Photo of the Day: Twilight on NYC and the Hudson River

The other night, at a restaurant near me in Bergen County, NJ, I was given the choice of eating inside or outside. Considering the view just before sunset, as seen in this photo I took then from the Hudson River Walkway in Edgewater, I don’t think my decision to sit with the skyline in view was surprising.

Quote of the Day (Hans Christian Andersen, on How ‘All Nature is a Series of Miracles’)

“ ‘All nature is a series of miracles,' said the candidate, 'but we are so accustomed to them that we call them things of everyday life.'”—Danish author of fairy tales, plays, travelogues, novels, and poems Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), “The Puppet Showman,” in Pictures of Sweden (1852)

I took this photo of the Hudson River as viewed from Memorial Park in Nyack, NY, in mid-September 2020.

Photo of the Day: Fall View of Park and River, Nyack NY

This past Saturday, with daylight contracting and fall descending more heavily, I drove up to Nyack, NY. Though longtime readers of this blog know that I have strolled through this Rockland County village filled with lovely Victorian homes a fair amount in recent years, I visited more often in the 1980s, when a good friend of mine lived here.

My friend, who moved down to Florida in the early 1990s, passed away in late May. Though the warm temperatures down south were better for her health during the winter, she had thought of moving back up here several years ago, only to defer the decision because of the pandemic and insufficient income in the changing real estate market.

On one of our many long-distance phone calls, she grew weepily nostalgic about the changing seasons she missed from the Northeast. Unable to pay my final respects after her death in Florida, I thought of revisiting the town that had once meant so much to her.

Veterans Memorial Park, which I managed to photograph just before sunset, seemed a pretty good spot to bring my friend viscerally to mind again. It was just down the street from her home, and from the shoreline she would often push off into the Hudson River with her kayak.

Nyack is a unique community, with a long history and bohemian vibe to go with its picturesque riverine setting. But a place is more than a point on a map or a real estate agent’s listing, but a collection of souls.

In the restless journey of her life, one such soul settled here for a while. Last Saturday afternoon, the sunlight along the Hudson may have faded, but I knew that my friend’s impact on my life would not.

Quote of the Day (John Updike, on How ‘Every Day and Season Has Its Beauty and Its Uses’)

“Also like my late Unitarian father-in-law am I now in my amazed, insistent appreciation of the physical world, of this planet with its scenery and weather—that pathetic discovery which the old make that every day and season has its beauty and its uses, that even a walk to the mailbox is a precious experience, that all species of tree and weed have their signature and style and the day is a pageant of clouds.” — American man of letters John Updike (1932-2009), Self-Consciousness: Memoirs (1989)

I took this photo eight years ago yesterday, looking across the Hudson from Fort Tryon Park in New York.

Photo of the Day: Piermont Pier, Rockland County (NY)

In the middle of this afternoon, I intended to walk the 4,000-ft.-long Piermont Pier to get to Piermont Marsh—good exercise, I figured, after being stuck in the house all day yesterday amid torrents of rain and miles anywhere from 50 to 70 MPH.

Well, that was my intention, anyway. But as I got up and walked around, I quickly realized that the local meteorologists weren’t kidding when they said that the temperatures had dropped 10 degrees from yesterday. 

And those winds—maybe they weren’t as bad as yesterday, but they were whipping around the riverside enough to make it harder for me to grip my camera as I took photos.

Obviously, this wasn’t an ideal day to experience this stretch of the Hudson River. (The fishermen often out in force were not to be found. But even now, the setting has a raw beauty, with the waves lapping up against the sharp rocks and the town of Piermont, with their row of shops and restaurants, waiting expectantly off in the distance.

Photo of the Day: View of the Hudson From Allison Park, Englewood Cliffs, NJ

With the weather warming up to near-summer temperatures the last couple of days, people are becoming more and more restless about staying cooped up inside. I could see this plainly this afternoon when I visited Allison Park, an eight-acre park in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, not far from where I live in Bergen County.

I came to behold and photograph the spectacular cliff-top view overlooking the Hudson River. Plenty of other people did, too: By the time I got there in mid-afternoon, there was only one parking space in the whole lot. 

While most people seemed careful to give others a wide berth on the paved walkways winding through the grounds, they were not quite as careful about practicing social distancing in their own groups, as you can see here on the park benches (or, not shown, couples on blankets in the middle of the grass). But most, if not all, were careful to wear some sort of facial covering. 

And, lest anyone disagreed, a “Parkway Police” vehicle entered the parking lot to make sure everyone knew where they stood.

A writer friend of mine told me she was continuing to jot down her thoughts daily, in what she has come to see as a diary of COVID-19. While I have never been disciplined enough to maintain a diary (and have never been crazy about anyone somehow getting their hands on my innermost thoughts), I realize now that for the last two months, with my “Photo of the Day,” I have, in effect, been creating a photojournalistic equivalent of Life During Plague Time—with even pictures taken several years ago now acquiring a different meaning in the light of this catastrophe. 

Today’s post is squarely in that vein.

Photo of the Day: NY Harbor, Viewed From Vesey Street

Last week, on a retail tour of Lower Manhattan, my group stopped for a discussion in a building high above Vesey Street. We were delighted by the view of the Hudson River and beyond—especially since, less than 24 hours before, we would have seen the most common precipitation event of this season (the so-called “wintry mix”) at full blast outside the windows.

I felt the immediate need to document the brightness of what felt like a spring day so quickly after this winter nastiness. Watery, sunlit views like this are a reminder of why so many New Yorkers (or those nearby, like me) are drawn back repeatedly to the city, despite its enduring problems.

Photo of the Day: Through the Trees to the River, Nyack NY

I took this image a little over four years ago in Nyack, NY, a town hugging the Hudson River in Rockland County, NY.

Photo of the Day: View to the River, Nyack NY

If the afternoon light is particularly pale here, it’s because I took this photo in late December 2014, looking down from a height in Nyack, a village on the banks of the Hudson River upstate in Rockland County, NY.  

Photo of the Day: Tugboat Passing, Hudson River

I took this photograph last Friday while visiting the Fort Lee Historic Park in New Jersey.