Rachel Adams wanted to make a map of smells.
I thought the most rich and complex landscape might be the Newtown Creek,
and this was confirmed by graffiti that we saw at the launch site.
You see, the Newtown Creek doesn’t just produce smells, it produces full body sensations,
like the enveloping nausea of oil and gas that we smelled as we entered the canal.
This was explained as we floated by a National Grid sign.
Not all the smells were so clearly labeled though,
or even easy to identify,
like the tangy intrusive smell of rusting metal,
or a thick ominous cloud of diesel exhaust.
At some point we thought that we could almost smell fresh air coming from the water,
and the Manhattan Skyline drifted into view.
This was the fresh salty air of the East River.
Around the Kosciuszko Bridge, we smelled a sweet earthy smell, like wood pulp,
and then something more sinister.
We were floating along in a swath of debris and filmy oil coming right out of a sewer.
It had been raining for a few days, and when that happens in New York,
the treatment plants can’t take all the extra water and they let some of the sewage out into rivers.
The new gas plants might be better at managing waste than their industrial predecessors,
but the combined sewage overflow remains a problem.
We drifted by a huge recylcing facility,
but a smell was coming from the other bank,
the familiar and complex aroma of the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant.
For years I lived a block from this place, and the smell of it now is as nostalgic as an old yearbook.
We decided to stop at the Newtown Creek Nature Walk.
Rachel remarked at rule number 3 – Avoid contact with water.
There was also a sign with the Lenape name for the Newtown Creek.
The Great Brook with Tide.
Another map cheerfully described the paradox of an undustrial waterway “DOLPHINS – SLUDGE LOADING DOCKS”.
That seems to be a paradox of proximity that is played out with every new species that inhabits the creek.
Another sign said no boating when it rains,
so we got back into the creek,
to get where we were going before it started to rain for real.
We climbed out at the end of Manhattan Avenue.
Rachel was flying back to Texas in the afternoon,
and I wondered if she would see the Newtown Creek from the airplane on her way out.
The rain had let up,
and I decided to row back to the truck,
which seemed like a good idea for the first hour.
I pulled up a little short, thinking that I would walk the rest of the way.
On land it was easy to tell where some of the smells were coming from,
like the wood pulp smell.
In fact it was so much more pungent on land,
that I wondered if the water had provided us with a kind of smell shelter.
but looking back at the map we drew out in the boat, I remembered that it had been different in there, but not better.
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