The Newtown Pentacle

Tuesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A two or three day interval in early February occurred in which Pittsburgh was still fiendishly cold, but no new bands of snow had appeared. The temperatures were far too brutal for a scuttle, but the roads were somewhat navigable, so I dug the car out of my snowed in driveway and headed over to the West End Elliot Overlook Park.

As you might discern, the three rivers of Pittsburgh were completely frozen over. Well, not completely…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Maritime traffic creates channels in the ice, of course, but the Monongahela River flows south to north so its waters are quite a bit warmer than the Allegheny’s, which flow southwards. I’m told that the Allegheny regularly displays river ice and even ice flows during the winter, but that it’s much rarer for the ‘Mon’ to freeze over.

That’s the West End Bridge, over the Ohio River, in the shot above.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It was about 15 degrees Fahrenheit, atmosphere wise, and your humble narrator had – despite using the car – dressed in multiple layers of insulating garments to combat entropy.

I was wearing my ‘Pennsylvania coat,’ a Carhartt branded winter coat that’s all puffy. It’s not feather down within the puffs, but the look is quite similar. I hate wearing the thing, as it seriously reminds me of uncomfortable winter gear I was forced to wear as a young child.

It’s also quite clumsy. Getting my camera strap over the coat’s hood is a pain in the butt, and the puffiness of the thing drives me nuts – especially when getting in and out of the car.

What can you do? The street cassock, as I call my filthy black raincoat, ceases to function properly when the air is under twenty or so degrees. Even with multiple layers underneath, it just ain’t warm enough.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Looking up the Allegheny River towards the Three Sisters Bridges.

A few posts away from this one, not really sure where it is in ‘the stack,’ you’ll see me walking over one of those bridges, and showing you some closer up views of all this frozen nightmare.

As has been the case for the last few months, I’m a bit out of sync with when these posts publish from a chronological point of view. It’s currently the morning of Monday the ninth of February as I’m writing this.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There was no point in using filters or anything to ‘slow’ the shot down, as the weather had already done that for me. I waved the camera around for a bit, then headed back to the car lot. Driving on Pittsburgh’s steep streets during a season of ice and snow is an adventure in itself, I’d mention.

There were a few other familiar locations which I tried to gain access to, but unfortunately I kept on encountering zero amounts of snow clearance, even at municipal parks and at privately held properties. It had been about ten days since the ‘big snow’ and despite that…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One last shot of the ‘Golden Triangle’ before I departed.

The rest of my day could best be described as ‘thwarted.’ Couldn’t get near a few things I wanted, as mentioned above, whereas others offered no safe walking path (still have to worry about the ankle), or the conditions of the road leading to my destination were a non starter.

Back tomorrow with something different.

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