Notes on the Raritan River, 1915

[Doug Vitale]

(This one's for you, Andy).

Van Dyke, John C. (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=97181124), THE RARITAN: Notes on a River and a Family, New Brunswick, 1915. (Archive.org (https://archive.org/details/raritannotesonr00vand))

CHAPTER I, The River

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There is a River running eastward to the sea — a gentle little River of still waters that reflect, and shallow rapids that run in lines of amethyst, and slow moving tides that flood and ebb without a ripple and without a sound. It is only a commonplace River so commonplace that the millions who rattle over its railway bridges in express trains hardly put down their newspapers to look at it. Its history is purely local and it never was grand enough for romance. No one has written it down in deathless verse or painted it on immortal canvas. Art, science, history, philosophy have all passed it by. In fact, it has been left quite alone save for the life and the love of the people who have lived by its banks and watched it through the years slowly drifting to the sea.

For much of its course the River flows through a low slightly-undulating country. Off in the northwest there is a range of blue hills where the stream takes its head. It comes to life, runs its course, and passes out to the sea before a hundred miles are counted. No stately reach of thousands as the Mississippi; no lakelike breadth of surface as the Saguenay or the lower Danube. The great streams go down to the ocean through broad basins and their shining silver faces may be seen from the hill-tops miles away; but this River winds through a flattened valley and you are upon it almost before you see it. At times it cuts through bluffs and hills, then flows past low-lying meadows, and then again beneath bordering fringes of willows, elms, maples and sycamores. The upland ridges back from the meadows that make up the valley borders are not more than a hundred feet in height. They are dotted with houses and huge barns; and around these, back from them, are fields of grain and corn, orchards of peach and apple, small forests of oak and hickory. The meadows are spotted with bushes, flowers and tall grasses. Cattle in herds and sheep in droves graze there or stamp away the heated noon under the shade of huge oaks. All summer long the meadows keep shifting their flower garmenting. At first they are yellow and white with dandelions, star flowers, buttercups and daisies, then silver with Indian grass or red with the tassel of sheep sorrel; finally they turn yellow again with golden rod or purple with masses of asters. Spots of wonderful charm are the river's meadows. You walk there on warm summer afternoons and lose yourself in nature's glorification of the commonplace.

As the stream flattens down to meet the sea its meadows flatten, too, and turn into marshes waving with flag and rush and cat-tail. These, as the seasons come and go, turn green, turn yellow, turn sere and grey. The coot and the rail, with the red-winged blackbird, nest there, and in the autumn flocks of wild fowl dip down to its lakes and run-ways, and great droves of reed birds swarm like bees above the nodding rushes. Flat as the still sea the tops of the rushes stretch out for miles, glittering in the sun — a huge monotone not the less beautiful because despised and neglected by man. Very beautiful are the marshes to those who have lived beside them and, through many years, have known the charm of their repose.

Perhaps repose is the secret of the River's attraction, also. The lines of the uplands, the banks, the meadows, the water, all lie easily and quietly, and in their horizontal repetitions create the feeling of rest. There are no abrupt broken lines, no perpendicular breaks in the scheme. Nothing jars or startles or utters a discordant note. You drift to the sea by the flat lines of the bordering uplands as readily as by the lines of the stream, and the scene levels out as effectively on the marshes as on the quiet waters of the Lower Bay. The flat lands with their high sky and restful horizon ring have always been the liveable and the lovable lands wherever located.

Far up the River, near the foot of the blue hills, there is a more abrupt and perhaps a more picturesque setting for the stream. It breaks through cloves and steep valleys, winds under abrupt cliffs, and falls down steps of shale in moderate little cascades. But it never is, at any time, a brawling mountain stream with a bowlder bed and plunging, roaring falls. There is a sound of rapid running water, occasionally a little churning and gurgling; but usually only the plaintive soothing murmur of a stream that is quietly running away to the sea. The steep banks of shale with their mosses, lichens, flowers, stunted cedars and trailing vines are quite as picturesque as those found elsewhere. Moreover, the trees grow thick here in spaces and the meadows entirely disappear in favor of side hills and farm uplands. It is a wilder country than down below, more stimulating, less restful perhaps, but farther from the crowd, nearer to the pure fountain head of nature in the hills.

Up in these hills the River starts out, like all youth, with purity, alacrity and considerable noise. For some miles the stream runs clear and swift through wood and valley, then is caught in mill ponds, where it stagnates, then falls over now neglected dams into beds of stone, and once more runs on through underbrush and willows. All its contributing streams, in degree, do likewise. But the South Branch and the Millstone quite change its character and give it a different look. Draining many miles of farm lands they, naturally, carry to the main stream their burdens of red shale and silt, and, after rains, the whole River turns almost as red as the Colorado. When the side streams are all in, when the broadened River passes Bound Brook, the drainage from town and factory begins to pollute the stream. Yet still it clears itself somewhat and goes over the Five Mile Dam with a transparent gleam and a low roar to be heard half a mile away. At the Landing it meets the in-pushing tide. The tide still wells up to the Rapids and stops there just as it has always done. Then with the ebb the whole volume goes slowly down under the Great Bridge, down past the city of New Brunswick, the bluffs of pine and the long stretches of marsh, down past the noisy South Amboy, out upon Raritan Bay, and so, by the Sandy Hook to the wind-tossed ocean.

[Doug Vitale]

From the mountains to the sea the River loses in life, vivacity of movement, purity of color; but it gains in volume, in depth, in restfulness. The lower reaches of the stream stretch out in width and lie still. The water is jade-colored but that does not perceptibly mar its reflections. The morning sun shows here in flashes of silver almost as brightly as on a mountain lake, and the afternoon light streams down the valley, glances from the River's surface, and strikes the arches of the Great Bridge in flashes of gold. The whole valley is flooded with light at sunset — that warm mellow light that gilds the most barren landscape and for the moment turns it into fairyland. The sun is scarcely gone before the moon is up, and the moonlight and the twilight, fighting not for mastery but blending softly with each other, make the lover's light of early evening. The River responds in tones of old rose and silver, becomes opaline and amethystine, and finally shades off into a night purple. The angels' pathway of the moon weaves and ravels on the stream, the stars come forth and shine upon its surface, the night wind steals softly along the sedges and the rushes. The stream seems like the Golden River in Elfland.

Not always thus the mood of nature on the River. Storms from the land come down with rushing winds and peals of thunder, storms from the sea drive in with clouds of rain and whistling voices. The River turns leaden grey, rises in leaden waves with crests of white, drives with the wind in shivering sheets or is pounded and pitted with falling rain. The meadow grasses, the willows, the elms, even the sturdy oaks, fling out tossed branches on the wind. The black smoke from factories, the white wings of sea gulls, the grey of rain, the flying scud of clouds all go by one with a rush and are swallowed up in the storm-mist. Blown by the eastern gales the sea waters heap up in the Lower Bay, and the tide comes in with unusual volume and push. It rises over the banks, floods over the marshes and meadows, and creeps up along the foot of the bordering slopes. Down to meet it comes the red River swollen by rains and muddy with earth sediments. A freshet results, and all the valley world seems for a time afloat, adrift, inundated. Thus for a day and a night, and then the waters ebb away and go down to the sea, the meadows dry out, the bushes and grasses shake themselves free and grow the faster for their muddy bath.

The great storms come in the winter and with them sometimes clouds of snow that turn the River into a dark flashing purple winding through a world of white. The marshes and the meadows, the uplands and the fields are all robed in white. The bare limbs of the elms, the wine-red leaves of the oaks, the dark green of the cedars lift above the snow mantle and answer the purple of the River. Gradually the River chokes with floating ice, freezes over, and is covered with newly-fallen snow. Then come the stillness of the winter cold, the glitter of the snow, the clearness of the air, the brilliancy of the stars. The River and its valley seem sleeping, hibernating under the blanket of snow. There seems no life. But beauty still remains. The glorious light, the delicate hues of the snow, the blue and purple shadows, the great harmony of the white with the blue of the sky are not merely attractive by contrast with the summer garmenting; they are beautiful in themselves and for themselves. Huge towering peaks of mountains are not absolutely necessary to the beauty of the snow landscape. Here in the River's basin — this flat low-lying basin of the commonplace — the beauty of winter is abundantly obvious to those who will but see.

Is it necessary to insist in this liberal inquiring age that beauty does not lie exclusively in romantic haunts or classic climes or spectacular display in any place? Are not all the arts nowadays insisting upon the beauty of the commonplace, the character of humble things, the dignity of simple truth? The materials that lie at your doorstep are beautiful if you are sensitive enough in impression, broad enough in comprehension, profound enough in sympathy to understand them.

"The meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

Why not then this unpretentious River with its humble valley? Have we grown so far away from nature that the meadow daisy has become merely a mean flower, the water-mirror merely a cheap reflection of a dull original, and the fair white clouds of summer merely a pestilential congregation of vapors? There is something in the ordinary that becomes extraordinary under continued observation; and there is that in the commonplace that has for us an uncommon meaning if we look at it aright. We would not alway be dinned and stunned with the startling. That which is livable finally becomes lovable. We cannot live with that which merely startles or overawes.

But the River was not always so commonplace. There was a time, and not three hundred years ago, when it was unique and was thought a wild, wild stream. No one had been to its head; no one knew how far it traveled. It was then a deeper stream with waters undimmed by the surface drainage from farms. There were no farms. The small open spaces on the meadows were planted with Indian maize; but all the rest of the land was forest. Huge pines grew along the shale cliffs; oak and chestnut and hickory grew on the uplands. There were no towns or bridges or railways or wagon roads. Indian trails ran across the land from river to river, Indian teepees were pitched under the great trees in the meadows, and Indian canoes glanced along the surface of the River. The white man had not yet come, the land was unflayed, the forest and the stream were in their pristine beauty. And then...

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[AndyS]

Thanx Doug. Fast forward almost 100 years later...............!