Emily Scott and I decided to take a trip out in the Bronx River. It is the only real ‘river’ in New York City, meaning that it is not a tidal estuary like the East River.
Usually I feel bad when I plan a boat trip with someone, and then we spend most of the day just trying to find a place to put the boat in the water.
With Emily Scott, I thought it was just perfect.
You see, Emily is part of of a group of artists called the Los Angeles Urban Rangers.
While we drove around the Bronx looking for access to the river, she told me about their ongoing Malibu safari project.
It seems that public access to the beaches of Malibu is a contested issue, and the LA Urban Rangers lead tours of public land that doesn’t appear public. They issue maps and directions about how to navigate the mysterious pathways and shrouded entrances of the public shore.
“It’s funny.” I said. “Those places are hard to access because they are so desired, but with the Bronx River you would have to assume the opposite.”
Finally, we found a forgotten little scrap lot that seemed just made for putting a boat in the water.
I added it to a mental map of semi-legal waterfront access points.
We had started our day at 6 am.
It had become a perfect morning;
windless, overcast,
and not a soul in sight.
Aside from being an Urban Ranger,
Emily is writing her doctoral thesis in Art History.
She is particularly interested in Robert Smithson’s ‘Field trips’.
As we paddled, she told me about the journey she has taken to pursue her research; her interviews with Nancy Holt, and moving her young family to the east coast. She described the field trips that Robert Smithson and his friends would take to New Jersey and beyond to study geologic entropy in the industrial landscape.
“Can you imagine what they talked about?” Asked Emily.
“Yes.” I said, “I can.”
Up ahead there seemed to be a change in the river.
We were confronted by a small dam.
There seemed to be no choice but to get out and haul over.
I watched as Emily washed off her hand in the water. I was just reading something online that described the Bronx River as an ‘open sewer’.
But it really seems to have come back.
Huge fish move about in the shallow clear water.
At one point, the river seemed to fill from side to side with thousands of fish moving down stream.
I had never seen anything like it in New York.
“Do you see many people when you are out on the water?” asked Emily.
“Mostly men fishing.” I said. Before today I would have wondered what they are fishing for.
At some point a little to the North, the Bronx River goes right through the Bronx Zoo.
As the river narrowed and became too shallow to navigate, I had to give up my hope of entering the zoo by water and of seeing a giraffe, for instance, come down to the water’s edge to have a sip.
We headed back over the dam.
Emily’s baby and husband were waiting back in Park slope, and this river trip was just a small part of a visit to New York from Washington.
It was still early,
and it was just beginning to rain.
We hauled the boat back out of the Bronx River,
and joined the rest of the world on the bridges and roads above.
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