Written Sep 2, 2018
The Kaaterskil Creek flows
East out of the Catskill Mountains
Into the Hudson River___
The creek has existed since the Ice Age.
For millenium the primordial Glacial Shield sheared off the tops of much high mountains forming the Catskills. Granite tops their ruined peaks.
A land of wonder.
In 1818 at the age of seventeen Thomas Cole emigrated from England to the newly-formed United States. Enamoured the wild beauty of the Hudson River Valley Thomas Cole moved to Cedar Farm on a high ridge with a westerly view of Kaaterskil Mountain immortalized the view of the mountain ridges from his veranda in Catskill.
The view was unchanged in 2018.
In June 2018 I stood atop the Hudson Milliner of Warren Street helping Shannon patch a hole in the roof. The steeple of the First Presbyterian Church cut off the view of Kaaterskil. My friend and his wife have been coming up river for years. In recent years I have joined them to help with construction, but mostly in the basement. It was good to be in the open air.
Wiping the sweat from my face, I said, “It would be good to good for a swim.”
Neither of us had swam in the Hudson and he said, “The Kaaterskil Creek is best.”
“What about the Hudson?”
“No one swims in the Hudson.”
The GE Plant in Schenectady had been formed by Thomas Edison. The Electric Industry had dumped pollutants into the river for decades. Deadly pollutants. So bad the PCPs killed off the Shad fishing seasons forever.
Before the White Man came the river was home to the Lenape people. THe called it or Muhheakantuck, the Lenape name for the river that flow both ways. In the summer they traveled down river to Manhhattah to feast oysters on Manhattan by the billions. The middens of discard shells created large mounds and the Dutch named a path Pearl Street for the luminous nacres ps the name Manhatta means “place of inebriation.
Peter Stuyvesant stole this treasure for the Dutch.
White men were the devil, but the river surged in and out without prejudice.
Tides ruled its flow.
Not man.
At least until the Union Bridge connected Waterford and Lansingburgh in 1804.
I mentioned this crossing to Shannon.
According to Structure Magazine the Union Bridge, connecting Waterford and Lansingburgh, New York, was the first to cross the Hudson River in its 154 mile course from New York harbor northward. It was located near a long time ford and ferry crossing. The Internet answered so many questions, but once we had completed our task, the two of us grabbed our bathing suits and went for lunch, before Charlotta his partner presshganged us into another task. In old houses there are always many.
After a beer we crossed over the Hudson on the Rip Van Winkle Bridge, which had opened in 1935 to fireworks. I had once walked across it in the winter squall. Rogers Island and Hallenbeck Creek beneath obscured by snow flurries. Coming from New England I have good winter gear.
On the other side I told Shannon, “I love that bridge. It’s probably the prettiest of those across the river.
“What about Bear Mountain? Isn’t that where Jack Kerouac start hitchhiking across America in ON THE ROAD?”
To get to 6 I had to go up to Bear Mountain. Filled with dreams of what I’d do in Chicago, in Denver, and then finally in San Fran, I took the Seventh Avenue Subway to the end of the line at 242nd Street, and there took a trolley into Yonkers; in downtown Yonkers I transferred to an outgoing trolley and went to the city limits on the east bank of the Hudson River. If you drop a rose in the Hudson River at its mysterious source in the Adirondacks, think of all the places it journeys as it goes to sea forever — think of that wonderful Hudson Valley. I started hitching up the thing. Five scattered rides took me to the desired Bear Mountain Bridge, where Route 6 arched in from New England. It began to rain in torrents when I was let off there. – OPENING to ON THE ROAD
“You’re right.” I stopped talking about the bridges across the Hudson.
Tomorrow I was traveling south.
Whatever I knew about the bridges was nothing without seeing them. We swam in the warm creek. The slabs of rock scarred by the glaciers. The scrapping immortalized in the stone.
The next day I caught Amtrak’s 3:47 to Penn Station from the Hudson NY station.
The train arrived on time.
We left on time too.
I was alone with a seat on the right. A river view.
The bay below the Rip Van Winkle Bridge was calm.
I was returning to the city to work.
Construction at Chez Oskar, Charlotta’s restaurant on Malcolm X Boulevard. Far from the Hudson. I wish I could have stayed , but I have five children in Thailand.
They hated me not working.
Beyond the opposite bank rose mountains.
They were eternal.
The Rip Van Winkle’s supports had been set in the tidal marshes.
1934.
The train hurried south through woods.
In 1835 Alexis De Torqueville had written during his travel from Newe York to Philadelphia that America was a jungle in DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA.
He was more right now than then.
What had been farmland in the 19th Century was mostly now woods.
The valley healing from Man.
The Catskills seemed small from the eastern shore of the Hudson.
Before the Glaciers they had been highger. The rubble had been swept south to form Long Island.
The train ran close to sea level.
The river flowed 315 miles from its headwaters in the Adirondacks.
Straight into the Atlantic.
A cold northern ocean.
The train picked up speed.
Another bridge crossed the river.
Rhinebeck to Kingston.
It had been built in 1957.
And still worked today carrying cars and trucks east and west.
I nodded off and dreamt of the impending apocaplypse. The Bridge toppled into the river. I woke, as the train pulled into the suburbs of Poughkesie. Another bridge. A train bridge converted to a pedestrian tourist attraction.
145 feet over the river.
It had survived by dream world extinction. For now.
A few passengers boarded at Rhinebeck.
The sun dropped low.
Even for this last day in the solstice cycle.
The river was calm enough to please the early explorers Jean Cabot and Henry Hudson.
It is called a drowned river and the dead always speak with quiet in their hearts.
I looked out the window.
The river bore only birds.
None of them were quacking.
I nodded off to nowhere and woke under the works of the new Tappan Zee Bridge.
The replacement bridge will cost $4 billion dollars.
Or two billions beers at the 169 Bar in Chinatown, my home away from home.
Once ferries carrying passengers and cargo up the river. All I see are barges, although the Newburgh–Beacon Ferry still services commuters.
Now there are more bridges on the Hudson from the fooden foot bridge just east of Henderson Lake outlet to the mightiest span of all is the GW Bridge. Forty Seven in total.
A monster.
The train tucked into the shore and delivered us to Penn Station.
Right on time.
New York wouldn’t be New York without the Hudson.
Because all cities are defined by their surroundings and man can never defied Nature.
Never.
