Ice on the beach

The wetlands beach is a little chilly this morning. Brilliant sunshine reflecting on ice. The waves are frozen.

This is not ocean, but brackish: a mix of fresh and salt water. The fresh water runs onto this beach from the stream that runs parallel with Park Drive. The salt water comes into the bay through the various inlets, the closest being Moriches.

Everything is frozen. Away from the beach, where the water movement slowed the freezing process, everything is freeze-dried, crisp, fragile. I remember frosts in England where the freeze was slow and the water in the air crystallized everywhere, coating trees, plants, windows, with frost patterns: everything so still that you could almost hear it forming. Not here, not this frost. The wind blew it all away and froze the remains to the bone.

But the sun is shining. I like that.