I reached the river at low tide this morning. (One of the great things about going to the river at about the same time every day is you really get a sense of the tide's dramatic change.) The wind was quiet last night and the weather frigid, giving rise to this splendid phenomenon: in this morning's sunlight, at precisely the same height above the waterline, a white ice collar wrapped each of the 1,000 pilings in the piling field. Three inches of ice clung to what was last night's high water mark, and below that stood two feet of wet, dark wood; and above it, pale, dry wood, streaked with green moss. The pale parts, though, depending on how the pilings were cut when the pier was removed, vary wildly in height, reaching an inch or two above the ice, or a foot, or four feet. Strict order and mad chaos, together. Gorgeous.