Dawn’s Early Light

When my son and I went down to the lake for some early-morning photography, we couldn’t believe our eyes: there, in the dawn’s early light, it appeared as though some great sea monsters had emerged from the deep in the night. All up and down the shoreline, these scaly leviathans were silhouetted against the saffron sky. It reminded me of a pod of beached whales.

The daylight revealed something almost as strange: the monsters had become huge piles of ice, which form (I later learned) when broken-up ice is driven by high winds to the shoreline; it’s a naturally occurring phenomenon called ice-stacking. So much for sea monsters.

in the dark, we can

only imagine monsters–

at dawn, we see them

–photos by me

20 thoughts on “Dawn’s Early Light

  1. Happens in Michigan a lot. One winter a good friend and I were staying at a B&B in Grand Haven so I could write a piece on it for a leisure style magazine I partly owned. The ice was stacked, not as high at this place but heaving like some creature was rising out of the depths. We sat in my car and watched it, mesmerized, for a good hour. It’s still one of our favorite memories.

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  2. Imagination or scientific knowledge and explanations… I think most poets and artists would prefer sea monsters to ice stacking and perhaps even delight in both perceptions… I’ll go for the sea monsters swimming in the saffron ocean 🤩

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