Blue Highways: Orwell, Sudbury and Goshen, Vermont

Unfolding the Map

We cross state lines again, and now we are traveling in Vermont.  The Salada Tea signs that William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) notices helps cover for my lack of knowledge of anything in Vermont, and allows me to wax poetic on my love of tea.  Pull up a nice easy chair, pour yourself a cup and don't spill any on the map as you look for Orwell, Sudbury and Goshen!

Book Quote

"...a soft amber light fell over Vermont to give the rise of wet fields deep relief and color.  Through the villages of Orwell, Sudbury, and Goshen Corners, past the old groceries with SALADA TEA lettered in gold on front windows, and into the Green Mountains (which, some say, Vermont means in French despite cynical literalists who insist on 'Worm Mountain')."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 7

Orwell, Vermont skyline. Photo by "origamidon" and hosted at Flickr. Click on photo to go to host page.Orwell, Sudbury and Goshen (Corners), Vermont

Here's a disclaimer.  I've never been to Vermont, or New Hampshire, or Maine.  As you've come to expect, for the purposes of these posts that doesn't mean much, as I simply write about what images and feelings the quotes bring to mind, or what caught my eye or imagination and interested me and which I then explored.

So when it comes to Orwell, Sudbury and Goshen (Corners), I can't really tell you much.  It would be a disservice to try to force a treatise about George Orwell on you simply because the town's name is Orwell or to stretch something out of Sudbury or Goshen.

I was a little curious about why "Vermont" would translate to "Worm Mountain."  After all, I've had enough exposure to Spanish and to Latin that I know that "verde" or "verte" means "green" in those languages.  "Mont" clearly means mountain, such as "montaña" in Spanish, "montagne" in French, "montanha" in Portuguese, or even "munte" in Romanian.  Well, it turns out that "ver" means "worm" in French (it is "verme" in Portuguese and Italian, "vierme" in Romanian but inexplicably "gusano" in Spanish).  Since the Green Mountains are within Vermont, I am pretty sure that Vermont means Green Mountain, but even so, it is pretty interesting to think of a mountain of worms.

But the thing that really catches my eye in this quote is the reference to Salada Tea. For years, my wife has given me a bad time because of my propensity to drink tea.  Her need, one might almost say addiction, is to get up and have a cup of coffee.  Once, when she and I visited El Paso, we drove around one morning with her getting angrier and angrier because we couldn't find a place where she could get a cup of coffee.  If she doesn't have her coffee, then she can't get going and she'll actually get a headache.  It's been this way for years.

I never developed a taste for coffee.  My mom and dad drank it, my father especially.  He drank coffee all day, and Early Times at night.  In high school and college, while my friends became increasingly dependent on coffee, I never took it up.  It didn't taste good to me, no matter how much you masked it with sugar or milk.  When I worked as an overnight security guard at the lumber mill in my home town, I briefly considered it but one pot, brewed badly by me, was enough to convince me that I would never like it.  More on this later, because one should never say never.

What has happened is that I've slowly developed a taste for tea, to the point that it is now my main morning drink.  Like Captain Picard, I prefer "tea, Earl Gray, hot," though I usually mix it up with Irish Breakfast or English Breakfast.  Like most people, I drank tea in the bag.  I started with Lipton and sugar, but as my tea palate became more discriminating, I discovered that Lipton wasn't that good.  It was a whole new world for me when I realized that there were more kinds of tea than the generic white bag that simply said "tea."  "What is orange pekoe?" I wondered, and later began to wonder "just what is Earl Grey and what is the bergamot in it?"  And so on. 

Then I discovered that tea did not have to black.  Another world opened up for me when I discovered green tea.  My tea awareness grew by leaps and bounds as first, I began frequenting stores that weren't supermarkets, such as health food stores.  A visit to the Whole Foods or my local cooperative would often open up new varieties of tea I hadn't heard of, and suddenly, I became aware of green teas.  I also learned that I liked certain types of teas in the mornings (black) and other types in the afternoons (green).  I also became aware of white teas as well, and began trying them.

For a while, like most people, I called anything that steeped in water and made a colored, tasteful drink "tea."  But as my tea wisdom grew, I learned that tea only comes from tea plants.  A lot of the things that are marketed as tea are really not tea, such as the herbal concoctions.  There is no such thing as chamomile tea, though that's what I called it when I was trying to get myself around Rome and see the sights with a bad case of bronchitis.  I really thought that it was the chamomile "tea" that I would find in the shops that helped break up the phlegm and make it easier to breathe.  It was really the hot water, I've learned, but I have a fondness for chamomile to this day.  But it is not a tea.  It and other herbal teas are called tisanes and have different properties than teas.

Another advance in my tea awareness came a few years ago, when I was introduced to an iced tea called "vanilla rooibos" served in a coffee shop near my house in New Orleans.  It was good - I love vanilla too - and I began to read up on rooibos.  A South African bush, rooibos is technically not a tea though they call it "red tea" in its own country.   However, it has some similar properties.  All teas are high in antioxidants, especially green tea, and rooibos also has a number of antioxidants as well.  All I know is that I like it.

Finally, lately I have discovered just how good it is to have fresh, loose leaf teas.  A tea shop, the New Mexico Tea Company, opened in Albuquerque and it has afforded me the opportunity to learn more about teas, how to properly make them, and to try a myriad of different teas from all over the world.  The taste, depending on the type and color of the tea, can be remarkably different.  I still tend toward the Earl Grey, but I also try other teas that can range from delicate flavorings to strong ones, fruity flavors to smoky.  I occasionally love the smokey flavor of a Lapsang Souchong, or the strong over-the-top flavor of an Irish Breakfast to break up my usual Earl Grey fix at times.  I really enjoy the nutty flavor of a good Genmaicha on a rainy afternoon, and I absolutely love jasmine green tea.

It may be that I can't brew a good pot of coffee, but I really think there is more variety and depth in tea.  Coffee is in your face, and people use coffee, in my opinion, to rev themselves up or stay awake.  But tea, to me, is more subtle.  I use tea in the morning to awake, but I also use tea in the afternoon to relax.  Tea seems to me to be very associated with the mood that one is trying to cultivate and, in Asia, serving tea properly has been considered a high art form.  I'm not trying to say that drinking tea makes me better than those "uncouth" coffee drinkers.  It's just that it is different, and I feel good, and a little different from my friends and relatives, in making it my personal drink.

And now my second disclaimer.   Remember my never say never?  I have developed a taste for Turkish coffee.  Now that's some coffee that I can drink!

Musical Interlude

I'm going to give you a double-dose of tea today.  For the first time, I'm going to repost a song I already used in this site, but I think you'll understand why I put Colin Hay's Beautiful World in here when you hear the lyrics.  The second song is fun also.  It's by a Croatian hip hop band named Elemental, who extol the wonders of tea in A Cup of Brown Joy.

If you want to know more about Orwell, Sudbury and Goshen (Corners)

Town of Goshen
Town of Orwell
Virtual Vermont: Goshen
Virtual Vermont: Orwell
Virtual Vermont: Sudbury
Wikipedia: Goshen
Wikipedia: Orwell
Wikipedia: Sudbury

Next up: Woodstock, Vermont

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

Blue Highways: Forest House Lodge, New York

Unfolding the Map

A venture into the forest can be a transforming experience, regardless of the moods of the forest on any particular day.  William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) wanders into a forest and eventually seeks out the warmth of the Forest House Lodge roadhouse.  While we sit with him for a few moments at the bar with a Genessee Cream Ale, I'll reflect a little on my love for the forest.  If you want to get lost in an Adirondack Forest, enter underneath the boughs and push past the brambles to the map.  Watch for poison ivy!

Book Quote

"The forest became heavier, sky darker, mountains higher, settlements further apart....I was at the heart of a great wilderness second only to the Northwoods of Maine in the eastern United States.  An occasional woodsy gift shop or burger stand built like a chalet did not prevent the forest from being pervasive, ominous, and forbidding; nor did they quiet the strange cries of birds from the dark hemlock.  Then a cold rain blew down, turned to hail, then eased to a drizzly fog.  It was early afternoon, yet headlights vanished after twenty yards as if the damp extinguished the beams.  Birch, alder, conifers - nothing but trees and water and fog for miles.

"East of the village of Blue Mountain Lake, dominated by a bluish hump of the Adirondacks, the road descended to a small building - part house, part tavern - snugged against a wooded hill and surrounded by vaporous mountains.  The mist glowed orange from a neon beer sign.  The building, white clapboard trimmed in red with a silvery corrugated tin roof, was the Forest House Lodge.  In fact, it wasn't a lodge, but something even better: an antique roadhouse.  The roadhouse - institution and word - has nearly disappeared from America."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 6

I'd love to have found an image of the Forest House Lodge, but alas, I couldn't. Here's a picture of the Adirondack Museum, nearby in Blue Mountain Lake. Photo at < a href="http://www.art.com">Art.com Click on photo to go to host page.

Forest House Lodge, New York

LHM sets up his stop at the Forest House Lodge by contrasting the gloom of the forest with the coziness of the roadhouse.  I will come back to this theme a little later.  In the interim, I'd like to share with you why I love forests, even if they are dark, gloomy and scary.

I grew up in an area that was heavily forested.  I say "was" because over the years, as the lumber company in my hometown went from being a locally-owned corporation to a subsidiary of major corporations such as Boise Cascade and Georgia Pacific, and as shareholders began to demand more, a cycle of greater cutting occurred.  The logs that exited forest logging roads on trucks got smaller and smaller.  It will take many generations for the redwood forests that I grew up in to regenerate themselves.

However, when I was young the forest was a big place, and even if as an adult I can see how much we've lost, it is still a big place, especially when I stand on the side of the road at the summit of Seven Mile Hill and look out over the tree-covered mountains toward the coast.

It was in these forests that I learned the beauty of nature.  If you've never experienced late afternoon in a Northern California forest on a sunny spring or summer day, you haven't experienced one of life's pleasures.  On the ground level, the light streams through the breaks in the leaves and leaves a diagonal dappled pattern on the forest floor.  Insects buzz, serving as a break in the silence save for the rush of a breeze in the leaves.  Above, the light shining through leaves that are just opaque enough to allow a little light through turns those leaves a brilliant green.  The radiant blue of the sky above contrasts just right with the greens of the forest.  The dried leaves on the forest floor have their own, woody and loamy scent.

I even loved the forest in winter.  A redwood forest in winter, some would say, is a pretty miserable place.  Cold and misty, you get chilled to the bone while water droplets from the trees fall onto your neck and travel down inside your shirt, along your spine, and deposit themselves in your underwear.  The deciduous trees have lost all their leaves, so everything seems barren despite the leaves still present on the conifers.  There is perpetual fog, partly because the trees themselves create their own ecosystems and therefore create the fog that lingers around their treetops and the rain that nourishes their roots.  The forest carpet of dead leaves is wet, like a sponge, and hideous looking huge mushrooms, most likely poisonous, spring up everywhere.  Yet, even in this environment, I was happy.  The rivers ran full, often with salmon swimming to their spawning grounds.  The air smelled fresh and clean.  When we had a cabin, the wet outdoors meant lazy days indoors by a fire.

Regardless of the time of year or the circumstances, when I'm in the middle of a forest it seems like a living being.  I don't just mean that there are lots of trees, plants and animals that are all living and dying in their individualities.  I mean that taken all together, it is as if I am standing in the midst of a large, living, breathing being.  It is hard to describe, and if you're concentrating on some task, you're bound to miss it.  But if you stand and listen, and open your mind, you can feel the spirit of the forest.  My father, who for all his faults could have moments of extreme transcendence, used to tell me to "listen to the trees," and we'd sit in silence.  I think that in those moments that he was tapped into something larger than himself, me, and all of us that have confined ourselves to a narrow range of our senses.

And this sounds a lot like what LHM describes in his quote - this sense of the forest as something larger.  For LHM, however, he feels a need to escape it.  Let's do a little thought experiment.  Let's imagine that LHM is traveling not in 1980 but in 1780.  Ghost Dancing is not a van but a carriage of some kind, perhaps a stage, drawn by horses and a driver.  While LHM dozes and muses in the carriage, the forest outside broods and darkens, an energy that can't be understood but can be felt.  It's cold.  After a long time of travel, the carriage descends into a valley and at the bottom is light, warmth, food and drink and a little mystery and intrigue.  The roadhouse.

LHM writes the roadhouse is disappearing from American life.  I would argue that it has just reacted to the more mobile American way of life.  A roadhouse originally offered both food and lodging, along with entertainment and gambling, but now you rarely find a place that is not a hotel that can offer such amenities.  It makes sense that when society relies on horse or foot-powered transport that all of the amenities needed by travelers is concentrated in one place.  That is probably why they were considered to be a little disreputable, as Wikipedia puts it.  It seems to me that the function of the roadhouse, in the modern age, has split among multiple types of establishments.  Hotels, restaurants, casinos, and nightclubs all offer individualized parts of the roadhouse.  Interestingly enough, those establishments that offer all of those things are now considered upscale, and called resorts.

In Europe, one can still find remnants of what we would consider the roadhouse, though more reputable.  I've read that in parts of Europe, such as Germany and Austria, one can go for a hike in the mountains and forests, and find establishments serving food, drink and even lodging at various points along the way.  I wish we had more of this concept in the U.S., along with the right to traverse private property as is common in places like Sweden.  Such privileges would make even more forests available to the common person, might encourage more healthy outdoor activities, and would certainly get me out in the mountains and forests more often.  Thankfully, I still have my own little corner of a forest in the form of thirteen acres in Northern California.  Even though I hardly get there anymore, it is nice to know that this small slice of forest, a part of a disappearing forest that once covered much of the western United States, is still there for me.  I can still tap into that energy that connects us with something larger than ourselves.

Musical Interlude

In this post, I'll include two songs.  The first is Redwood Tree by Van Morrison and I thought the song captured some of the feeling I had about my own redwood forest and my love of forests in particular.

The second song, Roadhouse Blues by The Doors, is a modern reference to the checkered past of that particular American institution.

If you want to know more about Forest House Lodge

I couldn't find much on the Forest House Lodge Bed and Breakfast, which the former roadhouse has become.  Here's some information on Blue Mountain Lake, the community in which it is situated.

Adirondack.net: Blue Mountain Lake
Adirondack Museum
Indian Lake Chamber of Commerce
Wikipedia: Blue Mountain Lake

Next up: Somewhere on the Hudson River