By Aaron Horrell

A wind-chill temperature in the teens greeted me the evening of Dec. 30 as I went outdoors with my camera. I slowly walked the shoreline of a pond frozen over with a thin layer of ice.

Under American bald cypress trees near the bank, small, fanciful ice formations had formed on recently fallen leaf litter. Some of the cypress leaves were only partly submerged, making identification easy.

I had found beauty in nature, even on a very cold, windy evening as light was fading.