THE WAKE OF HISTORY
Much of modern life goes by in a blur as we speed through our daily routine. But on the historic Erie Canal, a slower, quieter reality awaits. New York’s historic 525-mile-long canal system is many things: an analog engineering marvel, a living museum, a historic force for social change and a great cruising ground.
At first, the notion of proceeding hundreds of miles through mostly rural New York State at 10 miles an hour seems absurd. But it grows on you. We found it neither boring nor tedious to float westward across the state on a recent nine-day cruise. Rather, the lack of navigational challenge was oddly soothing as the scenery scrolled by our boat.
Our journey along the placid canal revealed stone ruins of antiquity, farm fields, village main streets and numerous examples of engineering ingenuity. Much of the canal east of Rochester follows natural waterways. On these canalized rivers, we passed upscale housing developments, modest summer camps and cabins and occasionally through remote Bottomland forests where the dense, shadowed
