Feb. 23, 1856 - I read in the papers that the ocean is frozen, or has been lately, on the back side of Cape Cod, at the Highland Light, one mile out from the shore, a phenomenon,it is said, the oldest have not witnessed before. -- Henry D. Thoreau

Journal of a Sabbatical

February 23, 1999

salt ice

The cold weather came back. We've been lucky so far this winter to have had very few brutally cold days, so having them now when the starlings' beaks are turning yellow and the bluebirds are returning is particularly shocking. But hey, this is winter, it's supposed to be cold.

When it gets cold enough for salt water to freeze (the freezing point of salt water being lower than the freezing point of fresh water) you get these thick milky chunks of salty ice. Sometimes on the beach I find fantastical ice shapes carved by the wind and the sand from frozen spray. Shells that land open side up and fill with water develop a layer of ice over sand. Sometimes the wet sand even freezes and you'll see alternate ridges of white and brown even when it hasn't snowed.

I've never witnessed the phenomenon of the ocean frozen a mile out from shore as Thoreau describes. I do remember sitting by a frozen harbor in Maine one February (late 70's or maybe '80 or '81) and watching ducks skid on the ice. I'd taken it into my head that February to take a week off from work and drive north along the coast. It was bitterly cold. Single digits here at home and well below zero by the time I got as far north as Camden on the Maine coast. I spent the night in a relatively expensive inn (I was gainfully employed in high tech then - although it was called "the computer industry" then before the "high-tech" fashion/design trend lent its name to the whole technological smorgasbord). In the morning I bought coffee and bread at a bakery with windows so steamed up it looked like a steam bath from the outside and walked to a park overlooking the harbor where I sat trying to savor my coffee and yet not let it get cold. A delicate task of pacing. I remember little else about that trip.

Remembering that, I realized my attraction to the winter shore is long-standing. It's not just since I quit my soulless job. It's not just since I read Charlton Ogburn's The Winter Beach. It goes way back. Maybe I was born this way. I remember as a little kid going to visit the Cape Cod "summer home" of a friend of my Mom's in midwinter. A rickety wooden staircase led down to the rocky beach. The rocks were coated with yellowish brown salt ice - like they all had cold salty hats on - and I practiced balancing on tiptoes from rock to rock. I remember how the rocks looked, how slippery they were, how exhilarated I felt, but I have no memory at all of whether I got in trouble for doing something so dangerous.

All of this explains why it didn't seem at all insane to me to go for a walk on the beach this afternoon. Isn't that what everybody does when it's the coldest it's been all winter?

On the way back I stopped at the Chain Bridge as the tide was coming in and got to witness the rare sight of ice sailing upstream. No joyriding starlings on board the ice floe, but still fun to watch. Two great cormorants flew by low over the water while I stood there. They're only here in winter. If this were summer, those would have been double-crested cormorants. So I can tell from the temperature and the cormorants that it must still be winter.