BANGOR DAILY NEWS • December 16, 2022
At first glance, I thought it was a mushroom. Frozen solid in the frigid December air, the tiny object had a lumpy cap and arcing stalk. But when I crouched down, I realized it wasn’t a mushroom at all. It was a pink granite pebble perched atop a bent column of ice. Needle ice, also known as pipkrake, is formed when ice crystals grow up from the ground in the direction of heat loss, according to the encyclopedia. These needle-like columns typically grow perpendicular to the ground, and they often bend due to wind and gravity. This type of ice best develops in moist, fine-textured sediment — such as the kind found surfacing an old road in the forest of Acadia National Park. That is where I discovered my ice-rock mushroom.