Waiting for the crisis to pass, our thoughts go out to friends and loved-ones who also shelter in place. Old friends pass away, people we loved and admired. Immobilized for the time being, we can revisit destinations, near and far. join me in celebrating the joys of Quaranteam travel, the hope that these diversions might inspire us to value things we had taken for granted, to draw strength, wisdom and compassion from deeper engagements with nature.
. (Image and text were featured in the exhibition James McElhinney. Discover the Hudson Anew, curated by Laura Vookles. Hudson River Museum. Yonkers, New York. September 13, 2019 to February 16, 2020. Published also as a limited-edition in Hudson Highlands. North River Suite Volume One. Needlewatcher Editions. New York. 2018)
George Washington Bridge from Fort Tryon Park. Monday August 1, 2016
Construction of the George Washington Bridge, which opened in 1932, widened a notch in the basaltic diabase cliffs to accommodate the roadway. In 1937 New York and New Jersey created the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, with Monument Park (Fort Lee) as its southernmost terminus. Alternately identified in Revolutionary War documents as Fort Constitution, the fortified position was designed to operate in tandem with Fort Washington in Manhattan, to lay down fields of fire hindering the movement of British warships and transports. Lacking sufficient water-batteries, each position had been situated at too great an elevation for the plan to work. Stretching across the Hudson was a chevaux-de-frise of sunken ships and stout timbers designed to pierce the wooden hull of any ship that might run onto them. What remains of this obstacle lies directly below the deck of today’s bridge. Ascending the Harlem River on Saturday November 16, 1776, Hessian and British troops attacked Continental units defending three hills between Spuyten Duyvil Creek and Jeffrey’s hook. Across the river at Fort Lee, George Washington watched in horror as his positions were overrun.
Hessian Map of the Battle of Fort Washington. Saturday, November 16, 1776. New York Public Library. (Reproduced under Fair Use etc.)
For the bicentennial of the American Revolution, parking lots and an interpretive center were built. Earthworks were restored to re-create the feeling of an eighteenth-century fort. When I first visited the site, in the 1990s, the fiberglass revetments had faded and were cracking. Recent improvements replaced these with timbers. A blockhouse and cabin were built, along with a coastal battery. On the anniversary of the battle, artillerymen fire salutes from the cannons, rattling Manhattan windowpane. Fact-checking another one of these posts I discovered that one of my fourth-great-grandfathers had been at Fort Lee/Constitution that fateful November day. On a return dated September 1776, Benjamin Mills’s (1738-1829) is listed as captain. One of the Connecticut minutemen who took up arms during the Lexington Alarm in 1775, Mills commanded a battalion at the Battle of Trenton. From what I can gather, rank in the Nutmegger militia was more a job-description than a mark of status. the fact that sergeant is inscribed on his tombstone suggests a low opinion of officers, despite having been one himself.
Looking southeast from a masonry terrace below Billings Lawn in Fort Tryon Park. Henry Hudson Parkway (Route 9A) runs along the western shore of Manhattan between the Bronx and the Battery. Crossing the George Washington Bridge, US Route 1 and Interstate 95 link Key West Florida to Kittery, Maine. Maritime traffic extends one-hundred-thirty miles up the Hudson River to the port of Albany. Beyond that barges and pleasure-craft navigate canals and waterways into the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River. What one might take as just a scenic urban vista is in fact a palimpsest of restless human mobility.
George Washington Bridge from Cloisters Lawn Terrace. Thursday May 28, 2015
Check out April 2020 Quaranteam Traveler Dispatches
(A preview of SKETCHBOOK TRAVELER by James L. McElhinney (c) 2020. Schiffer Publishing).
Copyright James Lancel McElhinney (c) 2020 Texts and images may be reproduced (with proper citation) by permission of the author. To enquire, send a request to editions@needlewatcher.com