Otherworldly Late Winter Moments in Vermont

I love those moments where the world, or parts of it in my line of site, take on the look of something from another planet.

The colors are warm in this sunset Sunday evening
in St. Albans, with Lake Champlain in the foreground,
but it was very cold

The setting sun plays on the clouds in a unique way, or ice forms shapes and patterns that aren't what you see every day.

That's happened near where I live over the past few days, to my delight

Sunday was a blustery, bitter cold day, with a strong, steady north wind keeping us chilled under a gray sky. Toward evening, the sky began to brighten.

As the sun set, it cast rays through a distant snow flurry near the mountains, while higher clouds above all this glowed. Beneath it, frozen Lake Champlain reflected the warm light above the cold air that had me shivering. The lake ice, and snow dunes on that ice, made its own delicate pattern.

Shifting, slushy ice along the shore of LakeChamplain
in Burlington, Vt. gives us this moonscape-like view.  

Next day was very bright and not quite as cold. The wind drove thin sheets of Lake Champlain ice against the shore in Burlington, Vermont. The ice formed into a moonscape of patterns, rolling gently as waves pushed through underneath them.

The ice surface looked like something from another planet, a planet where the ground is not rock solid, like it is here on Earth, or even someplace like Mars. It evoked a semi-liquid planet, one you imagine has exotic life, and plants, suited for something that isn't quite liquid, isn't quite solid.

One's imagination runs wild when you gaze at the ever changing ice patterns on a lake during a cold winter's day.