Thursday, March 27, 2003

The Ice Flows Cometh

From Brattleboro to right under the bridge between the campuses, the Connecticut River is awash with chunks of ice.

This morning, I rose early to grade papers over a cuppa Hazelnut joe and a plate of Virginia ham, eggs overeasy, and homemade toast at the Main Street Cafe, sadly closing next week after 16 years of the best damn breakfast for a hundred miles. A fine breakfast was followed by a shave at the tiny barbershop next door. Driving across the bridge in the early fog, I could see how the wind and the undertow had pushed the slow-moving bergs, flat and immeasurable, up against the western bank. One side of the river was choked; the other was smooth and clear.

This afternoon, fifteen miles upstream, we shared a cup of pumpkin soup and a classic steak and baked up against the window of the bridge-side Riverview Cafe. The sun set in Brattleboro behind us, illuminating the green frame bridge between Vermont and New Hampshire. The floes washed fast through the wide river mouth below us like sideways snow on a reflected mountain, disappearing under the graffiti, under the traffic, into the artifical horizon.

Breakfast: $7 with tip. Supper: $70, also with tip. A warm Spring day rimmed by water in its myriad forms -- the morning fog, the swollen river and its driveby tributaries, the drifiting ice from the far and cold north of my imagination: priceless. I wish I had a picture of this to share. Maybe they'll still be coming downstream tomorrow.

posted by boyhowdy | 9:46 PM |

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