"Great Falls on the rocks," New Jersey, February 2007

Hunk of the Passaic

Winters in central New Jersey usually meant more snow than ice, but a few memorable winters do stand out. There was an ice storm in the early 90s that encased all the trees in clear casts, a year or two when the Navesink River froze solid enough to allow the ice boaters to come out (I'm waiting for that one again) and one January or February a few years ago when hunks of ice floated along the Hudson between Manhattan and New Jersey. I also recall one winter when a few friends and I took up an abbreviated version of pond hockey -- maybe six of us out there in our sneakers on a frozen crust not much bigger than a basketball court, if that.

So when we get a cold stretch long enough to freeze the Navesink or threaten cruise ships on the Hudson, it stands out. As does this day nearly two years ago. We were about to put in a bid on our house in Clifton, and I'd driven there to buy some train tickets for our test commute on the train. After discovering how close it is to Paterson, I brought my camera along and went up to the Great Falls of the Passaic, which I had seen once before -- with my dad on a trip to do research for my fourth-grade report on Passaic County. (We had to list our top three, from which the teacher would assign one. I wrote down Sussex and Passaic in the north and Burlington in the south, three of the farthest away from where we lived in Monmouth.)

I found the falls on a clear February day coated ice. The wind had blown the mist to the opposite rock wall, coating it in ice and creating icicles and small glaciers on the rocks. It was a fabulous find and I'll have to keep my eye on the weather this winter to see if I can catch the cataracts in suspended animation again, perhaps even more so.