A light and persistent snow last night and today covered the ice. The hard surface's elaborate witness to freezes and thaws disappeared just as the flowing water beneath sank from sight during the past weeks.
Even in the cold, the work on the Middle Bridge continues, if fitfully.
The figure above peers toward a co-worker suspended on a scaffold between the span and the river. Some time back, a worker told me cables under the Middle Bridge keep the covered roadway straight. Tropical Storm Irene may have messed them up, and FEMA has funded work to fix them. Otherwise, the bridge could bend "like a banana," I was told.
In the department of silly conjunctions, it struck me that in this stark white world of the Ottauquechee in winter, we hear talk of bananas, the workers wear banana-colored coats, and the OSHA-required rescue dinghy seen upside-down and snow-covered on the opposite bank below, is yet another banana shade. And, by the way, when the river had its ice-lined central channel, the bend curved banana-fashion.
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