Day Five, August 1, Ulster Landing to Kingston
A wild day on the river: wind-driven rain, choppy water, and big swells, forcing us to Kingston Point beach to regroup and consider our options. Many of our party chose to walk or ride to our lunch destination, the maritime museum in Kingston. Their boats would be transported by trailer to the next day’s launch site at Norrie Point. Those who felt up to it could paddle around Kingston Point just ahead, and half a mile or so up the Rondout Creek from its mouth to the museum’s dock. Somewhat to my own surprise, I opted to paddle, though a walk on terra firma did seem safer and easier, even in the rain. But I settled back down into my kayak, stretched my spray skirt into place, and accepted a friendly shove from another paddler on the beach, launching me back into the river.
I found that I was part of a smaller flotilla now, of only about thirty boats. We fought hard to get around the point and then into the creek, paddling with all our strength and meeting the wind-driven rain and river waves head-on. The last stretch up the Rondout Creek was, as expected, relatively easy, but I was glad to reach the dock, where a small crowd was gathered, braving the rain with ponchos and umbrellas, to cheer us on. Rebecca was among them, and greeted me as if I had returned from a long and perilous voyage. And, since our sense of the passages we make is always shaped by how intensely we experience them, I felt I had.
The objective reality was that many river miles remained ahead of us to complete our journey. For now, though, I took advantage of this opportunity to enjoy a brief homecoming. My son Frank had also come to the museum to meet me, and he helped me carry my kayak from the dock and batten it down onto the van’s roof rack. We crowded into the museum’s “barn” with hundreds of paddlers and friends for dinner, and then spent some time just outside it, where native people were beating handcrafted drums decorated with paintings of turtles and eagles, though it was still raining.
Finally, Rebecca and I drove home to New Paltz for the night, and I got the chance to dry out my things a bit, shower, and sleep in my own bed. These were luxuries denied most of my river companions, who accepted improvised sleeping quarters in the museum barn and at the nearby community center.
I felt especially grateful that night to live in the Hudson Valley. Being a resident here made paddling the Hudson with the Two Row Wampum Renewal Campaign a natural, if not an inevitable, thing for me to do. But the old river had certainly taught us all a lesson today, which was not to take it lightly, to respect its power, the winds that stir its surface, and its tidal currents. And there is perhaps no better place to learn this lesson than from the cockpit of a kayak!
