Gathering at the River

There aren't too many places near me that have access to the Hudson River, and that 's probably a good thing. I would imagine safety issues are a big concern, as are property rights and liability issues. But it is great to be able to stand on the shore of the mighty Hudson River and toss a rock in, or take pictures. Down the road a bit from us, near Bella Napoli Bakery, there is an access road to the shore, probably used by a lot of people who have small boats. Local people come to fish, walk their dogs and take some time with their kids. It's low key, and kind of unpretentiously nice in a rural kind of way. There's no fancy park, no nothing really, just the remains of an asphalt road,  a rocky shoreline, and the river.

It doesn't take much to fascinate me, and I love the river rocks in Troy. They are all round, or lumps with rounded edges. You can just imagine the millions of years it took them to get that way, ground under the glaciers for millenia and then rolled and tumbled around in water for centuries. It reminds me that this part of the Hudson  may be a new discovery for me, but she's an old river, and perhaps there have been people standing on this shore for a thousand years.

The surrounding land has all gone back to scrub, and is littered with century old bricks, tile, and the remains of industry. I looked it up, and there was a mattress spring factory near here. It's gone almost without a trace, just the remains of a loading dock or some kind of wall. Most of the empty land here, and there is quite a bit of it, has been used as a dump by road crews for a long time. The streets of Troy are dumped here by the river, in mounds of asphalt and concrete. They rise up above the burdocks and marsh grasses, and are perches for feral cats and river birds.

This would make a fine park for the people of North Central. It would even bring people up from Downtown. There are acres of land here doing nothing.

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