House Stark’s motto cautions all to remember “Winter is coming.” Winter found Tennessee early this year, and brought a hard freeze that transformed our local creek into an ice covered splendor. After a few days of below freezing temps, we braved the bite and chill of the air to experience nature’s sculptures.

The Upper Cumberland region usually receives its fair share of winter weather, but we
infrequently find enough consecutive wintry days to produce a good hard freeze. This year we’ve actually encountered two winter events already, with this hard freeze coming first. It seems that this cold snap hit the entire state, as friends posted beautiful pictures and videos from back home in Wartburg of a completely frozen over Potter’s Falls, all the way down to Tellico Plains with a frozen Baby Falls. Rather than driving people deeper inside to huddle by the fire, this winter event brought more people outside to marvel at the glacial figures.

We began our frosted expedition of Spring Creek top side at Go-No-Go where Ian enjoyed throwing rocks across the frozen eddies. The majority of the creek had enough current to prevent a solid freeze from bank to bank, but we definitely found solid H2O in the calm areas.

After walking along the creek back towards the large fall, Waterloo, we decided to walk to put-in down below Waterloo to see what sights might be lurking. The chilly walk down the trail and over the metal stars held gratifying results. We found some icicles that hung so low that they had fused with the ice below and formed full columns. Brinn didn’t want us to walk directly below any of the icicles, as stabbing by ice could be a painful way to go in the event that one had detached and fallen, but the outcrop of rocks hanging over the creek bed offered a good defense. Following along the overhang, I was able to walk behind the ice to view it up close. Maybe the non-permanence of the ice added to its beauty, but its magnificence left quite an impression with us.
While I’m not in any hurry to pack up and move to Wyoming to enjoy winter’s opulence more continually, I must admit that I do appreciate the infrequent gusts of arctic air that have moved through Tennessee this January.