The landscapes of Washington State are as wild as they are fascinating. However, what one photojournalist found rotating in a local river was extraordinarily rare.

The curious phenomenon that Kaylyn Messer saw slowly revolving in an icy river in Washington State was so beautiful and so mesmerizing that she spent hours watching it from a bridge. Few people are lucky enough to glimpse such a spectacle. And fewer still are able to document it like Messer did.

Generally speaking, Washington State is known for its formidable and inspirational natural landscapes. A land of glaciers and dark volcanic peaks, it sees countless hikers and adventurers come to explore its rugged gorges, ranges and forests. What Messer saw, however, was extraordinary even by the standards of the Evergreen State.

As both a trained photojournalist and a director of Blue Earth – an environmental non-profit organization – Messer is experienced at documenting wild places. In fact, she describes her passion as “conservation documentary photography with a focus on the relationship between communities and their environment.”

Some may recognize the brooding vistas of her hometown, North Bend, from cult TV series “Twin Peaks.” Yes, the region’s transcendental power did not escape the attention of director David Lynch, who artfully explored the themes of nature, beauty and evil – using the land as a potent framework.

And it was near North Bend, in Middle Fork Snoqualmie River to be precise, that Messer stumbled upon the strange spinning phenomenon one cold day in January 2017. But of course, like all things, its existence was impermanent. Less than one week after Messer found it, in fact, it had disappeared entirely.

She first learned about the eerie phenomenon on the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River from a video posted on Facebook. Setting out to find it, she drove along the NF-5600, pausing at each bridge to peer across the surface of the water. And eventually, she was rewarded.

The natural phenomenon was, in fact, an ice disk – a slab of circular, freshwater ice that somehow rotates on the surface of a river. Though some are no larger than dinner plates, others can have diameters exceeding 50 feet. Indeed, the one that Messer found was quite gargantuan.

Now, one of the earliest observations of an ice disk was recorded by the Scientific American in 1895. Near the village of Bedford in Westchester County, New York, one reader spotted what he described as a “revolving ice cake” on the surface of the Mianus River.

“This circular cake of ice is slowly revolving and is surrounded for about two-thirds of its circumference by stationary ice,” wrote J.M. Bates. Bates was, in fact, describing an ice disk “twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter.” He went on, “There is a space of about three inches between the revolving cake and the stationary ice…”

Since then, most ice disk sightings have been confined to Scandinavia and North America. That said, reports have recently emerged from latitudes as far south as the U.K. It seems probable, then, that the only conditions required for their formation are a slow-moving river and sufficiently cold temperatures.

Meanwhile, Messer was thrilled to finally find the disk she had spotted on her Facebook feed. “I was elated to see that the circle was still intact and spinning,” she wrote on her website. “I shot a few videos and still images so that others could enjoy this rare site [sic].”

Indeed, the experience sounds not only rare and hypnotic, but somehow intimate too. “I spent the afternoon watching the slow rotations and listening to the murmurs of the ice,” she added. “A few notches of ice were broken from the nearly perfect circle…”

“It was a very meditative thing to watch,” Messer told The Seattle Times after her videos went viral. “It was just kind of like a record spinning on a player after a song was done. I think that’s why I ended up staying for a couple of hours.”

Finally, describing the sound of the disk, she told Colossal, “You can hear the sound of the river flowing continuously. Sounds from the ice periodically interjected with very small sharp cracks and groans. Overall, it was a quiet experience to stand along the river watching the ice circle rotate.”

The physical force responsible for forming an ice disk is called “rotational shear.” Powered by currents on the outer bends of a river, the force breaks a chunk of ice from the surface and grinds it against the surrounding sheet. And this constant rotation eventually files the chunk into a perfect circle.

Essentially, then, ice disks are formed by eddies – or at least that was, until recently, the prevailing wisdom. In March 2016, scientists from Belgium’s University of Liége published the results of an ingenious experiment – and they were somewhat surprising.

Firstly, under controlled lab conditions, physicists created miniature ice disks, with diameters of 3.3 inches apiece, which were floated in a still water bath. And how they kept them from moving is quite clever.

Ingeniously, scientists froze a piece of nickel inside each disk, which, when magnets were used, allowed the samples to be kept stationary. Thus, when the disks started spinning, just as in nature, the scientists knew it could not be due to any currents. Instead, something else was responsible.

In fact, the reason why the disks rotated is to do with water density. Scientists found that as the disks melted, the water they were composed of grew increasingly dense, which caused them to sink. And as they sank, they rotated – like water draining from a sinkhole.

Ultimately, then, ice disks are a magical and fascinating natural phenomenon, rarely seen but always unforgettable. And thanks to Messer’s thoughtful documentary work, we can now admire their beauty for ourselves.