Massachusetts: Frostfall

The New England winter is finally here. For a few months, I was beginning to doubt that it would ever arrive, as we passed a bleak, rainy Christmas and a grey, drab January here in Boston. But at last, things have started looking up. A series of snowstorms have left their unmistakable mark on the city sidewalks, and the temperatures have stayed below freezing for the entirety of the past week. The banks of the Muddy River are lined with frost, and the Charles has frozen over. Our showshoes in tow, Jane and I have gone out to find wonderful new places to explore. I, as usual, have been in search of the challenge that was so elusive in Baltimore: genuine, salt-of-the-earth winter photography. Snow and ice have the magical effect of reducing the landscape to its simplest and most beautiful elements: crisp patterns and leading lines, sharp contrasts between areas light and dark, and bursts of colour amidst fields of white. It also forces the photographer to think fast and to work quickly; one’s lithium-ion batteries and fingertips will not last forever in the harsh cold. In short, winter is a test. A treat. An invigoration. And it is all the lovelier for having been anticipated for so long.

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February 6, 2021: A morning walk around Moore State Park, in Paxton just northwest of Worcester. Lindsey first introduced me to this place in October, and it is gratifying to return to see the rhododendron-lined paths cloaked in snow, Eames Pond frozen over (and hosting an impromptu ice hockey game), and the nearby stone-fenced hill transferred into a towering expanse of white. We walk to the nearby sawmill, where I work on long exposures of the falls, before walking back to our car through the forest. It’s a long, stop-and-go drive home along Rt. 9 (note for next time: just take the Pike!).

February 7, 2021: A casual Sunday workday at home turns into a snow date in our courtyard, when the sky opens up and begins to dump on us in the afternoon. Jane helps me make my first snowman, whom we name Dr. Pepper (for the long green implement pulled straight from the Chinese supermarket to our fridge to his face). A few minutes into his existence, I get a little too handsy with Dr. Pepper, and he is ruined, gone from us all too soon.

February 13, 2021: An early morning trip up north to Groton, where we climb Gibbet Hill with our snowshoes and poles. Traipsing around the ruins of Bancroft Castle as sunrise lights upon the village and its steepled church, we take some lovely portraits at the top of the hill. A gem of a location; we’ll certainly be coming back next fall. After returning to the car, we drive a few miles down the road to the Groton Town Forest, where we take a short walk along the Nashua River before heading home.

Cape Cod: The Great Dune

The Cape is undeniably better during the winter - many friends, colleagues, and patients have already said as much during our short time in Massachusetts. Sure, there’s something to be said for America’s classic summer vacation: the colorful umbrellas and towels spread over the beach, the slow sunsets and long nights sipping ice-cold lemonade, the ice cream stands, the seedy motels, the fish fry joints. But return to the Outer Cape in the wintertime, and one is greeted by a totally different landscape: elemental, stark, and beautiful. Icy winds howling across the endless dunes and their intervening valleys. Storm clouds blowing in from the Atlantic across Cape Cod Bay. Lines of breakers pounding on the shifting sands. The absence of summer’s two great pests - biting insects and seasonal traffic - don’t hurt, either.

Jane and I drive out from Boston on a Saturday morning for a brief overnight stay on the winter Cape. Fully bundled up with only our eyes exposed to the biting chill, we leave our car by the highway, hiking up into the massive dune system of the Provincelands. Steep as the Great Dune is, the undulating sand, rendered firm by recent snow and ice, is easy to cross. We crest the top of first ridge and turn back for photos toward the bay; the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown is visible to the south, a sentinel on the horizon. To the north, we catch our first sight of the Atlantic Ocean, a distant, blue-grey haze beyond the series of peaks, some of which are topped by little shacks and wooden fenceposts. We drop down into a trough of wind-blasted sand, descending toward a valley filled with pitch pine, beachgrass, and other dune vegetation. The dwarven trees, clinging to each other amidst ripples of sand and snow, make for quite an otherworldly environment. We walk through this little forest, emerging at the valley’s other end, atop the last rise before the foreshore. The waves are roaring toward us here, driven forward by an offshore storm. Jane walks along the bluffs while I photograph her with the crashing ocean.

After a long return walk to the car, we drive back south and grab a delicious takeout lunch at Mac’s Seafood Market & Kitchen in Eastham (crabcake sandwich and fries for me; a cod sandwich and a bowl of chowder for Jane). Now past mid-day, we retrace our route along the Cape Highway and proceed to Grays Beach in Yarmouth, where the boardwalk over the marsh (a buggy, crowded mess in the summer), is all ours for the afternoon. It is a stunningly cold day; gloves and coats on, we creep to the end of the rime-covered walkway and photograph the ice jam flowing through the nearby tidal inlet. After this, it’s time for dinner and an early, relaxing motel night, with the heater at full blast and the TV on - a well-worn and familiar pattern for Jane’s and my weekend getaways.

Essex: Plum Island

The North Shore in the winter is a special place - bereft of beachgoers and out-of-town traffic, cold, stark, and beautiful. We’re driving up the coast in the pre-dawn dark, through curtains of alternating snow, mist, and empty grey sky. It’s been a busy few weeks in the hospital, and Jane and I are looking for a bit of time - any time, even just a morning - away from the city. Plum Island, in the northeastern corner of Essex County, has been on our wish list for awhile. An prototypical barrier island situated on the Atlantic flyway, Plum Island, with its great marsh and dunes, is a birder’s paradise. Thousands flock to the island’s refuge (Parker River NWR) every year to see shorebirds, seabirds, and migratory visitors from far-flung nesting grounds in the Arctic. For me, the binoculars stay in their pack for most of the morning. I’m mainly here to spend some time with the camera, wander the lonely outer beach, and get lost in the howling wind - and in my own thoughts.

We arrive at the entrace gatehouse shortly after sunrise; after leaving our entrance fee in a little envelope, we walk the short boardwalk over the dune grass to the gently sloping beach. As the sun rises into a bank of purple clouds, the tide is coming up over a narrow bench that separates us from the breaking waves. The water chases Jane up the beach, leaving sinuous curves and gullies in the sand. Light is beginning to show on the beach houses in the nearby village of Newbury. My fingerless gloves prove to be downright masochistic amidst the morning’s severe windchill; I manage to snap some nice compositions up and down the beach, and along the dunes, before we retreat back to the car.

Back on the refuge road, we drive the length of the island, down to the boardwalk near the Emerson Rocks. I climb a nearby observation tower while Jane warms up in the car. We walk the nearby boardwalk to reach a beach covered in snow - a first for me, after a childhood in California and years of mild weather in the Mid-Atlantic. I find that the demarcation between snow and sand, at the high tide’s strand line, makes an interesting element for black-and-white compositions. Jane wanders down the beach, watching a flock of plovers and sandpipers foraging for breakfast in the surf. After short walk to the nearby bluffs, we return to the car and grab breakfast in town, and are back in Boston by late morning.