River Town

The day is warm and blue skyed, with a fair breeze to push sails and skirts a-billow.  Masts glide by people walking on the warm brick of Central Wharf as the summer textiles of rig and outerwear show off, caught by the mild wind that brings lake air in and up the harbor.  Rippling fabric snaps against lines and legs, pushing forward, lifting weight up and away from gravity, moving through the landscape to the quay and into whatever you are to become, to home.  The humans lean abaft to keep balance, supported by the hand of the wind at their backs; the ketch presses bowsprit forward through the level waters of the small feeder river, current or tide next to nil.

News has come that the Buffalo River is to be dredged and restored to a viable ecosystem after a hundred years of industrial contamination.  Fed by the tributaries of Cayuga, Cazenovia, and Buffalo Creeks, the Buffalo River generally flows downstream in a fluvial process, towards Lake Erie.  However, because Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes with an average depth of 62 feet, there is a bathtub effect when the winds kick up, thus pushing the water to the eastern end.   Called a seiche, the rising lake water pushes upstream into the Buffalo River, adding sediment throughout the snaky bends of the system.

Already there has been recovery upon the embankments: the city has reconstructed the terminus of the Erie Canal and further up on Ohio Street, there is now a small park area made for community gatherings.  Bikepaths and walkways have been installed along Lake Erie and will one day connect through downtown, Blackrock, and the Tonawandas bringing movement and interest to the green areas and most importantly, to the resource that has been at our feet all of our lives, the water.  Plans have been made for markets, lodging, and a visitor center located at the Canal terminus, and it looks like it will proceed, gratefully;  people have waited a long time for water-based amenities to return to the Queen City of the Lakes.

Staying at my grandparent's on the lower West Side was a treat when I was little. Originally, my family lived with them; after we moved to far away countryside, returning overnight to the city let me listen again to the familiar sounds of traffic, of rag and bottle men yelling for commerce, of steam whistles on popcorn carts, of creaking, rusted trucks banging down brick streets, and if the morning was still and thick, the solemn, abyssal voice of a two-tone foghorn warning ships of breakwalls and shoals which raked shivers, comfortable shivers through me.  A caveat for mariners, the sound carried through damp air, knowing things I hadn't dreamed of, calling, calling.  I was a nutty kid about sounds as it was, and this just prickled my spine even though it was something I hoped to hear, before the common clatterings of day began.  Could we install a two tone Diaphone, to be sounded on Sundays?  Buffalo was the first city on the Great Lakes to have one, is this not historical enough to merit attention?  I would love a shiver again.

Writing this post has taken several days, and ends after three fast thunderstorms spun through the above, with a rainbow at the closing curtain.  Rain came in sheets, flooding streets and drains, puddling for birds and animals, rinsing both heavy air and spiderwebs from window screens.  The streamers of color arced against deeper, dark greys of still roiling weather, illuminated by sun, vaulting from the city to the south.  A happy ending.

The cats hid most of the day, coming out only after each of the storms subsided for food and reassurance.   They are out now in various draped postures, attentive to nothing but cat dreams of slow mice and deep fields of catnip.  I have had supper, and simply need to give the pleco his coveted chunk of melon, which he waits for at the feeding end of the tank.  Let night work its magic, and relieve the worries of day; allow the subconscious do the job of sorting, answers will be there in the morning.  Sleep well, sleep deeply, shut doors, latch windows, turn keys.  Sentinels watch the harbor, even as our sense of hours blissfully falls away; green to starboard, port red.  Good night.