Bridge & Ropewalk

The first time I saw the Tobin Bridge out of the back of the Navy Yard, I was enthralled. It's so big & green and when the sky is blue and bright, it's really striking. I don't think this photo does it justice. Who picked Tobin Green? Wouldn't it be cool if it was painted blue?

The building in the foreground is the Ropewalk. There's a Longfellow poem about a ropewalk. This wasn't the only ropewalk in town; there used to be several of them at the foot of Beacon Hill. This one was a steam-powered ropewalk and it was in use until 1971. It's a quarter mile long. If I had the money I'd buy it just to be able to run a quarter of a mile in a straight line indoors. But the bridge is really bad feng shui, so I wouldn't really buy it. Or maybe I'd buy it, run back & forth for a while, use it for a really great haunted house in the fall, and then sell it back. It's probably full of asbestos anyway.

THE ROPEWALK

IN that building, long and low,
With its windows all a-row,
Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their threads so thin
Dropping, each a hempen bulk.

At the end, an open door;
Squares of sunshine on the floor
Light the long and dusky lane;
And the whirring of a wheel,
Dull and drowsy, makes me feel
All its spokes are in my brain.

As the spinners to the end
Downward go and reascend,
Gleam the long threads in the sun;
While within this brain of mine
Cobwebs brighter and more fine
By the busy wheel are spun.

etc. etc.

and a pile of displaced snow:



So, I was really uncomfortable standing with my back to the sun for the bridge photo, and I've been watching this snowpile for weeks now. I figured I'd document it. This snowpile is now located on a chained-off piece of tarmac beside an unused warehouse. It used to be located in the middle of the Navy Yard. Backhoes have been carting off the big Navy Yard snowpile. I thought they were dumping it in the harbor-- that's what they did last year, but they were just moving the pile. In this photo, the chunks look like they're all peering expectantly back towards the Navy Yard. "Can we go back now? What about our friends and relatives? Hello? Can we go for another ride?" I like the way the sun models the chunks. It snowed again since the pile was moved, so there's old snow and new snow. Snowpile, in a month you will be a film of gray sludge in a place no one ever goes, but I will remember you. You were a heroic snowpile fighting an epic battle against the forces of backhoe and sunlight. There is no overblown Longfellow poem to you.