Lordly Hudson

Photo by Beyond My Ken CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53325701

Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of all things? — Emerson, Nature

The Mohicans called it Muhheakunnuk, “the river that flows two ways", recognizing the Hudson as not only a river but a tidal estuary, where south-flowing fresh water collides with saline sea water pushing north twice a day, like a giant, slow-motion exhale.

With a recent post focusing on waterways and cities, let’s take a moment to appreciate the magnificent river flanking New York City’s west side, a river that attracted native inhabitants; beckoned explorers, from Verrazano to Hudson (in search of a waterway to China); helped a new nation grow and achieve global influence; inspired a school of art influenced by Romanticism; and even has a museum dedicated to it (in Yonkers).
 
Its headwaters in the Adirondacks at an altitude of over 4,300 feet, the Hudson begins as a series of alpine brooks and ponds – Lake Tear of the Clouds, to Feldspar Brook, to Opalescent River, and then Calamity Pass Brook and Indian Pass Brook to Henderson Lake, where a convergence of rivers become “The Hudson”. Winding its way south to Troy, the northern reach of tidal influence, it widens and continues on its 315 mile route. Reaching its widest point of 3 ½ miles in Haverstraw, it continues past Manhattan, and flows beneath the Verrazano Bridge, through the Narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island and into the Atlantic Ocean.

But it doesn’t end there.

At the mouth of the Hudson River begins the Hudson Canyon, a submarine canyon extending over 400 miles into the Atlantic, cutting through shallower continental shelf and then dramatically into the deeper ocean basin. With walls reaching ¾ mile from the ocean floor at its deepest point, 100 miles off shore, it rivals the depth of the Grand Canyon’s mile-deep cliffs and is one of the largest submarine canyons in the world. Last exposed over 10,000 years ago, during the last ice age, the canyon formed when the sea level was 400 feet lower and the mouth of the Hudson was 100 miles east of its current site.

If you can, take a look at the river. You might notice it flowing north! You also may notice a patchwork of movement across its surface – central sections dredged deeper for shipping perhaps moving more swiftly than shallower areas along Manhattan and New Jersey, various micro-currents, and the influence of wind. Think about the clash of forces and wave patterns when the tide is moving in, pushing against the current. And think about how quickly the river moves when the tide is outbound, a double whammy of south-bound current and outbound tide conspiring. Think about traces of the Hudson continuing off shore, through one of the world's deepest submarine canyons, and about the ebb and flow of the river that flows two ways.

Suddenly Poughkeepsie
Grace Paley, 2007

what a hard time
the Hudson River has had
trying to get to the sea

it seemed easy enough to
rise out of Tear of
the Cloud and tumble
and run in little skips
and jumps   draining
                a swamp here and
    there   acquiring
streams and other smaller
rivers with similar
longings for the wide
imagined water

suddenly
there’s Poughkeepsie
except for its spelling
an ordinary town but
the great heaving
ocean sixty miles away is
determined to reach
that town every day
and twice a day in fact
drowning the Hudson River
in salt and mud
it is the moon’s tidal
power over all the waters
of this earth at war with
gravity     the Hudson
perseveres    moving down
down    dignified
slower    look it has
become our Lordly Hudson
hardly flowing
                          and we are
now in a poem by the poet
Paul Goodman  be quiet heart
home home
                        then the sea