Photo essay by Jo Schaper
The Meramec River may have frozen over some other time in my lifetime, but I never noticed it before. Having grown up in the fringe suburbia of northern Jefferson County and now living in eastern Franklin County, the Meramec is “my” river. I’ve contended with its moods, marveled at its power in flood, seen it wash over I-44, rise halfway up the Hwy. 141 hill, walked across it in drought, and now, with Traveler, work in its shadow behind the Valley Park levee. This is the first time I’ve seen it entirely barricaded under the crests of frozen waves.

The St. Louis metro area is a land of rivers and bridges. The Mississippi and Missouri, which drain the continent between the big mountain ranges are familiar friends.
Smaller rivers: the Meramec, the Illinois, the Big, the Cuivre, River Des Peres — and innumerable creeks lend to the count of innumerable bridges, without which the area would not long survive. Anyone who drives is constantly crossing the area’s waterways. Place names — Laclede’s Landing, Times Beach, Twin Rivers, Sherman Beach, Portage Des Sioux, the Riverfront, Pontoon Beach, Riverport –dot the region and they aren’t just some developer’s invention.

In the last week, I’ve seen the Meramec frozen over just north of Fenton on Hwy. 30, near Sunset Hills, north of I-44, at Eureka, and even upstream of Valley Park. All these sightings took place from bridges– not very good places to either stop one’s car or try to get a grab shot out the window.

Returning home from an errand, I stopped by the Lower Palisades river access off old Hwy. 66, between Allenton and Pacific. After driving back the still snowpacked road to the old access (no access any more there: the river saw to that a few years ago), noted the locals had cut a snow donut into the parking lot and started snapping pictures of the lightly frozen river.
In places, riffles an inch or two deep shimmied over the icepack like minnows; an ice pack I had no intention of venturing upon. Looking upstream, one could see the river breasting the packed ice, and then, open water.

As I snapped, the world lay wrapped in stillness. No birds, no wind, and only a weak sun struggling to cope with the cold– the only sound the crunch of my shoes as I moved, looking for the best angle.

I shot my fill of snapshots, and left. But such wintery stillness demanded to be shared. I alerted my husband, and headed home. By the time he arrived at my photo spot, half an hour later on a day where, though the temperature squeaked only to 31 not besting the freezing mark, as it hadn’t in over a week, the push of the mighty Meramec had broken the ice, which swirled in trapped floes — moving, yet jammed against proceeding downstream. He was disappointed.

Some times we adopt a river. Sometimes the river adopts us, and favors us with a sight seldom seen and meant only for us. And I heard today from the ghost swirls in the fog where chill water and frozen air collide on the Maramiguoa.