezes again. It does this until the ice is thick enough to hold all the running water underneath. At least, that’s what I can make of things.
I brought the camera outside this morning to grab some pictures of what’s going on. I guess this one describes it most clearly:
Frozen Stream With Running Water Underneath
That’s the furthest shot I kept. Anything further than that didn’t really come out all too well.
After a while, I started to look more closely at the ice and decided that up close was a heck of a lot cooler than far away. That’s when I took a whole slew more photos. Out of everything, I kept these four. A little taste of what’s shaping up to be a (hopefully) cold winter.
Small Ice Shelf in Stream
Side View of Surface Ice Over Running Stream
Tiny Icicles Touching Running Water
Lumpy Ice Growth in Running Stream
UPDATE: The above pictures were taken from the upper part of the stream, near the house. Later on in the afternoon, Laura and I went on a hike to the back of the property and took more photos. Below are the best ones.
Water Dripping From Ice
Melting Ice
Ice Covered Branches
Ice in Mid-Air
River Running Under Ice
Water Running Under Ice
Ice Crystals
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just curious what made you choose maine over vermont or new hampshire? what area of maine are you in? we were in bethel/newry recently and we loved it. the western mountains of maine seem a bit more wild than our favorite area, which is the northeast kingdom of vermont. your thoughts on maine vs other areas of new england?
Hi Kito,
Excellent question. To be honest, we really like all areas on Northern New England. Upper Vermont, from Woodstock to St. Johnsbury, is a fantastic place. I’ve never been to New Hampshire before moving to Maine, so I didn’t have an opinion of it before we drove through it. But once we did, I put it on my favorite list as well. And really, I hadn’t yet stepped a foot in Maine before we moved here either, so I was flying blind. I was using a lot of Google Earth to warm up for the whole thing.
Western Maine (we are right outside Farmington) is a very realistic place, if that makes any sense. People here are very down to earth. We’re just now getting out there to see some of the finer things, such as the art gallery and used book store on Maine St. Farmington.
I can’t really compare the various places on Northern New England because I have very little experience with them. I will tell you that entering Maine on Rt. 2, driving from New Hampshire, made my heart skip a beat. Bethel looks like my kind of place. Rangeley is awesome and has a HUGE snowmobile crowd every winter. The sled scene in our neck of the woods is insane.
I think it came down to this: When we were looking to move somewhere up in this area, I needed a Jiu-Jitsu club and perhaps a college, just in case I felt like educating myself. The Farmington, Maine area had both of those things. I like the state a lot. In the future, if I hit the lottery, I’d like to continue my stay in Maine and perhaps purchase a large chunk of land in our area to extract firewood from and to put up a small cabin. I like land.
The items we were definitely NOT looking for were neighborhoods, cul-de-sacs and people looking through our windows. We did that in a past life and are over it. What we wanted was land, a lawn for an eventual garden and some privacy. That’s what we got. We also wanted to be “out there” a bit.
Oh yeah, we chose our town in particular because the taxes are low. For our house and the five acres it sits on, the taxes are just under $1600. Other areas of Maine have much different tax costs. I think it’s based on populations and roads and all that.
Jay