Sandusky River, winter, forty-five years ago

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.

(Robert Frost, "Fire and Ice" 1920)

With all the preoccupation with fire lately, I did think remembering snow and ice would be nice.   Every place has its charms and its drawbacks.  "You really can see the fires from here," a friend remarked last night, standing at the window and sounding a little surprised, as though he'd suspected I'd been making things up.

I can remember looking out a window at a frozen river.  Not so frozen that we were allowed to try walking or skating on it, but close enough. No longer moving, put it that way. White and motionless like an untraveled road going by, past the dock.

I am trying to remember some things.  Places, people, events.  People who are being evacuated because of the fires all say the same thing, that after the kids and the pets, what they go back in for before they get the hell out of there are the photographs. The wedding and baby and school and graduation pictures.  "We got the family photo albums in the trunk," a lady says out the window of her car.  "That's all that matters really." 

Pictures help you remember, no question about it.  "Take a picture it lasts longer," they say when you stare.  Sometimes though, you are staring at a picture.  Sometimes you even remember the picture more than the time or the place or event it has captured so it will last.  You remember taking it, for example. 

Pictures aren't the whole story, of course.  How cold was it then?  You can't tell from the picture.  

Robert Frost equates fire with desire and ice with hate.  But he was a poet.  And he was talking about the end of the world.  You look at this picture of winter back then and how can you possibly hate it.  You can't at all.  You want to see what the ice looks like up close.  And how the air smells when it is that cold.  You want to see what the tree branches look like against a sky the same color as the ground.  You are so tempted, thinking about the river and what it is doing, underneath that still surface of snow.