The choice of the year’s itinerary started with me thinking about the possibility of paddling the Chemung River, a shorter river than Karen and I usually consider. The Chemung flows through my hometown of Elmira, New York. I’m in Elmira now having arrived last night, and I write this post from the bedroom of my next-door neighbor’s house from when I was a child. It was a second home to me. I’m looking out the window onto the house that I lived in for 18 years and visited for decades after until 20 years ago when it was sold. I’ve been helping my friend Mary whose brother John just died at age 69, having lived in this house his whole life. We have been organizing John’s belongings. Needless to say, Mary and I have been discussing many childhood memories, visiting cemeteries of both my family and my other extended family, the Jacobson‘s, going past childhood landmarks and the houses of friends growing up.
Elmira is a struggling post industrial city. It’s a river city, and like most river cities nowadays, it is cut off from river views by levees and flood walls. Having lived through the flood of ‘72 I know that flood walls are important, but I’m always sad that the rivers are not visible from most of the cities and towns that have flood protection along riverbanks.
How much of Elmira has changed over the years due to a large degree from its waning economic prosperity! One thing has not changed and that is the river, even though it is not visible, except from bridges.
And so I want to begin our trip tomorrow with that reality in my heart. While the buildings change, while people die, and important landscapes have changed, to quote that famous movie, the river still runs through it.
I’m driving from Elmira to Corning tomorrow where I will meet Karen at the house of her friend Beth, who will drive us up to our put-in point this year somewhere around Addison, New York, on the Canisteo River. It flows into the Tioga River and then to Painted Post, NY, where it will converge with the Cohocton River and become the Chemung River.
I had the privilege of meeting Cait and Jim from Friends of the Chemung River today as we walked along the flood walls and scoped out the portage around the only dam that we will have to get around on this trip. In addition to these new friends who hope to paddle with us for a little while, I also get to reunite with a school friend, Kim, from now over 50 years ago, who will help us by transporting us from our end point in Pennsylvania back to Corning.
So this year, the river winds through the friends and family of my past, living and deceased, as well as the present with newfound friends. We have yet to know in upcoming days what else the river will provide for us.
Paddle With Us 