It never fails to amaze me how disconnected New Yorkers are from their local rivers and tidal estuaries. It amazes me, yet I used to be one of them. Only dimly aware that I lived on an island at all. Terrified of the water as if it were made of toxic sludge. Incredulous that crabs fish or birds could thrive so close to such a large city. But, ever since I got my hands on a kayak paddle I have a totally new perspective on the waterways in this great city. Like the roads and green-ways of New York the water is means of transportation. It is a enjoyable, if impractical way of getting around. Due to the tides it is possible to go almost wherever you please with little effort if you time it just right.
We have taken to exploring every nook and cranny of the rivers and estuaries and along the way we have found abundant wildlife. Suddenly New York feels like a harbor town, a city connected with rivers and with the ocean. Nothing could be more exciting.
So, that brings me to the matter of safety, and how notions of what is safe shape the relationship urban people have with their waterways. All along the east river there are almost no good places to pull up a kayak. Most of the time the city meets the river in a vast sea-wall that affords no access. it is topped with a fence. The physical message this architecture sends is "Stay away from the water!"
In recent years, the city has begun to build parks that have water access, steps that lead in to the water. Docks for small watercraft. Mesh bridges that invite people to look down and see waves crashing under their feet. And slowly people have ventured back in to the water. Kayaks have become more common people fish from the piers. (The fish are high in mercury, but safe to eat in small quantities) One day I saw a family crabbing, it was a scene right out of New Orleans transported in to NYC. A beautiful thing. Beautiful like the cormorants and other shore birds that have returned to the city. Industry is gone, the water beckons.
And yet, form time to time tragedy strikes. It seems that every summer a child drowns in the water. This summer it was two. The lethal combination of city dwellers who don't know how to swim and deep unpredictable waters makes it tempting to fence the waterways off again. To keep the people safe, keep them dry.
But, as the summer newspapers around the county tell tales of drownings always peppered with statics about how few "city kids" "poor kids" "black kids" "those kids" "Latino kids" know how to swim I end up pausing. The solution given is to stay away from the water, but it is the lack of a relationship with water that has always been the problem in the first place! The water belongs no single person, waterways are public spaces they belong to the people. What would happen if we taught our kids to have a sense of pride an ownership in their water? Teach kids to fish, to swim to boat. Teach them to embrace the water and know it secrets and dangers and we would see fewer drownings, but we would see something even better: a city that cares for her rivers and estuaries.
We should be ashamed that fencing things off was ever considered to be a solution.
(To go with this essay, I'd like to share a video about the joy of drifting around on the water in NYC.)