The Risky Advance

About 30 years ago, while a frigid cold winter was invading the New York Metro area, I was expressing my disgust with my grandfather about the weather when he turned around and said “the Hudson River is beginning to freeze over with solid ice.”

“What?” I asked incredulously. He responded in his diphtheria afflicted voice, “when I was a young boy living in Jersey City I remember being able to walk from New Jersey to downtown New York City over the frozen ice. They called it an ice bridge.”

“The Hudson River iced over? Is that possible?” “Sure,” he said, “we even had snow shoes to walk across, but I remember my parents weren’t happy about it. Your Nonna Mary was pissed.”

That’s about a mile-long distance (slightly less actually), and frankly, that’s crazy. Being a brackish waterway with tidal motion (and pollution), water freezing temperatures are lower for the river and therefore, a unique occurence. For example, the river has frozen over across its its span from New Jersey to New York only a couple of times in the last 100 years. Coincidentally, one of those times was from 1917-1918, which would have made my grandfather about 8 years old at the time, dovetailing closely with his recollection (at 84 years old) that he was about 10 years old when he pissed off my great grandparents. Interestingly, as one travels North, towards Beacon and Newburgh, the potential ice bridging across the river increases as the water is less briny moving away from the mouth of the Hudson where it meets the Hudson Harbor and Atlantic Ocean.  

In the last 35 years, I have seen the river partially freeze over about 3 or 4 times. This being after my grandfather awakened me to this phenomenon, of course.

Truthfully for this excursion, I waited until the weather began to warm before trekking to the local river walk and snap some photos with my camera. Yes, I took some shots with my phone from a lunch place the week prior to these shots, but the real effort to take some pictures and get outside began after it was warm enough to enjoy the experience rather than fight the single digit temperatures with 40-45mph wind gusts. But hey, you do you.

So, inspired by my grandfather’s words decades ago, I parked the car, grabbed my camera and began the walk to the river’s edge via an unshoveled and unplowed route through a fairly large children’s playground in Guttenberg. Apparently others more brave than I had made the effort during the deep freeze bomb cyclone as evidenced by the dizzying amount of now iced-over footprints. It felt reassuring to see others were more inclined to frostbite than myself as I began the 60 yard triple-diamond trail walk to the snow cleared river walk area. After step one, I began cursing. About three steps and one slip further into this mess, it finally dawned on me that this idiotic idea would also be a treacherous one. I began talking out loud, to myself, to work up a syllabic rhythm “id-ee-iot-id-ee-iot-id-ee-iot” each syllable a foot placed in another’s footprint moving forward. When I reached the iced-over steps and ramps (one tends to forget about those in springtime) which also had 10” of half-frozen snow on them, the rhythmic beat of “idiot” turned into “fuck.” I began thinking of turning back, but that return walk seemed longer than the distance left, I could see the ice in the river. I also was able to see two people watching me from the river walk and shaking their heads while giving each other the look that said “is this guy a moron or what?” 

And yet, the most challenging part of this excursion wasn’t the ice, or half-frozen snow, or the risk of crushing my camera against the fencing or rails as I slipped, or my hopping and chanting from one boot imprint to another (did I mention I was wearing leather sneakers?). No, it wasn’t those challenges. It was something else entirely. Like the Atari’s Space Invaders game with the falling bombs/missiles from the aliens, or the insects falling down the screen in the Centipede game or the various other foils that were designed into all Atari games, was the foil of this debacle: the freshly thawing piles of dog shit scattered throughout the pathways and park (some hidden in boot print tracks) like landmines from owners that intentionally left their pets’ waste to slow the photographer in his advance towards the river. One slip and it could have been a broken back AND a face full of shit, leaving me to freeze and suffocate on the banks of the Hudson. Game over.