The Kaaterskil Creek flows east out of the Catskill Mountains into the Hudson.
The creek has existed since the Ice Age.
The primordial Glacial Shield destroyed the mountains.
Granite tops their ruined peaks.
A land of wonder.
In the 1840s Thomas Cole immortalized the view of the mountain ridges from his veranda in Catskill.
The view is unchanged in 2018.
The other day I was speaking with my friend Shannon.
He and his wife have been coming up river for years.
We spoke of the Hudson.
None of us had swam in the Muhheakantuck or the river that flow both ways.
The river was home to the Lenape tribe.
They ate oysters on Manhattan by the billions.
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.
Neither of us knew of its location.
We crossed the Hudson on the Rip Van Winkle.
The span had been constructed in the 30s.
I’ve walked across it in the winter squall.
I told Shannon, “I love that bridge. It’s probably the prettiest of them all.
“What about Bear Mountain? Isn’t that where Jack Kerouac start hitchhiking across America in ON THE ROAD?”
“You’re right.” I stopped talking about the bridges across the Hudson.
Tomorrow I would be traveling south.
Whatever I knew about the bridges was nothing without seeing them.
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.
The bay was calm.
I was returning to the city to work.
I had five children.
They hated me not working.
I was looking for the Rip Van Winkle.
I only saw the river and the mountains.
They were eternal.
The Rip Van Winkle was set in the tidal marshes.
1934.
The train hurried south through woods.
In 1835 Alexis De Torqueville had called America a jungle in DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA.
He was more right now than then.
The Catskills seemed small from the eastern shore of the Hudson.
The train was running 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.
At least I did see it fall into the water.
Other than in my day dream.
What else can you expect from a country at constant war?
Perfection?
A few passenger boarded at Rhinebeck.
The sun was dropping low.
Even for this last 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.
Another bridge.
Poughkepsie.
A train bridge converted to a pedestrian tourist attraction.
145 feet over the river.
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.
There are no more ferries.
Now there are bridges and the mightiest span of all is the GW Bridge.
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.
