At 1 a.m. on February 3, 2025—the sixth day of the Lunar New Year—four of us pulled away from Huizhou in an old SUV. I was with three classmates. The trunk was packed with winter clothes, dry food, and the drone we were proud of. Our destination was Hengyang, Hunan, and beyond it Mount Heng, where we hoped to see rime. The highway unspooled through the dark. Stars were still faint in the sky, and the roadside lamps kept drawing arcs across the windows. We stopped once for fuel, stamped our feet against the cold, and watched our breath turn white under the lights. The service area glowed orange in the black fields, a small warm island before we drove on.
By about 7:30 a.m., Hengyang took shape in the morning light. We went first to a temple in the city. Incense drifted, bells sounded, and we burned incense and made wishes for a safe and smooth new year. For a moment, the noise inside me quieted. Then we took the scenic-area shuttle up the mountain. The road bent upward in long turns. At first there were only scattered ice crystals on the branches. As we climbed, the whole forest turned silver. When the bus reached Nantianmen, the rime held us silent: branches looked like jade and polished leaves, pine needles carried layer upon layer of ice, and the wind made the frozen twigs click and ring.
Someone had brought a drone, and we had planned to fly it. But fog wrapped the summit and visibility was poor. We worried it would hit a tree or fail in the mist. In the end we shook our heads and put it away. A little regret stayed with us, but the view was enough. From the viewing platform, the rime trees faded in and out of cloud. Sunlight broke through now and then and pulled colors from the ice. Crystals fell from the pines with a soft, soundless scatter. I stood on the boardwalk, listening to the snow creak under my boots, and let the quiet settle.
On the way down, I brought back a few rime-covered twigs. They sat in a glass jar on my desk afterward, slowly melting, drops sliding down the clear ice as if replaying that morning on the pines. In Hengyang, friends were already waiting at a restaurant. A table of Hunan dishes pushed the cold away. We talked about our lives, recalled school days, and laughed more than we had in a while. They urged us to stay the night, and we accepted.
On February 4, the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, we started back. The expressway was badly congested, and the navigation screen showed worse ahead. We decided to leave it and take provincial roads. The route was longer and slower, but the towns along the way still carried the New Year. Red couplets flapped in the cold wind. At a small roadside shop we bought hot ciba and soy milk. When night came, our headlights lit the road ahead like two moving rivers of light.
On the morning of February 5, the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, a little after 7 a.m., we reached Huizhou after 22 hours on the road. We had gone to chase rime, but the trip gave us more than that: long talks on a night highway, small surprises in the mountains, the warmth of old friends, and the simple courage to leave on a whim. Maybe that is what youth looks like. Back home, I opened the photo album on my phone. There was no drone footage of the rime forest, but the image of those frozen trees was already fixed in my memory, brief and bright, like the hours we spent on the road.