Ice on the River

I read a comment in a book once (I have forgotten who said it) that went something like this: If you can't enjoy the weather, ignore it. Thus, I was celebrating the ice on the river. I live right on Riverside Drive, in Washington Heights, and I can easily see the river. This past week, with the bitterly cold weather, ice started coming down the river. I noticed it first in the morning on Wednesday I think. It is dark when I get up most days but the light from the George Washington Bridge showed me that something was different on the river. I looked more closely and saw ice. As it got lighter I saw that it was floating down river when the tide was going out and just sitting when the tide was coming in (on the west side of Manhattan the Hudson River is actually an estuary). I think with the warming up there will be less ice today and tomorrow.

Last year was pretty warm and I don't really remember ice on the river. Three years ago though, it was so cold ice extended across the Hudson River. Because the Hudson is an estuary here, there is a fair amount of salt involved which make the freezing of the river hard to do. That year, even the East River froze over. That is hard to do because the East River is not a river at all, it is the ocean trapped between two islands.

My point here is that, yes, I can complain about the cold (my apartment was not that warm last week!) but why bother? Instead, while I was looking for the beauty in winter, I found it in the ice on the river.