Gazing at the river, my mother often opined that the look of the Hudson was never the same. The quality of change in the river—that it was never the same— enchanted her. When I was a young teen we lived in a crazy house set high in the mountain that looms over the Hudson River a mile or two south of Nyack, New York. From every window facing east, we viewed the entire expanse of the widest part of the Hudson and across to Sunnyside, Washington Irving’s manse in Sleepy Hollow, Tarrytown.
Avast Ye Sailor!
A sea captain built our house. The house had fifty-seven rattling windows, all without storm windows in their wooden casements. The boiler was enormous, of a size more suited to RMS Titanic than a two bedroom house. The cast iron radiators did their best, but they could not compete with the drafts and gales blown off the river, down the mountain, and through the seams of the windows. We froze. We never sat to read or watch TV without heaps of blankets over us. Not to mention the cat and the dog burrowing in with us. My parents wore woolen hats to bed. As a teenager I despaired of my hair most days, so wearing a hat to bed was out of the question. I burrowed down in bed and rigid, waited for my limbs to relax in the increasing warmth.
Mahicantuck
Hands around hot cups of tea, noses red, we looked down at the cold river. My mother was right that it was never the same. The water changed from green to purple, swirled by the tides and the winds, the deep channels and currents. The Lenape tribe, the original residents, called the river Mahicantuck— translated as “the river that flows two ways.” The Hudson does flow two ways, which was obvious from our observation platform, and especially obvious from the many small boats in which I plied the river during my youth. Mixing the freshwater of the river’s tributaries with the brine of the Atlantic, the two currents, constantly ebbing and flowing, mixed the changing components of the water that resulted in the ever-changing appearance. The river was truly never the same.
Change for the Worse
Nor was the river the same over long periods of time. The Lenapes gave way to the Dutch, the English, and the other Europeans who built villages and farms along the shores and in the hills. In the 19th century, fishing began to give way to the pollution caused by increasing industrial and waste use. In the 20th century, addition of chemicals like PCBs contributed by General Electric, just up the river from Washington Irving’s idyllic manse, finished the fishing and swimming.
Change, But More Change Coming
But things changed. The efforts led by activist environmentalists such as the late Tosi and Pete Seeger, and passage by Congress of the Clean Water Act in 1972, have begun to show reclamation of the river by wildlife. Starting in 2016, whales have been spotted swimming upriver off of the western shore of Manhattan. The river is never the same, but its flexibility is an unknown as it faces imminent climate change.
Never The Same
My neighbor told me that she finds our country views boring because they are always the same. She splits her time between our neck of the woods and New York and finds that her surroundings in the city constantly surprise her, that they are never the same. As a dogwalker, I spend time outside in our country byways and woods every day. In all seasons, in all weather, I have the opportunity to engage with the surroundings. I can tell my neighbor that they are never the same. The changes can be subtle, once a season digs its heels in, but they are there. From one day to the next, what I look at while we walk is never the same. The colors of leaves and bark change, houses and farms hidden during the summer emerge into view in the winter. The shapes of everything change from season to season, but also from day to day, as weather and light obscure or clarify. The sun, high and strong in the summer, seeks out unseen corners of the forest for me as it sinks and weakens in the winter. My countryside is never the same.
Change, Please
That things are never the same has given me hope during these trying times of a simultaneous attack on the environment and rejection of climate change preparation by our current federal government. Even while our federal administration seems hell bent on undoing environmental progress while ignoring the danger of climate change, so too does it seem to be unraveling, on becoming undone. It is my hope that we will not fall back so far that we can’t go forward again, and ahead of the coming climate change damage.
My mother missed this particular era—although she lived through others like it (McCarthy, Nixon)—but she would be pleased to see the daily change now—subtle or otherwise—the beginning of their end.