Goodbyes

This is the week of goodbyes. Over the course of the next three days I will be saying goodbye to the seniors graduating from Bard College. Tomorrow marks the first goodbye, with the baccalaureat ceremony, followed by the always-rowdy senior dinner. Friday night at the President's dinner we say farewell in a more sedate manner. What follows the dinner is my favorite part of graduation, the senior concert. The American Symphony Orchestra performs pieces composed by graduating seniors. The music is always inspiring. To hear a work of a young composer performed by such a talented orchestra is thrilling. And then Saturday, those students march across a stage and are gone. So fast. I've watched some grow up, intellectually, emotionally, physically. The young men change more than the women, it seems, growing taller and broader in four years.

I am always a bit heartbroken at the end of graduation. On that day, a shift happens. These graduates no longer need me--to read their work, encourage them through finals, figure out a paper topic. I applaud this, of course. But it leaves a hole. And then I will wait for the next shift, that moment when they write needing a letter of recommendation for graduate school. They write to tell me of jobs or marriages, of children born. They write to tell me they are writing.

To add to the leavings, I too am leaving, off to Alaska for a month. My own departure for such a stretch of time has its own sense of loss. Of course I'm thrilled to be off to this big place I have visited before. I have never been disappointed with my adventures in Alaska. But for a stretch of a month, I will be off the river. This has created in me a sense of quiet desperation. I've been out in my boat as much as I can, as if I can absorb the river into my body and take it with me. 

I've come to need the river, and the egotistical side of this is that I sense the river needs me as well. It doesn't, of course. Recently I received an email from Riverkeeper in which they describe their captain, who is also my good friend, John Lipscomb, as the eyes and ears of the river. He keeps a watch on the river, reporting back what he finds, taking action against polluters and illegal developers. But I really see him as the voice of the river, speaking for what the river needs. The river does need him. Perhaps the river does need all of us.

This morning, under a half-blue sky, I shoved north from the Tivoli launch, headed toward the Saugerties Lighthouse. I dipped into the bay south of the lighthouse, the same bay that will be clogged with water chestnut and spatterdock by the time I return from Alaska. I was about twenty feet away from shoreline when I spotted the eagle, perched low in a snag. It sat there as I bobbed in the water; it preened, and ignored me. Of all the birds on the river, this is the one that people are most excited to see. "See any eagles?" is the first question I get when people see my binoculars. What most people don't understand is that the eagle is an obvious bird; birders are looking for smaller, more elusive birds. And yet--seeing an eagle, especially so close, remains a remarkable thing.  I thought of all of the eagles I will see in Alaska. My memory is that they are everywhere, so common you stop paying attention to them. I'll hold onto this image of my Hudson River eagle, part of the success of restoring this river. Restored because people need this river but the river needs us as well to care for the shad and sturgeon, the eels and eagles. 

Perfect Timing

Garbage CrewIt takes a while before we start to see the garbage. A bottle here or there rests at the edges of the still-brown cattails and phragmites that line the waterway that meanders through the North Tivoli Bay. When I pull the canoe up onto the mucky embankment Susan Lyne gets out and from her standing perspective locates a half dozen more items that don’t belong, items made of plastic or Styrofoam,glass, metal. She scoops them up, along with a plastic turkey, and we jam everything into two bags, one in front of her son, Emmet, the other behind him. Emmet is our youngest garbage collector and while he showed a real talent on land, grabbing things with the garbage picker, he’s less excited about being in the canoe. “It’s dirty,” he explains.

Susan with treasures from the Bay

It’s hard to find a kid—a boy—who doesn’t like mud. But he’s right. The mud is dirty. Besides the fact that it is gooey and brown it smells slightly, that fermented pond smell that makes me so happy. But who knows what else is laced into that mud? If I thought too much about that, I wouldn’t get out of my boat. So the truth is, I’m happy Emmet is a young neat-freak and keeping his hands and feet inside of the wide metal canoe.

The sun beats down on us as we gather more things. We watch as Sheri takes on an enormous plastic tarp and drags it behind her kayak. Emily has a bag stuffed into the cockpit of her kayak. The Bland family—Avis, Celia and Alex—have scooped up a refrigerator. It’s hard to tell who has the best booty.

We are all cruising the North Bay on a Saturday late morning in search of garbage. It’s a great treasure hunt  And the more we find, the more we find. It works like that. Our eyes adjust so that a glint is a bottle, a bump the edge of a barrel. There’s a general sense of excitement and an extreme sense that we are doing good work. Knowing that in the South Tivoli Bay, a group of Bard College students are cruising those waters Bard College students, gleefulcollecting their own garbage adds to the collective sense of purpose. And in a few weeks, with Riverkeeper's River Sweep, groups the length of the river will clean up. We will make this Hudson River cleaner. One small thing in a world that needs lots of small things.

Soon enough, Emmet doesn’t want to be on the water any longer. I’m impressed he made it as far as he did, but I’m sorry to lose my canoe partners. Just then, my phone rings and my friend Georganna calls to say she’s a half hour away. Perfect timing.

I drop off one set of partners and all of our loot and scoop up the next. That George is still fresh helps to give me some energy. We work our way around the circuitous water paths of the north bay, until we reach the wide bay by the railroad underpass. Everyone seems to have vanished, though I know Emily and Sheri are out here somewhere. We poke along, past the docks that washed into the bay after Hurricane Irene. Then we meander down one of the alleyways that run parallel to the train tracks.

I glance over my shoulder and see a plant I have never seen before. “What’s that?” George asks as I’m about to exclaim, “Golden Club.”

Golden clubThough I’ve never seen this plant before it is so distinct I know right away what it is. Brilliant yellow prongs, like a riding crop, emerge from green leaves. It’s a plant I have been looking forfor years.

I first read about Golden Club in Ester Kiviat’s book about the Tivoli Bays. She goes in search of this rare flower, with no luck. Her quest sent me on my own searches and every year I have come up empty.

What surprises me is how beautiful the yellows are in this flower. Practically neon in their brightness. I jump out of the canoe to take photographs of the flower. I’m dizzy with excitement. A golden club at last. And what are the chances? It’s a flower that blooms but a week every year—usually in May. Here it is, early in the season, and without searching, I found it. Perfect timing.

Georganna with a canoe-load of garbage

Before I get back in the boat, I pick up a hunk of Styrofoam and a can of soda, dented and filled with mud.

Flow On

Water-side trail at Falling WatersIn the final chapter of The Hudson, Carl Carmer writes of how he imagines the Hudson developing, changing, flowing on. The book, published in 1939 as part of the Rivers of America Series, remains a wonderful resource about the history and quirky stories of the river and Carmer is a lively story teller. That Carmer chose to imagine the future is a wonderful task: what might I see if I squinted past tomorrow? It’s not something I have been good at in my own life. Never could I have seen myself living in the Hudson Valley and teaching writing. And yet that I am here feels most natural.

Bloodroot in bloomCarmer cheered that people, ordinary people, were gaining access to the land along the shores of the river, land that had for so long been the preserve of the rich. The rich included the Livingston, Astor, and Vanderbilt families, all of whom had many estates with views that spanned the river.

The movement from rich to ordinary involved an influx of religious from Father Divine and his cult at Crum Elbow to the Ursline nuns in Beacon. When Carmer wrote, of the eight country seats, thirty-three were no long operated as estates and nineteen were medical education or religious institutions. “Thus in a strange way the people have won the river,” Carmer applauds.

Carmer writes about John R. Stuyvesant’s home, Edgewood, three miles north of Poughkeepsie that was sold to the Jesuits and was renamed St. Andrew’s-on-the-Hudson. This Jesuit monastery has become the Culinary Institute of America (known to locals as the CIA). Could he have imagined how these properties would flow on to the next generation?

A property in Saugerties, a  town on the western short of the river just a bit north of Tivoli, has also flowed into the hands of anyone who wants to take a walk by the river. The northern end of the property belonged to Gilbert Spaulding, not one of the rich of the valley, but rather a veterinarian. He named the property Falling Waters, which remains to this day. The Dominican Sisters bought this property in 1931, as well as land where a former ice house operated, in 1932. And there the sisters had a summer vacation retreat. The sisters remain on the property, but they have opened up a portion of it for people to enjoy. Working with Scenic Hudson and the Esopus Creek Conservancy, the sisters have built a system of trails, with stunning views of the river. From time to time a bench invites walkers to sit by one of the two waterfalls. It is one of the few places along the river where you can walk in the woods and skip a stone on the Hudson River.

That is where Peter and I were headed on a drizzly Saturday morning. We had started our day at the Great Vly, a swamp just north of Saugerties, where we were delighted by Virginia Rail skulking its way through the reeds. Coots with their startling white bills hid among the reeds, and Tree Swallows, newly returned, swooped low over the water. Wood ducks took flight making their crying sound, while Horned and Pied-Billed Grebes floated on the placid water. Grebes are neat birds, with lobed toes that make walking on land difficult. So they mostly swim, float, and build floating nests (which I have never seen). The Pied-billed Grebe has a goofy thick bill that makes it one of the cutest birds on a pond.

We then drove to Falling Waters, cheered by our sightings. Had we stopped there, our day would have felt complete. But there’s a hunger that takes over after seeing a few good birds, all of these migrating through. Perhaps there were other treasures that had flown in through the night?

The trails at Falling Waters are gentle, winding through the woods, with strategic views onto the river, east to Magdalen Island, and north of that the Village of Tivoli. I always enjoy viewing my village from a different perspective, to see the crooked line of Friendship Street and the houses that open out to the water. But they are gazing across the railroad tracks. Here, no tracks ran nearby to jar our walk. We passed vinca in bloom and Bloodroot as well. Spring is here.

In the next two hours we had an assortment of ducks that had us grinning with excitement, above all the Long-tailed Ducks, with tails that look like they are a radio-receiver. There were Bufflehead and a Double-crested Cormorant. The Cormorants would stick around through the summer but the other birds were just moving through, all part of the cycles of a bird in migration.

The day seemed complete, but we couldn’t help ourselves; if these birds were floating through what other migrants might also be in the area? It was my first day of spring break, and I had promised myself a rest from papers and grades. So there was no reason not to head back to the water’s edge.

Our good luck continued with more Bufflehead on the water, joined by Green-winged Teal and to Peter’s disbelief five Red-breasted Mergansers. We stood on the edge of the river, which was at low tide, to get a better look. Indeed, the birds did have dark chests and wispy crests, unlike the more rounded head of the Common Merganser.

It was dusk when we drove out of the parking lot, tired from gazing onto the gray waters of the river, the light shimmering through thick clouds.

View North from Falling Waters“Let’s check the waterfront,” I suggested. Glasco has a small waterfront park, situated on the water in front of their water treatment plant. Birds often congregate there. My suggestion felt like greediness of another order.

“You don’t stop, do you?” Peter asked with a grin, turning toward the waterfront.

We pulled out the scopes, scanned the river.

“My god,” Peter said.

I peered into his scope. More Long-tailed ducks. I grinned.

We scanned some more.

“My god,” Peter said. He stepped away from the scope. “Just look.”

I looked, recognizing right away that we had some more Grebes. This time, Red-necked Grebes, a bird I had never seen before, bobbing in the fading light. Two neat birds with elegant flat heads, and red necks. They were making their way north, to breed somewhere in the Arctic.

Flow on. Flown on. Water, land and air: movement is inevitable. Land changes hands, birds fly north then south. Rivers are movement; this river carries birds and trash and once carried bricks and ice. Sometimes this flow is encouraging, sometimes unnerving, but always it is inevitable. To walk on some of the land of change, to see some of the flow in the fading light of a gray day makes me feel lucky. Flow on.   

First Paddle of the Season

When I arrived at the Tivoli landing at 5 in the evening a group of people were hanging out at the dock, playing bad music and chatting. I didn’t know anyone and for a moment I had this horrible feeling that my landing, my reach, had been taken over and was no longer mine.

This feeling vanished once I was on the water. The air shifted between spookily warmed and cooler patches that rose from the water itself. The smell was of an enclosed room that needed to be aired out after a winter. I pushed South against the current and a level wind. Moving slowly, I was able to take in my river for the first time this season. And this is what I thought: there’s a lot of garbage out here.

It’s not a romantic thought, I know. Usually when I write about paddles in my reach, I glow with a certain satisfaction that I am in one of the prettiest places I know. But on this evening things looked raw, barren, the colors gray and brown dominated. I struggled to find my way into the beauty of a place I have come to love.

My delight commenced once I slipped under the railroad bridge and into the North Tivoli Bay. A Northern Harrier loped through the air, skimming the tops of the dried cattails. Red Winged Blackbirds made their dinsintctive conkladee call. A flock of Black Ducks flushed, taking to the air. I was back in my world.

The crocuses are up. The first Woodcock peented ten days ago. The bright yellow Winter Aconite dots the woods. Yesterday Peter and I found a Wilson’s Snipe as well as some Painted Turtles sunning on a log. It’s spring. It’s a time of firsts. You would think that at mid-age I would not get so excited over crocuses in the garden, but it’s the opposite in fact. Every year it seems to be more miraculous; those flowers bring me more pleasure. I took the cycles of the seasons for granted when I was younger; now I feel lucky I’m here for another round.

But my most treasured first is this first paddle of the season. It always feels as if something miraculous should happen. What did happen: I felt a tightness in my right shoulder, and then an ache in my lower back. I felt the cold seep through the bottom of the boat to cool my feet. The sky hung gray and uninviting over the Kingston-Rhinecliff bridge. I liked this quiet reentry into this water world, into my reach. The miracle was in the familiar, the grays and browns, the garbage, the ordinary.

As I returned to the big river, the Catskills shimmered in the distance, and shadows stretched in front of me. I started to see colors emerge, and felt the joy of movement under a wide gray sky.