Post-Irene Paddle
The first thing I noticed was that my usual launch in Tivoli was over a foot thick with water chestnut, laced with bottles, Styrofoam and other debris. The water chestnut pulls up in the fall, forming green rafts on the water. But these plants had been ripped off by the winds and water of hurricane Irene (or tropical storm Irene?). So I slipped my kayak into the water at the small dock. It had weathered the storm—still in place—but was slick with a layer of mud. Clearly it had drowned in the storm. The water was chocolate brown, more silty than usual and scanning the wide river I could see flotsam, logs, and other debris drifting swiftly south with the current.
I stepped into my boat, noting the cold at my ankles was not the fall-warmed water of a few days earlier. I struck south, passing a wooden dock, sloshed up on shore. Swallows zipped across the water and landed on the wires next to the train tracks. A great blue heron took flight. In many ways, it was just another day for the birds, and for the baby map turtle I saw taking in the last of the day’s sun. But for me, the river was transformed. I recognized everything: the Catskill mountains in the distance, the puff of trees in front of me that is Magdalen Island, the houses on shore that peer down at the river. But the texture of the river was foreign. There was a sense of dereliction, I want to say of lawlessness. It was as if the river itself was not following its own laws, but also that those who live in and on the river had given over to new ways of being, one where anything could and did float off in the river.
The raft of logs and sticks laced with debris was so thick at the entrance to the north Tivoli Bay that I could hardly shove my way through. The water poured out of the narrow entrance to the Bay, pushing me quickly south. There, just a hundred yards off of Magdalen Island was a small island of river junk. A long wooden dock. A large refrigerator and a small refrigerator both knocked against the wood. A pile of sneakers stacked on top of one end of the dock. On the far end, a submerged motorboat, engine still attached was lashed to dock. It too had been dragged south.
A man motored in on his own boat. “I get stupid when it comes to collecting crap,” he said, pulling out a toolkit. That’s what this was, crap. He set to work removing the cleats attached to the dock. “These are worth twenty bucks a piece.” I watched for a while, taking inventory of what was there. “This morning there was a kayak washed up on the end.” A kayak? Now, a kayak I’d like to find. “But it wasn’t a nice boat like yours,” he said. I smiled. “Don’t you want to get out and help me or something?” he asked. I didn’t.
So I headed south, seeing a brilliant orange red scarlet tanager in the late day sun, several king birds, and a kingfisher. I thought I might scoot into the North Bay from the southern entrance. But the water there, which I know to be sweet, often placid, was so fast, so violent I knew I couldn’t make my way against the current. So I headed north, taking to the river side of Magdalen Island.
As the sun set I saw the same colors I knew well, slurping down the back of the Catskills and I started to feel this was the river that I knew. And then I heard the engine of my crap collecting friend’s boat as he slowly towed the sunken boat home.