Snow, Fire, and Ice for Valentine's Day Weekend in Vermont

February in Vermont is a collision of cold winter weather and fire-warmed interiors, and Valentine's Day is smack dab in the middle.

Some have strong feelings about the season. My grandmother would start worrying the day after the summer solstice, when the length of each day would be shorter than the last, and she could feel the approach of the cold and the dark from the distant horizon.

"The farm folks, up in this north country, dread the winter; but I was supremely happy," said well-known Vermonter Wilson Alwyn "Snowflake" Bentley, who spent his days photographing flakes in the village of Jericho.

For me, snowfall has a way of momentarily lightening the weight of winter. I remember how the world grew quiet outside. The snow muffled the trees. The shuffle of my boots in the snow seemed magnified in the silence. I could catch freshly fallen flakes on my knit pink gloves, where they would linger a moment and then melt from the warmth of my hand.

Said Bentley: "...from the very beginning, it was snowflakes that fascinated me most."

On the long-weekend winter break from school, while others made their way for the ski slopes, my family and I had other plans. One of them was known only to me.

I had just purchased a macro lens for my camera, gripped by the crazy, out-of-nowhere idea that I wanted to take pictures of snowflakes, as Bentley had done before me. With few storms to be found in coastal Connecticut, I hoped returning to Vermont would up my chances.

I was rewarded right away with a brief early morning snowfall the day after we arrived. Half awake, I surged outside. I used what I could find for backdrops with enough contrast to accentuate the shapes of the translucent flakes, like conifers and the hoods of cars.

I knew little about photographing snow, but I would quickly learn that not every storm generates pretty, photographable snowflakes. And once the flakes fall, they don't stay intact very long, especially if you get too close and breathe on them by accident.

Bentley experimented with a bellows camera he hooked up to his microscope to capture images of the ornate hexagonal flakes. He used natural light to illuminate their unique forms without melting them. I can imagine him bundled against the Vermont cold in those early days, shuffling in place to keep warm, determined to capture one shot after another, while his father frowned at this squandering of time and went about the farm chores by himself.

Bentley never married but devoted years of his life to his passion for precipitation in all its forms.

I stayed outside as long as I could, but eventually I had to go inside to warm my hands. By the time I had showered and grabbed a coffee, the individual flakes had melted or molded into the larger mounds of snow on the ground. It proved to be my only chance to photograph full flakes that season. A subsequent flurry dropped mangled blobs of flakes, melted and merged in their passage through the upper atmosphere until they lost much of their shape—to the naked eye at least.

That early morning experience of seeing in a new way arced into a weekend of warmth and cold, of snow, fire, and ice. There was a shop filled with crystalline conifers, where molten glass was shaped into translucent forms, a lake frozen over for the first time in seven years, and two cities of heart-strewn streets.

Fresh flakes on a car hood in Randolph, VT. I knew it might look strange to hover over strangers' cars in a hotel parking lot, but the owner of the car didn't blink an eye when he saw me there. He told me he uses a macro lens to take photographs of his antique Mercedes back home.

Freshly fallen snowflake on a conifer in Randolph, VT.

Seasonal glass display at the Simon Pearce flagship store in Quechee, VT.

Glass blowing at Simon Pearce.

Shaping glass with fire.

Cascades of icicles in Quechee, VT.

Dressed for the chill, people walk and ski far out onto a frozen Lake Champlain in Burlington, VT.

The Spirit of Ethan Allen III is still for the season as kids frolic on the frozen lake.

Church Street in Burlington, VT, decorated with hearts and rosy lights, where one can enjoy ice cream and laughter, even in the midst of winter.

Visible from the windows of the oven-warmed Italian restaurant known as Sarduccis, the snow-covered Winooski River basks in the glow of bridge lights on Valentine's Day in Montpelier, VT.

The Vermont State House, dignified in white, even while dressed with paper hearts. Every year, locals and visitors alike wake to find the shops and buildings of Montpelier's streets festooned with the holiday symbol.