We too easily forget the unforgettable beauties of nature found around us, season after season.
The afterglow of a glorious red sunset fades into night. The orange and black of Monarch butterfly wings are erased by everyday worries. A golden sunrise changes into a glaring noonday sun, and the twinkling of fireflies becomes only a faint memory. Who can clearly recall the greenish glow of the Northern Lights?
Winter brings its own wonders, the first snowflakes lazily dropping on your coat sleeve, or sundogs shining beside January’s sun on a below-zero morning.
One of North Dakota’s most striking beauties has to be frost, the glistening white that covers tree branches, power lines, street signs, even blades of grass. It would take a lifetime to paint even one acre of trees all white, but Jack Frost does it overnight.
North Dakota newspaper editors often wrote about how winter sunshine illuminated the frost and brought it into sharp focus. On this date in 1901, the Grand Forks Herald described the “beautiful hoar frost that adorned the works of Nature and of man,” and how quickly “mild” temperatures made morning frosts disappear.
A Jamestown writer rhapsodized that “the climate of North Dakota is always delightful, but never more so in winter, when nature paints the trees and shrubs and window lattices with a coat of frost more beautiful than the hand of the most brilliant artist could conceive or express. The trees are bright with millions of icy particles, and the mass of telephone, telegraph, and electric wires also glisten day and night alike.”
An observer in Bottineau saw a countryside “shrouded in cold, gray mist, folding mountain and prairie in its damp embrace, and loading each minutest branch and twig and weed with whitest frost, winter’s beautiful foliage.”
Some called the frosty art “Nature’s handiwork,” while others said it was “God’s handiwork.” Whatever the name, all agreed it was glorious.
Modern North Dakotans know that the “beautiful white frost gracing Bismarck’s trees” is ushered in by one hundred percent humidity combined with chilly temperatures. Others worry that power lines, “laden inch-thick with frost,” could crash to the ground.
Today’s reminder: keep your eyes wide open to see the “frost decorations” of a North Dakota winter.
Dakota Datebook written by Steve Hoffbeck, retired MSUM history professor
Sources:
- “City Locals,” Fargo Forum, November 28, 1901, p. 6.
- “The Jamestown Alert says,” Cooperstown Courier, December 28, 1905, p. 5.
- “A Most Remarkable Variety of Weather,” Bottineau Courant, December 15, 1894, p. 4.
- “Frost Decorations,” Grand Forks Herald, November 30, 1900, p. 6.
- “The Telephone and Telegraph Lines,” Grand Forks Herald, December 29, 1910, p. 4.
- “Mild Weather Seen On Holiday,” Bismarck Tribune, December 23, 1975, p. 2.
- “Nature’s Handiwork,” Bismarck Tribune, December 1, 1903, p. 3.
