As we passed the mouth of the Esopus Creek and the Saugerties lighthouse, an immature bald eagle flapped by us, and then a trio of great blue herons, long necks drawn up into S-curves, long legs trailing behind them in flight. We looked up to see a brilliant 360-degree rainbow, forming a perfect ring of glowing color in the sky. Steve, who was paddling his canoe alongside my kayak, remarked that it was not a natural rainbow, and he was not glad to see it. He called it a “chem-bow,” the result of air pollutants interacting with water droplets and sunlight. I could not argue with his assessment but, at least in this instance, was glad of my ignorance, if such it was, since it enabled me to say, with Wordsworth, “My heart leaps up when I behold/ a rainbow in the sky;/ So was it when my life began;/ So is it now I am a man;/ So be it when I shall grow old,/ Or let me die!”
We stopped to rest and eat our lunch at Glasco mini-park, the site of a wastewater treatment plant, directly across from Magdalen Island and the train causeway separating the green, marshy expanse of Tivoli North Bay from the river channel. Sped by the ebb tide, we soon passed under the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge, and in a few more minutes beached our boats at Ulster Landing’s Sojourner Truth Park.
There was a drum circle outside the pavilion before dinner, and a series of interesting talks, one by a black Seminole man, another by a man whose ancestors were Caribs, among the first people encountered by Columbus (disastrously for them!) in the New World. Women from a local Baptist church group served us a hearty, home-cooked dinner of collard greens, corn, and roast chicken. It was already dark by the time we finished eating, so I soon retired to my tent perched on its ridge above the bank, feeling satisfied but weary after a full day on the river. The day’s paddle of a dozen miles, give or take, had offered so many fresh vistas to the eye, mind, and spirit, that I knew I would feel the river lapping on my inner shores all night, and for a long time to come.
