Asakiyume mita

I've photographed this before, but I keep doing it because I keep being fascinated by the image: the snow that's pushed up by the sidewalk snowplow casts shadows that look like marvelous city skylines. This one seems to have a dome in the center--a mosque or Eastern Orthodox church:



And this one has some impressive spires and minarets:



We went on a hike on Mt. Tom late this afternoon (there is another mountain called Mt. Toby ... it feels like a rather-too-familiar naming convention? I prefer mountains to be named things like Sugarloaf or Norwottuck... which, indeed, are names of other nearby mountains). The ruins of an old 19th century hotel, the Eyrie House, look out on the Oxbow, a feature of the Connecticut River that the Hudson River Valley painter Thomas Cole painted in 1836:



The Eyrie House has its own entry in Atlas Obscura--it has an aura of tragedy, and indeed, so does Mt. Tom generally--a B-17 bomber crashed into the mountain in 1946, killing the 21 people on board. ... And people keep on needing rescuing, for some reason, from it. A woman was rescued from the summit in September this year, and someone else in November. Go figure!

I am happy to report we enjoyed our hike without incident. The evening light was beautiful.