Back in this article I mentioned the Hudson River Reader call for submissions.
My submission below:
Miracle on the Hudson
For weeks I wracked my brains over what to write. Hudson River, memoirs of the Hudson River, recollections, musings. What could I possibly write that would truly capture the scope of the people, the towns, and the river itself?
I certainly have some things to say. I grew up in Goshen, well within the Valley and close enough to go boating or hiking during muggy, mosquito-filled summers. More recently, I have worked as a deckhand, on a boat called ‘Pride of the Hudson’ no less. I’ve gone up and down its length a hundred times, pointing out landmarks well-known and less-so, tossing rope in storms that turned West Point into a foggy nothing, buying fruit from dockside vendors between shifts.
Really though, these are splashes of color. They capture a few moments in time and place. The smell of the Newburgh docks, industrial, oily, fishy, the quaint peacefulness of Cold Spring in August; these are snapshots. They cannot possibly do justice to the Hudson.
And then there was ‘the Miracle on the Hudson’. In a week that will have scrolled by on CNN so many times it will be subliminally linked with images of Anderson Cooper. Right now though, a day after that tragedy, it is fresh and poignant and meaningful.
In New York, like nowhere else, we are used to the bittersweet taste of life. We are well acquainted to all the tragedies of life, petty and profound. A man gets mugged, but a support network develops in the form of a neighborhood watch. A school is vandalized, but people come together to erase, repair and then improve. On that most momentous of days thousands of people died, but the world saw heroism in its truest. We have seen it all and expect to see even more.
The Hudson has seen it all too and it has become a cynical river. With good comes bad, with bad comes good. If there’s a net-gain, it’s only at the expense of time and sweat and blood. Rivers are always fickle, they expect tribute. But maybe that is going to change. Maybe it already has.
Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III, pilot of Flight 1549, landed a crippled 747 carrying 155 passengers into the Hudson. It could have ended in candlelight vigils and days of rescue divers pulling bodies from the depths of the Hudson, but it didn’t. Emergency workers responded immediately. No one died. Injuries were minor. The Captain’s a hero.
It’s the fairy tale ending, but it’s not at all a fairy tale. Just real life, tragic and heroic. It’s as fine a testament to what this river has seen and what this river represents as any of the thousands of similar stories that happen every day but never make the news. It is my fondest memory of the Hudson and my highest expectation of what the future will hold. It is the Hudson River in all of its glory.
~Robert D. Drake
