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How many strawberries grow in the salt sea?
Not counting the drive-by occasional glimpse, I had not been to the Mystic since the early part of the summer, before I got really sick. The afternoon was brilliant blue and white with snow and sunlight, so I layered up and headed out.
I was dressing to leave when I was struck by the capture of one window's view through another. With additional reflections.
I like this little channel of a not-quite-alley for no particular reason. This afternoon it looked like a canal of sky.
Outside of a few doughty locals shoveling out their cars, I met almost no one on the way to the Blessing of the Bay Boathouse. The sidewalks were everything from snowblown down to concrete to untrodden knee-high drifts. I walked in the street half the time without incident except slush. Behold the frozen Neva, I mean, the Mystic River.
I did not walk out to the dock across the ice, but it was a close thing.
I suppose frost fairs can be held only during a little ice age.
I decided against the full loop of the river-walk based on the short daylight and stuck to my side of the banks despite the temptation just to make a dash across the snow-covered river. There were wind-waves on the frozen land.
Almost no one had broken the snow beyond the very narrow path trudged out from the bike lane. I had to wade out if I wanted to get closer to the water. I hope this tree is climbed frequently in season.
The boardwalk that runs under the Wellington Bridge.
The Wellington Bridge, with waterfowl.
Wind-waves on the frozen water.
Self-portrait as a shadow with white water of ice. For no obvious reason, more people passed me standing on this boardwalk than at any other point in my journey. None were masked. One did say encouragingly to me, "Beautiful, right?"
The other side of the Wellington Bridge, with different waterfowl. I could not photograph—and did not try to—the swan that launched itself over my head, absurdly streamlined and countershaded gold in the setting light.
The Orange Line crosses both ways over the Edward Dana Bridge.
I took almost no pictures while returning home; the temperature was dropping, the streets were icing up, my fingers were getting stiffer and more blanched each time I took the camera out. I finished the cloverleaf of the boardwalk, considered returning home via the Fellsway, decided I would rather look at as much of the river as I could. Everything was very attractively lit, even cars in a mist of road slush.
I left my boots in the hall on account of road salt and other substances insalubrious for little cats and fed said little cats as soon as I got back in. As far as I'm concerned, the best thing about John Sturges' Ice Station Zebra (1968) is Patrick McGoohan's self-described "sneaky bastard," a nervy veteran of ungentlemanly warfare with his hands shaking around a cup of coffee and whisky as he details with rapid-fire bitter precision exactly how he would have sabotaged the submarine had it been his brief to do so, which for all we know it may yet be, but once we hit the half-burnt, shell-shocked Arctic research station with its frozen corpses and paranoia of moles and double agents, I couldn't see how this film, no matter its faults, wasn't an influence on John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). I may still try to track down Alistair MacLean's Ice Station Zebra (1963) on the understanding that much of it is extremely different.
I was dressing to leave when I was struck by the capture of one window's view through another. With additional reflections.
I like this little channel of a not-quite-alley for no particular reason. This afternoon it looked like a canal of sky.
Outside of a few doughty locals shoveling out their cars, I met almost no one on the way to the Blessing of the Bay Boathouse. The sidewalks were everything from snowblown down to concrete to untrodden knee-high drifts. I walked in the street half the time without incident except slush. Behold the frozen Neva, I mean, the Mystic River.
I did not walk out to the dock across the ice, but it was a close thing.
I suppose frost fairs can be held only during a little ice age.
I decided against the full loop of the river-walk based on the short daylight and stuck to my side of the banks despite the temptation just to make a dash across the snow-covered river. There were wind-waves on the frozen land.
Almost no one had broken the snow beyond the very narrow path trudged out from the bike lane. I had to wade out if I wanted to get closer to the water. I hope this tree is climbed frequently in season.
The boardwalk that runs under the Wellington Bridge.
The Wellington Bridge, with waterfowl.
Wind-waves on the frozen water.
Self-portrait as a shadow with white water of ice. For no obvious reason, more people passed me standing on this boardwalk than at any other point in my journey. None were masked. One did say encouragingly to me, "Beautiful, right?"
The other side of the Wellington Bridge, with different waterfowl. I could not photograph—and did not try to—the swan that launched itself over my head, absurdly streamlined and countershaded gold in the setting light.
The Orange Line crosses both ways over the Edward Dana Bridge.
I took almost no pictures while returning home; the temperature was dropping, the streets were icing up, my fingers were getting stiffer and more blanched each time I took the camera out. I finished the cloverleaf of the boardwalk, considered returning home via the Fellsway, decided I would rather look at as much of the river as I could. Everything was very attractively lit, even cars in a mist of road slush.
I left my boots in the hall on account of road salt and other substances insalubrious for little cats and fed said little cats as soon as I got back in. As far as I'm concerned, the best thing about John Sturges' Ice Station Zebra (1968) is Patrick McGoohan's self-described "sneaky bastard," a nervy veteran of ungentlemanly warfare with his hands shaking around a cup of coffee and whisky as he details with rapid-fire bitter precision exactly how he would have sabotaged the submarine had it been his brief to do so, which for all we know it may yet be, but once we hit the half-burnt, shell-shocked Arctic research station with its frozen corpses and paranoia of moles and double agents, I couldn't see how this film, no matter its faults, wasn't an influence on John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). I may still try to track down Alistair MacLean's Ice Station Zebra (1963) on the understanding that much of it is extremely different.