Stillness rules these winter days. The river is unmoving, at least on the surface. It is frozen now, from New York to PA, from just south of the boat launch to as far north as we can see from the Big Eddy. The sky, which was dull gray at dawn, has opened up into patches of blue. The scene is mostly white. A crow is nervously digging in the snow on the island. Dig, dig, look both ways, dig some more. No eagles in sight. We are watchful.

Watchfulness can get you through a long winter, whether it is looking inside, or out, at the world. I hold an image in my mind that reappears now and then. It is from something someone told me once about a night that 800 loggers stayed in our little town long ago; a result of some natural occurrence. They were out on the river, tending their logs, and up in town slaking their thirst, swarming all over like bees.

I tempt my imagination to put me here then. I want to see the river full of river people, taming their freight in tiny boats with long poles, in their homespun shirts and stiff-as-leather breeches. Their hats, of various designs, trained just so against the elements. I want to hear that sound; 800 voices rattling the eddy, vibrating through the streets of Narrowsburg. And the train, rumbling in, stopping to pass on news and pick some up. What a time I imagine.

But it is nothing like that right now. The holidays are ended, shops close early. There are more eagles on the river than people, most days. Looking for something to do recently, I called the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance. The recording wished me well, and encouraged me to wait a few weeks for culture to regain its momentum in the valley. There has to be some time, after all, for artists to make art. They can’t always be showing it. The listings in this paper are similarly lacking. Last month there was too much to do; now there is little.

I walk through the silent flats, up to town after a lazy day, looking for the company of strangers more than sustenance, but hungry nonetheless. I have waited too long; the appointed hour for lunch has passed. Disappointment only increases my hunger. On the way home I see my son, down on the icy eddy with his father. Emboldened by some ice fishers, they explore the unfamiliar terrain. My son carries a stick, his constant companion. In the middle of the eddy he begins an art piece on a new kind of canvas: the snow. He walks in spirals, shuffling his new snow boots across the ice. There seems to be purpose in his effort. Even the promise of food cannot tear him away from this muse, until it is done.

When he finally surfaces, he exclaims of the exhilaration of walking on what once was water, the thrill of looking through the thick ice, to the river below. It is intoxicating, he says, like being an explorer in a new world. “I felt like Neil Armstrong, walking on the moon.”

I, on the other hand, am driven to reading catalogs by the fire. Shameful behavior, and consumptive. I find myself wondering if snowshoeing might not be fun, after all. This is the solitude and quiet I yearned for only weeks ago. All I can do is squander it. Even the wild birds have left for more exciting climes; an eye trained on the feeders will soon wander.

I would like to tell you I am holed up with Chekhov or even Ann Beattie, but it is the Campmor catalog or L.L.Bean that keeps me close to home. Where is my muse? There, on page 7 of L.L.Bean Home: “It was such a lovely day, I thought it was a pity to get up,” attributed to Somerset Maugham.

As night falls, the bare trees advance against the white landscape as a kind of freeform black lace. Where is my muse? Buried under inches of blue-green ice, rushing with life.