A Bridge Too Far

A Bridge Too Far — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures

There would be weather they said. Follow the global models they said. Disregard the NAM they said. The heaviest bands will never push north they said. Well here we are one day after the Blizzard of 2016, and I’m sure many a backs are barking from a long day of digging out after wondering, dude, where’s my car? This was one for the record books, folks, and even though the biggest snows happened just a few miles to my north and to my west, the coast sure saw a battering at the hands of a fired up Atlantic Ocean. After spending the better of the weekend weathering the storm with friends, fretting over rain/snow lines only to later find myself and swan diving into snow after the changeover, my buddy and I finally made it out for some real deal photo making this evening.

After much hemming and hawing over where to shoot, most of which happened during a pitiful attempt to clear out my driveway, an unsolicited query from family friends on Dock Road asking my Mother if I was out shooting said road solidified the final destination. Understanding the marsh isthmus no doubt took a serious tidal beating, we didn’t exactly know what we were in for at the Road of Dock.

The scene upon arrival was otherworldly. Elevated sea levels and ice flows littering the marsh dominated the landscape. While the tide was mostly down at this point, its frozen remnants were not hard to parse out. The vestiges of a foul tempered nor’easter were visible horizon to horizon, and before long the power of the wind was clearly on display. No less than four telephone poles were down, with power lines sidewinding the single road for what must have been a mile. Yes the scene was surreal but that was quickly supplanted with the sobering reality that real humans live amidst this battered place of wonderment, and here they are tasked with wintering it out sans power in the wake of a powerful winter storm—one that will most certainly be regaled as historic in the pantheon of east coast storms.

While my picture making was at a minimum this weekend, yet this photograph marks my first documentation of New Jersey in a post Winter Storm Jonas world. Here’s hoping you fared as well as possible during this powerful weather system, and were able to make the most of your time indoors. Cheers.

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