After a late start out of Edison, NJ, and a tiring luggage haul through Penn Station, I finally settled in a comfortable car headed north through Poughkeepsie and into Hudson. We followed the Hudson River the entire trip, with its snake-like windings glistening in the midday sun, and I was surprised at how enchanting its veiled banks are. My experience with her was limited to glimpses from the highway in Albany and a solitary panorama from the Rip Van Winkle Bridge just outside of Catskill.
Following her up from Manhattan, however, introduced me to the quaint river I had not before known. We moved quickly from urban to suburban, and then about twenty miles along, great heaping mounds of forested hill sprung up and gave the river a wildness that New York City has stolen from the harbor.
Up toward Rhinecilff the train sped up, but the scenery slowed down. Two herons gossiping in a swampy sidenote heard the train and showed their great wings. The rushes and swamp grasses are more populace further north, with the appearance of a few disinterested islands to hide them. About ten minutes from the Hudson depot, a small cottage, sitting a piece of island almost as small and looking much like an abandon lighthouse, stood guard of the sleeping giants. These mountains are less juvenile, more Catskill; no abrupt knobs or drops. They are softer but more potential; less unpredictable and more certain.
Ah – Van Winkle. The bridge I have only known from above – tall and slender, stately and grand, grasping both shores as if to pull the earth together in some Herculean stunt. This perspective is much more overwhelming – much like life – greater, different, but ultimately truth. What is a bridge until you have explored its underbelly? What is it until you’ve seen that which keeps it standing?
