Last month, upon establishing the goal of wading through the entirety of the Green River, I established the twin goal of not publishing anything about the experience. Our gentle, meandering stream is to be enjoyed in small numbers, and I didn’t want to be blamed for turning roadside pull-offs into the Monument Mountain trailhead parking lot. The Green River is just so lovely, I reckoned, that the loveliness would shine through my inadequate prose and the world would descend. But I am going to go out on a limb here, a limb like the one I clung to in the final moments of this story, and hope that once you hear what happened on the most recent day of my summer 2024 river journey, you will not be inspired to follow in my flailing footsteps.
Before the end must come the beginning, and I determined to approach my project as Thoreau approached life in the woods, but working within the confines of a life in which I am the one who cooks dinner for five people. This is to say, I wanted to front the essential facts of life between 2 and 5 p.m. on a handful of weekend afternoons, and not, when I came to September, discover that I had spent the season online. I would step into the water and not get out, metaphorically, until I had travelled the whole thing, carrying a small backpack for my phone, a water bottle, and four Tootsie Rolls, and steadying myself with my son’s ski poles.
The Green River’s 18-mile-long life begins far out of public sight in No Bottom Pond, east of Route 22 in Canaan, N.Y. From there it flows mildly and narrowly southeast, hewing closely to 22 through Austerlitz and into Hillsdale, where it abandons westward-facing 22 to join up with eastward-oriented Route 71. From there it crosses into Massachusetts and proceeds, still mostly narrow and mild, with deep, blue-green holes here and there, through Alford and into Egremont. The water in these sections is clear and cold year-round. Somewhere downstream of my childhood home in North Egremont (see photo of “No Trespassing” sign with my long-deceased father’s name on it), the river’s path begins to wind less south and more east. At Pumpkin Hollow Road, the river, after briefly dipping south again, begins to twist its way north.
Things change directionally and materially once the Green River merges with Seekonk Brook, which happens about half a mile northeast of the Seekonk Cross Road pull-off. After this confluence, the wider and noticeably warmer river turns steeply southeast again. So it flows, at times a broad, liquid throughway bordered by pebbly beaches, at times concentrated at urgent corners, at times compelled into path-finding ingenuity by a fallen sycamore, willow, or combination of the two. It reaches its most public landmark at the Route 23/41 turn-off. From there the Green River keeps on its southeasterly path along fields and through the country club, after which it prepares to come into the possession of the Housatonic, east and north of Fiddleheads Restaurant on Route 7.
I know these details because in the past month, over four afternoons, I have walked, scrambled, and swum through a fraction of the Hillsdale portion and all of the Massachusetts portion, about 10 miles total (see map). Day one brought me from Route 71 to Rowe Road in two hours. Day two took me from Rowe Road to Seekonk Cross in a little under three. Day three, with two friends, brought us from Seekonk Cross to Route 23. And day four I did the last stretch, alone, from Route 23 to Route 7. (“The public has the legal right to freely pass over all waters in Massachusetts, even if underlying soil is privately owned.”)
So I legally flow to day four, for which I chose August 11. This was my first problem, as August 11 had been preceded by August 6 through 9, a stretch of time during which South County received more than four inches of rain, rain that would have naturally brought up the water level of the Green River—my “gentle, meandering stream”—quite dramatically.
I looked at August 11 and did not see danger, but I did foresee the looming end of summer, when life gets bigger and my availability and eagerness to spend hours in cold water get smaller. That is the best explanation for why, at 1:46 p.m. on August 11, I stood on the bridge where the river hits Route 23, took a quick glance into the running waters below, pronounced them fine, and set out.
Now, I am no one’s idea of a reckless person. I sled only on objects designed for sledding, and then only after ensuring that the slope is free of all possible impediments. I don’t use bug spray or aspirin, much less take real drugs, because I am more scared of chemicals than I am of mosquitoes or a headache. I once paid good money to sit on the head of an elephant only to get off five minutes later, because elephants have minds of their own, it turns out, and are inclined to bend down at alarmingly steep angles.
Why would a 52-year-old woman thus committed to a non-reckless lifestyle choose to trek through the Green River on August 11? Why, upon first stepping into water that reached my thigh where seven days earlier it had reached my shin, didn’t I step back out onto dry land? The depth alone was alarming, but I might then have clocked further alarm by the murky water that made it hard to see obstacles, because the Green River is full of dead trees. Furthermore, I was approaching what was to me terra incognita, so I had no idea what conditions I would find. I guess I assumed the river would simply behave in the same friendly, supportive manner it always had for me.
The first hour’s walk was slow-going, and hard work. I had to pay close attention to where the pebbly bottom showed through the brown cloudiness so as to stay in the shallows as much as possible. “Pebbly bottom, you are my friend,” I said aloud. To navigate the fallen trees on this walk, I couldn’t duck underneath or climb over the mess of branches, so I had to seek out land-based solutions. After the second of these jungle struggles, I considered turning back, but at that point slogging against the current sounded worse than slogging with it.
In this way I arrived at a place where the tree ceiling disappeared and was replaced with open sky, where the river suddenly, unnaturally narrowed, where human voices replaced birdsong, and where I had the uncomfortable sensation of having left nature and reached a civilization that did not include me. This was the country club’s golf course, a fact I realized a few moments before the river bottom gave out, and I went under. I came back up gasping and paddled, one-handedly, to a pile-up of large, sharp rocks that reminded me of razor wire. So as golf carts hummed leisurely above me over the pedestrian bridge, I sat on the razor wire to catch my breath and figure out how to survive the golf course.
I see now that I could have held the backpack over my head and floated down the water, but the only idea that occurred to me then was the one that had me climbing the rocks and striding, a child-sized ski pole in each hand and a blue bikini hiding my nakedness, through the well-populated golf course.
Feigning casualness, I called out, “Hey!,” to a dry, well-heeled couple. “You want this ball?” I was helpfully holding up a golf ball I had found on the grass.
“What?” he yelled, “Is it a live ball?”
I made an “oops” gesture and tried to drop the ball in the vicinity of where I had found it.
“Live ball, dead ball, I’m just trying not to die here myself!” I didn’t say.
My second near-drowning happened soon after I had left the course and re-entered the water. By then, I was so demoralized by the failure of my river to treat me right that I didn’t have the heart or wherewithal to search for pebbly bottoms. I just walked into the current, assuming that it would not be mean enough to knock me off my feet. It knocked me off my feet. I grabbed onto a tree branch, swung around it toward the shore, and that was it for me and the Green River on August 11.
Alongside Route 7, I gratefully collapsed into my Subaru, bruised, bleeding, and waterlogged, and as soon as I pulled onto the road, I articulated the first of many self-recriminations. “Why?” But my attempt at an apologetic explanation to myself was interrupted by a line of motorcycle engines roaring past. I looked to my right and saw that the line at Bistro Box now extended to the driveway. Further up traffic cones still diverted cars away from the closed-off Brush Hill Road bridge. Guido’s parking lot, as ever, was full.
“Amazing!” I marveled. “It’s just a regular Sunday afternoon here.”
I had come to the river to see what it had to teach me, and in the end, I learned quite a bit. Humility, first and foremost. Test the waters. Respect the waters. Consult a map. Bring a friend. Also, it is not helpful to pick up golf balls off a golf course.
I have been back to swim the Green River three times since August 11. The water is now back to crystal clear, and it is barely higher and faster than usual. Tomorrow, and next month, and Christmas Day, I will be back. I am approaching my watering holes with just as much love as ever, but I find I am also instinctively surveying the upstream landscape with a sharp eye, so I will know what is coming my way.
