Imagine everything covered in ice...

... and it will look like this.  Last week we had an ice storm here in New Jersey, and woke up to a landscape where everything was covered with about half an inch of ice.  Every branch, twig, car, fence, road... The freezing rain had soaked us in frozen stiffness.  There was a slight wind, and with every breeze, the branches on the trees moved against each other in the forest creating the eerie sound of glass against glass, like when you move your hand in a box of giant and small beads.  Once in a while, in the quietness, was a giant crack and a branch or tree fell of the heavy waterweight, and a million tiny ice pieces fell down on the ground with glass-shattering noise.  Schools were closed, roads too icy to drive on, and branches fell on powerlines, so we had no power from 8 AM to 8 PM (= no heat, no water, no electricity, no phone,  but we have a gas stove so a wonderful beef stew dinner was cooking half the day).  But it was gorgeously beautiful.  Here are some photos from our walk that day, and we stayed on the road to avoid any big falling branches. By the late afternoon most ice had melted off the trees and fallen down on the icy snow, crack, crack, crash....