Into the snow

We have had heavier snowfalls in New York City, but the most recent one was exceptionally beautiful. It frosted every branch on every tree and shrub, catching delicately on any extended and horizontal surface. So of course we went to the beach. The Frenchman to run, me to walk and explore and take pictures.

This drive-by photo was snapped as we passed the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. To think that once, long ago, both my parents cruised beneath it, the massive Queen Mary 2 barely fitting in (I included that link because the ship's website shows exactly that perspective), on her maiden voyage. They stayed in SoHo and we ate out and explored and walked and it all seems impossible, now.

The edges of Brooklyn looked like a fairytale as we were about to cross a channel of Jamaica Bay onto the narrowest, sandiest, least diverse portion of Queens. Breezy Point is a conundrum, waiting to be solved. But that's another story.

And Fort Tilden, at last. Part of the Gateway National Recreation Area. These back roads behind the beach are one of my favorite places to walk, in any season. 

The sense of emptiness is emphasized by the deserted tar roads, remnants of the military base here that tended nuclear warheads. Cold War days. And we don't seem to have progressed, much.

The thickets include native trees and shrubs like black cherry, serviceberry, sumac, bayberry, eastern red cedar, and pitch pine, as well as privet, those Nanking cherries that we only captured in full fruit last year, and strangling tangles of honeysuckle, bittersweet, and multiflora rose.

The snow on sandy, colder-than-tar paths showed footprints of earlier adventurers. I saw two people. The other 8.8 million were elsewhere.

And the dunes above the beach. Grasses and hedges of beach plum and bayberry. Somewhere on the low tide beach the Frenchman was running. 

Grasses still upright and not a snowy owl to be seen. (But you can spot some gorgeous Long Island owls on the Frenchman's site.)

Back in Imbaleki (our electric VW; she replaced the beloved Ntini, the little gray golf), the little enigmatic church beside the soccer fields. 

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Prepare to Forage and Plant