Blue Highways: Greenport, New York

Unfolding the Map

Getting gas in Greenport with William Least Heat-Moon lets us reflect over the words of the gas station attendant about what belongs where.  Does Long Island belong to Connecticut, New York, or should it just be its own state.  I'll discuss what attaches us to place, and if it really means anything.  To attach yourself to Greenport, check out the map.  At right is the Eastern bluebird, the state bird of New York.  The image is from Wikimedia Commons.

Book Quote

"Don't call me a New Yorker.  This is Long Island....

"Manhattan's a hundred miles from here.  We're closer to Boston than the city.  Long Island hangs under Connecticut.  Look at the houses here, the old ones.  They're New England-style because the people that built them came from Connecticut.  Towns out here look like Connecticut.  I don't give a damn if the city's turned half the island into a suburb - we should rightfully be Connecticut Yankees.  Or we should be the seventh New England state.  This island's bigger than Rhode Island any way you measure it..."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 7

Greenport, New York. Photo by americasroof and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

Greenport, New York

With whom and with what place does one identify?  For many of us it is easy.  Our ties to home, to family and friends, make our identities pretty strong and ones that stay with us throughout life, despite where we live.  You can take some boys and girls out of _____ (fill in your place name here) but you can't take the _____ out of those boys or girls. 

I grew up in such a place.  Everybody I know who lived or currently lives in my home town thinks its a little slice of God's heaven on earth.  It is a small town, situated on the coast of Northern California, north of San Francisco and just south of the intriguingly named Lost Coast.  It's rugged and beautiful.  People have continued to live there despite economic slowdowns and loss of industry.

Of course, we all thought that the north coast of California was the best place to be.  If you couldn't live in my home town, at least you wanted to be somewhere in the north coast region.  The Bay Area was nice but too crowded, so you wanted to stay away from there.  But if you couldn't live near the coast, being in Northern California was good enough because it is beautiful and not too crowded.  The Bay Area was crowded, it is true, but it was certainly preferable to Southern California, which was way too crowded and busy and all that traffic.

But hey, California, even with southern California, was preferable to anywhere else in the country.  Where else could you find such coastline, such mountains, such wonderful farmland, such variety, such entertainment?  So don't mess with California, it is the best place on earth!  And even if you couldn't live in California, then at least if you lived somewhere in the west you were doing better than if you had to live in the harsh Midwest, the steamy South or the uptight and overpopulated East Coast.  But you had to feel lucky that you were born and lived in the United States of America, the best nation on earth.

And so on...

I could go backwards to, down to the very street and acreage on which I grew up.  The point is, our thought processes about places resemble concentric circles.  I have put a graphic below...

If you think of the middle, small circle as the point of origin, such as your neighborhood or your town, then it is a small part of a bigger area, such as your region in the state.  We belong to many different localities and identify with many different places.  That's why I could proudly be a Fort Bragger, but also a Northern Californian, a Californian, a westerner and an American.

I think the next big concentric circle that is in the process of becoming part of our identity is regional, or perhaps continental.  Europe took that big leap starting in the 1950s, but while many people who live there consider themselves European, most of them identify more with their country of origin.  There has yet to be forged a consistent and strong pan-European identity.  However, you see baby steps toward this regional identification in places like Asia and even in the Western Hemisphere.  The identification is loose because the integration is occurring economically, not politically.

In the end, borders are just made up markers on a map.  As the Long Islander who identifies with Connecticut and New England more than New York in the quote above demonstrates, borders don't often truly delineate who belongs where.  This is especially true in countries where borders were haphazardly drawn, such as in the Middle East, or where borders were defined by acts of aggression or the taking of territory through war.  Much of the Southwestern United States fits this description.  I've been told that the US-Mexico border in Texas is just a place where guard stations are erected.  The real border is a fuzzy zone stretching from San Antonio to somewhere inside Mexico.  Southern California is as much Mexican as it is American.  Except for a different systems of government, and excepting Quebec, much of Canada looks like the northern U.S. states it borders, and its people have remarkably similar appearances and values.

Will people one day identify with each other on a planetary basis?  I've been watching the old Star Trek series lately, and the idea of a Federation, in which humans identify with each other and the Earth as their common home, seems very far away.  I suppose it's a historical process, evolving just as our awareness of what constitutes our "neighborhood" evolves also.  At one time most people couldn't imagine what lay beyond their sight.  Now, we can imagine, so much so that I see writing about our neighborhood in our galaxy.  As our ideas and goals get bigger, so does the sense of what and where we belong.  And I think that's all for the good.

Musical Interlude

Here's a wonderful song by a group named Pangea, consisting of the US band Flying Machines, and musicians Cheng Lin from China, Kailash Kher from India, Khaled from Algeria/France and King Sunny Ade from Nigeria.  The song is called Citizens of the World.  Enjoy this global music supergroup!

If you want to know more about Greenport

New York Times: Greenport, New York
New York Travel Magazine: Greenport
Village of Greenport
Wikipedia: Greenport

Next up: Riverhead, New York

Blue Highways: Orient (Point), New York

Unfolding the Map

The demise of the full service filling station is the subject of this post.  We have just sailed in to Orient, New York on the ferry with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) and are back in New York for a quick trip through before beginning the trip west and back to the beginning.  Do you remember full service filling stations?  I miss them.  To find Orient Point, click here to see the map.

Book Quote

"If you want to hear distortions and misconceptions laced with plenty of dogmatic opinion, you have a choice of three places...bars, sport arenas, and gas stations....As filling stations cease to be garages and community centers, as they become nothing but expensive nozzles, they too are losing ground.  But, in the past, an American traveler depended on the local grease pit boys to tell him (a) the best route to wherever; (b) the best place to eat...; and (c) what the townfolk thought about whatsoever....

"Orient Point, Long Island, was a few houses and a collapsed four-story inn built in 1810..."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 7

Orient Point Lighthouse in Orient, New York. Photo by hatchski and hosted at Flickr. Click on photo to go to host page.Orient Point, New York

While visiting my hometown recently, I had an experience that was so unique in this day and age that I took note of it.  I had to stop for some gas, and pulled into a station on the main street to fill up.  As I got out of my rental car to open up the gas tank, a guy came out of the office and said "What do you need?"  Puzzled, I told him I was going to gas up.  He grabbed the nozzle and asked what type of gas I needed.  Then, he gassed up the car.  After he was done, I handed him my credit card, and he took it back into the garage, and then brought the credit card and slip out for me to sign on a clipboard.

He didn't check the dipstick under the hood, but I bet if I had asked him, he would have.

I remember when, and it seems like a long time ago, gas stations regularly provided that type of service.  When I was growing up, someone employed at a gas station always came out and filled the tank as well as looking under the hood and adding oil or water or wiper fluid as needed.  They also washed the windows, put air in the tires if needed, and sometimes gave your car a wash or a detailing.  This was the kind of service provided in 1963, the year of my birth, when gas cost 30 cents a gallon.

Now, as I write this, gas currently averages $3.51 in New Mexico where I live, and the most expensive state to buy gas is California, where I grew up, at an average $4.12.  And yet, when I pull into the pumps, I have to get out and fill up my own tank.  I have to check my own oil, and if I need some, I have to buy it and put it in myself.  If my tire is low, I have to pull the car over to the air compressor, if the station has one, and pay 50 to 75 cents to get the compressor started.  If my windshield is dirty, I have to hope that there is fluid in the containers provided near the pumps, or that there is a squeegee to use. 

I'm told that self-service gas stations are convenient, but it seems to me that it was more convenient to sit in my car and listen to the radio while someone else did the work.  I'm also told that self-service gas stations keep the price of auto fuel down, but then again, gas prices have risen anywhere from 1056-1323% since I was born.  Thirty cents in 1963, according to an inflation calculator which calculates at the average inflation rate of 4.18%, would have the same buying power as $2.23 today.  So gasoline has become more expensive yet less convenient over time, and I'm not sure what the savings has actually been.

But convenience and pricing isn't the only reason I'm writing about this.  LHM also points out that these businesses were an integral part of the community fabric.  People met at the gas station, not only to fill up but to exchange news, gossip and opinions.  Station attendants saw everyone in town and were often the source of important information.  Not only that, but they knew your car personally.  Did your car have a funny knock?  They knew which gas would minimize or eliminate it.  Did your car have a leaky hose but you didn't have enough money to replace it right away?  They could help you nurse it along until the last minute or until you could the money together to fix it.

When I go to fill up my car now, it's such an impersonal experience.  Gas stations have become pumps that sit outside small convenience stores.  It is rare to find a garage attached to a station anymore.  The convenience stores are usually staffed by clerks who seem to rarely smile (and would you for the paltry pay?) and who rarely even look at you.

I've written about this before in my posts, as have others who have bemoaned the loss of community in our country.  Today, people rely on their smart phones to get directions, on the internet for restaurant reviews, on Google to find anything and everything and on Facebook to share what they've found.  People socialize over the Web, buried in a wall of sound on their headphones in the middle of a crowded coffee shop, oblivious to each other and only aware of what is on their screen and in their ears.  We don't socialize with each other, but with a virtual community that can always throw information at us from behind its electronic walls, but can never provide us with real face-to-face contact and authentic human interaction.

And yes, some of these advances are convenient, and I use them.  But I don't think it's hypocritical to say, even in the midst of human advancement, that I miss some things about the past.  And one thing I miss, even as I bemoan that we rely so much on fossil fuel today, is sitting in my car like I did as a little boy and being fascinated as attendants so quickly and efficiently provided service to my parents' car and with a friendly wave sent us on our way.

Musical Interlude

I found a fun and funky song called Service Station Song (Let Me Pump Your Gas) by Mean Gene Kelton and the Die Hards.  I wonder what the song is getting at?  Unfortunately, Mean Gene is no longer with us.

If you want to know more about Orient Point

Cross Sound Ferry Services
LighthouseFriends.com: Orient Point
LongIslandLighthouses.com: Orient Point
Wikipedia: Orient

Next up:  Greenport, New York

Blue Highways: Somewhere on Lake Champlain

Unfolding the Map

William Least Heat-Moon's (LHM) trip on the ferry across Lake Champlain leads to some reflection on ordinary miracles like boats and ships, airplanes, and even bicycles.  We'll even start the reflection with a memory of Bangladesh.  If you wish to know how all these things connect, read on!  If you want to see just where to catch the ferry and the route it takes across Lake Champlain, consult your bearings, nautical or otherwise, on the map.

Book Quote

"A ferry, interrupted off and on only during the Revolutionary War, had crossed the long lake at this narrow point since the 1740s.  The boat of 1759, large enough to carry a stagecoach, had a sail, but on windless days, boatmen walked the length of it and pushed with a single, thirty-foot oar....

"Almost a century and a half later, I made the same crossing with only a few technological changes here and there: the sail and oarsman had given way to a modified, Navy-surplus landing craft attached to a cargo barge...."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 7

The current Fort Ticonderoga Ferry. Photo at the Fort Ticonderoga Ferry website. Click on photo to go to host page.

Somewhere on Lake Champlain

Have you ever contemplated the sheer wonder of how simple, ordinary things work?  I'm going to preface a post that explores this type of wonder with a story from a ferry ride I took in Bangladesh.

In the late 1990s, I traveled to Bangladesh while I got my masters degree in international relations.  My goal was to visit a micro-lending program that had been organizing in rural communities, making small loans to women to not only help them finance their own small businesses, but also to teach them the value of savings and, most importantly, to increase their status in society by turning them into earners making incomes independent of their husbands.  I stayed in Bangladesh for a month, and during that time I was taken by a variety of modes of transportation, including car and motorcycle, to various places where their programs were in effect.

I arrived at the start of the monsoon season, the regular afternoon rains that are responsible for rejuvenating the groundwater and the plant and animal life in that region of the world.  From the time I landed to the time I left, the country, which is mostly at sea level, filled up with water.  From one week, even one day, to the next, roads that we traveled on the day before would be impassable the next day due to mud and flooding.  Fields and rice paddies became lakes and ponds.  On some roads on raised roadbeds, it almost felt like we traveled across a shallow inland sea, dotted with islands with dwellings on them.

On one of those trips, we stopped our small SUV where the water had inundated the road in years past and the roadbed had not been fixed.  I looked across the expanse of water to the other side, maybe a quarter mile away, and saw a flat boat with people on it coming across.  Similar to what LHM describes above, the operator of the makeshift ferry had a long pole to push the boat across the water.   I assumed that we would take the ferry across and our car would be driven another way around.

I assumed wrong.  After some haggling over price, boards were put down to create a ramp, and our vehicle was driven onto the boat.  We climbed on, and just as before, the boat was propelled by pole across the water to the other side, where the vehicle was driven off and we resumed our journey.

In Bangladesh, where people work very hard to scrape out the most rudimentary living and in which, unlike the stereotypes we have in the west, people are extremely entrepreneurial.  It is not surprising that somebody saw an opportunity to provide a ferry service in order to make a living and created it.  That in itself is a wonder.  But the wonder that I write of is a part of those everyday wonders that when I think about it, just makes me drop my jaw before I accept it's every-dayness.  We put a ton of car onto what was a small wooden float, and one man poled that ton plus the added weight of people across water.  Isn't that amazing?  I would have to strain to push that car on land.  The fact that a few bits of wood, configured into a raft could move it so easily is a miracle to me.

A similar feeling came over me recently when I visited San Diego and took a tour of the aircraft carrier Midway.  At the time it was built, in the 1940s, the Midway was one of the biggest and most complicated ships ever produced.  It carried 4,500 people and a large number of planes and equipment and stores.  And that's just what was in it.  The carrier itself weighed, at its decomission, 75,000 tons.  Now, I don't know about you, but boats are a miracle to me in general, and a ship like the Midway is almost incomprehensible.  If I take a piece of steel and drop it in the water, it sinks like a stone.  But, a ship like the Midway is made of 75,000 tons of steel and not only floats, but managed to take on additional weight and survived voyages and rough seas through war and peace time for 60 years.  Another miracle.

Airplanes also constitute a miracle to me today.  I've flown on jets routinely and yet, as I watch Boeing 757s and other aircraft at the Albuquerque airport, marvels of metal and electronics, take off and land with a weight up to 255,000 pounds, my mind still sometimes reels.  I understand the mechanics of air flight - thrust is generated by engines that creates speed, and that speed leads to a rush of air over a fixed wing which provides uplift and then flight.  Yet occasionally I see one a jet, and I really get this when I see it landing, hanging there in the sky, and my mind still argues that so much weight in the air shouldn't be possible.  And yet, it is.

Lately, I've been contemplating the miracle of a simple bicycle.  I note that I'm unable to balance it when there is lack of motion, when standing still.  Yet as soon as I move forward, I have balance.  Again, I understand the mechanics of how I ride a bicycle.  The wheels moving forward provide stability because they act like gyroscopes.  The bike's inertia in motion means that it is reluctant to move any other way and this counteracts some of the force of gravity which wants to pull it to one side or the other.  Yet sometimes, when I am on a bike and zipping down the street toward my work, I am amazed that I can, balancing on two thin wheels, get to another place more quickly and efficiently than walking.  Another small miracle.'

LHM contemplated only a part of the miracle as he crossed Lake Champlain on the ferry.  He saw how little the conveyance had changed through a century and a half of use.  To me, however, the fact that humans could understand, unlike any other beings on earth, how to put materials together that by themselves are useless, and make a mode of transportation on the water that not only carries them, but if we extrapolate up to the biggest ships of our time, anything we want to carry...to me, it still touches the side of my brain connected to the miraculous.  I think that always, even as I understand how and why such things as ships, planes and bicycles work, there will be a side of my brain that will be astonished that such things are possible.

Musical Interlude

The song and video I found for this post, Sarah McLachlan's Ordinary Miracle, was part of the soundtrack for the movie adaptation of Charlotte's Web.  Charlotte's Web is a wonderful story, and is all about miracles, so I think it fits the sense of seeing miracles in our lives each day, even those that may not register as such until you really think about them.  By the way, I read this story first when I was young, and it was the first and last time I ever cried over the death of a spider.  Spiders are miraculous beings in themselves, and I respect them, but the primitive side of my brain gets the willies over them.  So that I cried about the death of a spider - that in itself is a miracle.

If you want to know more about Lake Champlain

Fort Ticonderoga Ferry
Lake Champlain Ferries
Lake Champlain Maritime Museum
Lake Champlain Region
Ticonderoga Ferry
Wikipedia: Lake Champlain

Next up: Orwell, Sudbury and Goshen Corners, Vermont

Blue Highways: Hague and Ticonderoga, New York

Unfolding the Map

We pass through Hague and stop at Ticonderoga, New York because and wait for a ferry with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM).  While LHM tells us about Fort Ticonderoga, we notice a mistake and that leads to a large post, below, about the fort, the French and the relationship between France and the U.S.  To see the area that Hague and Ticonderoga occupy, storm the map.

Book Quote

"Route 8 dropped out of the Adirondacks to Lake George, the way lined with resort homes and summer camps that advertise in the back pages of the New York Times Magazine.  At Hague, I turned north and followed the water up a narrow valley to Ticonderoga and cut through town to the shore of Lake Champlain where, under the dark brow of the fort built by the British against French and Indian raids, I waited for the ferry."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 7

Fort Ticonderoga store room and magazine. Photo by Mwanner and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host site.

Hague and Ticonderoga, New York

What do "freedom fries" and this area of New York have in common?  In this post I'll try to draw a narrative that links them.

But first, I feel compelled to note that LHM, in his quote above, made a mistake.  It's a minor mistake, but those who read Blue Highways might go away from the book thinking that the British built the fort for which the town of Ticonderoga is named.  In fact, the French built the fort.  It was eventually taken by the British, and then later still fell into the possession of the Americans.  Originally called Fort Carillon and finished in 1757 at a strategic point on Lake Champlain, the fort allowed about 4,000 French defenders to turn back 16,000 British troops in a major battle during the Seven Years War (more commonly known in the US as the French and Indian War).  The British eventually gained the fort in 1759 and renamed it Fort Ticonderoga.  During the Revolutionary War, the fort changed hands a few times before the U.S. was able to defend its independence.  By 1781, the fort's usefulness had declined, and it fell into ruin before being restored in the 20th century as a site of historical and tourist interest.

That mistake aside (and who of us hasn't made mistakes?) the fort has figured directly in American history, and also in literature.  I've referred before to James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, which is set in this area.  Fort Ticonderoga is part of a string of forts, including Fort William Henry which lies south on the southern end of Lake George, and Fort Edward which lies a bit further south of Fort William Henry.  In the French and Indian War, a large contingent of French based in Fort Carillon (now Ticonderoga) attacked  the British at Fort William Henry, who appealed for help from Fort Edward.  Upon receiving news that no reinforcements would come, the British negotiated a surrender to the French, who offered them safe passage out of the fort on the conditions that their weapons remain unloaded, that British combatants refrain from fighting in the war for 18 months, and that French prisoners of war be freed.  Unfortunately, the news either did not reach or was not understood by the Native American allies of the French, who attacked the British column as it left the fort.  Some French officers and troops tried to the protect the British but before the British were able to flee some 200 or so people, including women and children, were killed.  The battle and its aftermath are one of the key plot points in The Last of the Mohicans.

We don't hear a lot in American history about the French and their activities in North America before and after the U.S. gained independence.  Unfortunately, U.S. public opinion about the French in our time in history often rests upon certain political differences and stereotyping.  The French and Americans have tended to be squabbling allies.  But modern sentiments obscure what seems to me to be an important historical fact: France and the United States are inextricably linked and I don't think that either would have existed in their modern forms without the other.  And, lest we forget, France as a nation and many important French individuals have been staunch supporters of the U.S. democratic experiment.

Why are we inextricably linked with France?  First, French explorers, like Spanish explorers, paved the way for the U.S.'s own acquisition and subsequent exploration of the interior of North America.  French explorers, through their wanderings, were the first Europeans to set eyes on many of America's geographical wonders.  These explorers included Jacques Cartier, the first European to see the St. Lawrence River; Samuel de Champlain, who explored much of the Great Lakes and New England; Pere Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet, the first Europeans to see the Mississippi River - they sailed on it as far south as the mouth of the Arkansas River; Pierre Francois-Xavier de Charlevoix, a Jesuit priest who traveled extensively through the middle of the present day United States and provided some of the earliest known writings on North America; Robert de LaSalle who sailed the Mississippi to its mouth and discovered the site of modern day New Orleans; Julian Dubuque who founded the city of Dubuque; Jean-Baptiste-Point du Sable, who founded the city of Chicago; Jean Baptiste Bernard de la Harpe, who explored much of the South and established settlements near the Red River; Jean-Francoise la Perouse, who mapped much of the west coast of North America; Pierre de la Verendrye, who came very close to discovering the Missouri River; Jean Nicollet, who was the first European to travel through the Great Lakes area; and Pierre Esprit Radisson, who was the first European to see Minnesota.

When the U.S. bought the Louisiana Territory from France (another link!) and more than doubled its land area, Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the new territory.  They relied heavily on the information from past French explorers and current knowledge from French hunters and trappers along with Native American knowledge from Sacagawea and others to travel through the territory to the Pacific Ocean and thereby increase the U.S. government's knowledge of the territory it had purchased.  Of course, Louisiana plays another ongoing role in our linkage with France as the home of thousands of descendents of Acadian exiles who settled its swamps and became known as Cajuns.

In the Revolutionary War, French moral and military support for the American colonists was essential to the U.S. victory.  France first aided the colonists with shipments of arms, and entered the war on the side of the Americans in 1778, first with her fleet and then with troops.  Key to this cooperation was the influence of the Marquis de Lafayette, who joined the American cause early in the war, was made a major-general under Washington and participated in and won many battles for the Americans.  The victory of the Americans over the British restored French pride as a nation, and served as an inspiration for the French Revolution.  Alexis de Toqueville, a French political thinker, legitimized the growth of American democracy (with warnings) in his book Democracy in America after extensive travels through the U.S. in the 1830s

Relations between the two countries have undergone many ups and downs since.  France and the U.S. fought a quasi-war at sea during in the 1790s, and Jefferson considered going to war against Napoleon for control of the Mississippi before Napoleon surprised him by offering the whole territory for sale.  In the mid-1800s, France and Britain conspired to check American expansionism by supporting a free republic in Texas and limiting U.S. access to California.  The government of Lincoln was concerned that France would support the Confederacy, though France stayed neutral in the U.S. Civil War.  France did install a French emperor in Mexico, though he was defeated by rebellious Mexicans shortly after.  By World War I, however, world politics had moved France back into position as a U.S. ally.  U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War started after French control in Vietnam began to crumble.

Which brings us back to freedom fries.  In 2003, the French government opposed the U.S. effort to get U.N. authorization for an invasion of Iraq.  When authorization was granted, the French aided the U.S., particularly in espionage and intelligence gathering.  However, the American public was outraged and there were attempts to boycott French goods.  Anything associated with France, such as french fries and french toast, were subject to symbolic renaming. 

Eventually, passions cooled and freedom fries became french fries again.  It's true that since the American Revolution, France and the U.S. have often been uneasy bedfellows.  However, those that excoriate the French forget that without France, the U.S. might never have existed at all.  Fort Ticonderoga, once the French Fort Carillon, on the shores of the French-named Lake Champlain reminds us of the deep and lasting French influence in our history.

Note: Hague was not mentioned, but is named after The Hague in the Netherlands.  The Dutch were some of the first settlers in New York, which was originally named New Amsterdam.

Musical Interlude

As a co-host of a local global music show, I find myself quite taken by songs in French.  I find this interesting, because unlike many people I know, I have never been truly taken by the French language.  It's a fine language, but I haven't fallen in love with it as others have.  But for some reason, when it's sung, regardless of the musical genre, I like it a lot!  Try some French hip-hop sometime - it gives it a whole new flavor for me.  France is a major crossroads of musical styles, and some really interesting music is created there.  Here's a song in French that captured me a few months ago, Destins et Desirs by Toufic Farroukh featuring Jeanne Added on vocals.  It's jazzy and sexy!

If you want to know more about Hague and Ticonderoga

Denpubs.com (Ticonderoga and area online newspaper)
Hague Chamber of Commerce
Ticonderoga Chamber of Commerce
Town of Hague
Town of Ticonderoga
Wikipedia: Hague
Wikipedia: Ticonderoga

Next up:  Somewhere on Lake Champlain

Blue Highways: Somewhere on the Hudson River, New York

Unfolding the Map

We have reached what, until the colonists and settlers pushed farther inland, would have been to them the mightiest river of America.  Where William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) joins it, you can throw a rock across the Hudson but, eventually it becomes the large expanse of water that traverses the Hudson River Valley and flows past New York City as it mingles with the sea.  In this post, I'll look at the Hudson through song, literature and art.  To find out where we touch the fledgling Hudson, see the map.

Book Quote

"Our beginnings do not foreshadow our ends if one judges by the Hudson River.  A few miles east of the Bad Luck Ponds, the Hudson came down between the ridges to race alongside route 28; it was a mountain stream: clear, cold, shallow, noisy.  A few miles from its source in Lake Tear-in-the-Clouds a mile up on Mount Marcy (the Indian name for the mountain is better: Tahawus, 'Cloud-splitter') and three hundred river miles from the thousand oily piers of Hoboken, Weehawken, and Manhattan, here it was a canoer's watercourse.  Above the little Hudson, spumes of mist rose from the mountains like campfire smoke."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 7

The Hudson River right where it joins route 28 in New York. Photo by "swisstek" and hosted at Panoramio. Click on photo to go to host page.

Somewhere on the Hudson River, New York

I remember the first time I saw the Hudson River.  By seeing the Hudson River, I mean really seeing the river, not the part that flows past the "thousand oily piers" between Manhattan and New Jersey.  I was in my late 20s, I think I would hazard, and had driven out to Yonkers, New York from Milwaukee on a work-related trip.  I had a couple of people with me, and I had worked out with them, on our trip back, to stop in Cooperstown, New York to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame, then stop at one of my companion's home in Geneva, New York in the Finger Lakes area, and then cross at Niagara Falls, head across Canada (basically LHM's route in reverse) to Detroit where we would stay at the home of my second companion before heading back to Milwaukee.

Our initial drive out of Yonkers was as you'd expect from the New York City region - a lot of interstates.  We planned to take the interstate straight north up the Hudson and then connect with another freeway going west toward Cooperstown.  It was morning, and the sun gave that soft light that only the sun can give when it is a couple of hours old.  I remember both of my companions being a little sleepy.  I believe there was a moment - I can picture it in my mind though I've probably put a few images together into one idyllic one, where we crested some stretch of interstate and there lay the Hudson, expansive, placid and the water a mix of blue and green.  I picture wooded hillsides sloping down to the water.  There wasn't much beach, as I remember.  In fact, if I wasn't aware that I was driving along the Hudson River, I could have easily mistaken the river for a long, narrow lake - that's how calm the waters seemed to be.

I think that the Hudson is probably one of our great rivers, because it was probably one of the first big rivers that settlers knew when America wasn't even yet a dream in the mind of the colonists.  Yet I was surprised.  Other rivers are celebrated in well-known songs.  The Mississippi has had untold numbers of notes and lyrics written about its entire length, about certain portions of it, about its moods and floods.  Literature has been written where the Mississippi is a central character - I'm thinking particularly of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Roger Miller, Johnny Cash, Sam Cooke, Paul Robeson and the Doobie Brothers, among others, have sang about the Mississippi.  Other rivers have also taken their central place in art, music and literature.  The Missouri River, made famous by Lewis and Clark's journey, for example, has had its moments of celebration.  Oh Shenandoah, for instance, was a song that I learned in grade school that has "across the wide Missouri" as part of its refrain.  The river has also been celebrated by such musicians as Bruce Springsteen, Carly Simon and Van Morrison.  Even lesser known rivers such as the Columbia River, the Kern River, the Red River, the Green River, and the Tennessee River get their due in song.

I tried to find songs that celebrate the Hudson River, but mostly came up empty.  I know that there must be some out there, but I couldn't find many that I could use for the musical interlude, though I was happy to see that there was a decent one.  However, for one of the United States' great rivers, there seems to be a dearth of songs about it.

Where the Hudson river really shines is in the visual arts, especially paintings.  It gives its name to a genre of paintings by artists grouped in what is called the Hudson River School.  The paintings of these artists are steeped in the Romantic tradition, in which the Hudson is shown in an idealized fashion as a true wilderness to demonstrate its savage nobility and pristine nature.  In the paintings, the majesty of nature is often at odds with humans and their drive to toward resource development, such as this 1866 painting by Samuel Colman called Storm King on the Hudson demonstrates:

Samuel Colman, Hudson River School. Storm King on the Hudson, 1866. Obtained from Wikimedia Commons.

In addition, the Hudson River also shines in literature.  Some of the earliest American literature, such as the stories of Washington Irving and the Romantic novels of James Fenimore Cooper take place within the environs of the river, and many authors over American history have written about the Hudson and the places it passes.

The Hudson River is also environmentally sensitive.  For a few years I worked with religious organizations on shareholder actions around environmental and social concerns.  A number of religious groups had filed shareholder resolutions in the past against General Electric, who dumped PCBs into the Hudson River from two of their plants.  The river also has concentrations of DDT.  The GE plants have since been declared Superfund sites and cleanup continues.  In terms of total pollution the Mississippi River dwarfs every other river in the United States in the amount of contaminants in its water, but the Hudson is still rated the 33rd most polluted river in the country.  What probably makes it even more polluted is that the Hudson is an estuarial river, in which tidal action from the ocean causes the salt and fresh water to mix, and also causes the river from its mouth to Troy, New York (over 150 miles upriver) to run backwards, and rise and fall when the tide is coming in or going out.  Estuaries are very environmentally sensitive, and in the past pollutants, such as raw sewage, from New York City and cities on the New Jersey side of the river polluted that whole, though there have been many efforts from those places to clean up the Hudson River estuary.

The Hudson is one of America's great rivers, and is beautiful to see.  While I am surprised that it isn't celebrated more in song, I am not surprised that it holds a magic place in the hearts of those who live and work around and near it.  It certainly had a great effect on our art and literature, and to link it to a past post, it was the first part of the inland transportation route completed with the monumental Erie Canal.  It deserves its accolades, and our protection.

Musical Interlude

As I mentioned above, I had trouble finding a song for the musical interlude about the Hudson River.  Paintings, no problem.  Literature, no problem.  For some reason, the Hudson doesn't inspire song the way the Mississippi or other rivers do.  However, Dar Williams came through with a song about the Hudson, inspired by her residence near it.

Addendum:  As I was searching for more information on Dar Williams, I discovered that she has a new song, just released, called Storm King, which is beautiful!  This is the mountain in the painting by Samuel Colman that I include above, and she evidently lives near it.  Enjoy this serendipitous moment of discovery!

If you want to know more about the Hudson River

Historic Hudson River Towns
Hudson River Foundation
Hudson River Heritage
Hudson River Valley Institute
Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area
Hudson River Watertrail Association
Wikipedia: Hudson River

Next up:  Hague and Ticonderoga, New York