Yesterday I took one of those paddling trips that made me feel a million miles away from the hustle and bustle of this great metropolis and I never lost sight of Manhattan. One of the wonders of paddling in this area is the world of difference a change of direction can bring. I live on Manhattan's Upper Westside, about a half mile walk from the put-in on the Hudson at the 79th St. Boat Basin. Here you face those two different worlds. If you head south, you are soon engulfed in a world of piers, commercial vessels and a dozen ferry runs that during rush hour are operating at 5 minute intervals. The waters are turbulent almost always. In part because of the churning wakes of commercial boats. In part because of the hard, unyielding sides of piers and seawalls that reflect these wakes back at you in confusing patterns and clashes with fresh wakes. And in part, a matter of geography and the nature of the river at this point as it courses to the sea. I always find it has hard to relax in this environment. Maybe I am too mindful of the dangers from the waters and from timetable-minded ferry captains trying to cut corners while their minds are spaced-out in 14 hour days workdays needed to earn overtime pay to make up for skimpy paychecks. If however, you head northward you enter another world. No ferry traffic, little if any wake, and softsided shores that absorb whatever forces the waters send against them. Too, the shoreline is mostly green, at least on the Manhattan side where city parklands extend under the George Washington Bridge, 5 miles north, and well beyond to Manhattan's northmost tip. The Jersey side is losing its green to highrise condos that are mushrooming up to give their dwellers fabled views of Manhattan and the river below. But it is easy to dismiss this varied architecture in one's eye as feeble lichen against the looming majesty of the Jersey Palisades. And just a few miles up, the shoreline abruptly shuns mortar and brick for parkland and cliffs. First protected nearly 100 years ago, they begin to rise to some 500 feet above the water's edge and appear exactly as they did to Henry Hudson when he sailed by looking for a northwest passage. Yesterday I chose the northward passage. Currents favored my choice but so did temperment. A need to relax and just tune out. It was late in the day, already the rush hour exodus from the city. I crossed to the Jersey side to see what new developments winter's construction contracts had wrought. Well away from me was the din of auto traffic crawling up Manhattan's Westside highway. My marine radio blared with the talk of ferry captains hurrying to meet their schedules and the movement of tankers, barges and freighters being juggled by the Coast Guard's vessel traffic service center. The sounds of the radio were perversly comforting; that hassled world was so far away albeit partly visible if I strained my vision downriver for their scurryings. My fellow vessel company was few. Not a boat near me. Up north from a partly fog-engulfed George Washington Bridge two vessels were emerging from the mist. They were barely discernable but I knew from their shapes and position what they were. The one closest to the Manhattan shore would certainly be the Circle Liner cruise that circumnavigates Manhattan in 3 hours, a trip better take in a kayak in eight to 10 hours of your own muscle and savvy for catching favorable currents and their free ride. It was near shore to give its passengers a closer look at the Little Red Lighthouse of children's book fame that would have been demolished when the bridge went up but saved in large part by the book...the pen is sometimes mightier than the wrecking ball. The other vessel was riding high. My sense that it would be an empty oil barge heading down river was confirmed by the barely visible dot ahead of it that I know meant a towing tugboat. I watched both the Circle Liner and the tug 'n barge wend their way slowly down river in what seemed a turtle race. I was in no hurry yet to cross back across the river, so their pace didn't matter to me. The wind was picking up. And so I pulled over to an empty marina that was awaiting its fleet of pleasure craft that would one day in May suddenly all appear at once from far away and from the dry dockage on the shore behind. Leaning against an empty finger slip, I put down paddle, took off PFD, and donned a paddling jacket over my shorty wetsuit. Now it was time to turn around. The currents had already changed from a favorable flood to an opposing ebb that with the northern wind was making the paddling more of an effort than I wanted to bother with. Besides it was getting toward twilight and I wanted to get home. As I crossed back, a loaded oil barge riding so low in the water that is seemed almost awash was headed northward a tugboat nestled against its portside in pushing mode. I thought of using my marine radio but we were no where near crossing courses. It would have been a silly exercise more of an amusement than a necessity. Back on the Manhattan side. I flowed with the ebb southward, lazily dipping my paddle into the water now and then. I was now alongside the highway. The northbound lanes were frozen into a virtual parking lot; a hill on the highway was topped by stuck headlights that beamed out across the river mimicking a lighthouse. Downtown bound traffic whizzed by going my way, at a faster clip but probably with not as much enjoyment of the sunset that was beginning to form in the western sky over the lower Palisades with streaks of red through the growing cloud cover bringing in a rain front. A two hour respite on the river, just a short walk from home to launch and back. I know that the Northwestern US is supposed to be paddling paradise but it would be hard to prove to this urban dweller whose worlds can change so dramatically with just a few strokes of a paddle away from the concrete and steel of the Big Apple. ralph diaz -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024 Tel: 212-724-5069; E-mail: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com "Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Fri Apr 23 1999 - 08:45:22 PDT
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