FAST TIMES ON THE HUDSON
OUR RAFT LEFT THE INDIAN RIVER behind and entered the Hudson three miles below the Lake Abanakee Dam, outside Indian Lake, and I reflected on how deeply you can absorb a landscape, especially if you traverse it repeatedly for years. I wouldn’t have imagined I’d remember every inch of the Indian River’s whitewater since my last trip down it 10 or 12 years earlier. And in truth I did get confused about what was coming next, but only in the same places I always got confused when I guided on that river and the Upper Hudson Gorge 40 years earlier.
That’s the way it is with the Indian—it’s relentless. So that kind of counts as remembering.
THE INDIAN, AND THE HUDSON River Gorge for the next 14 miles, with its continuous Class III–IV whitewater (depending on water volumes), dominated my working and imaginative life for a decade. Back then, in the early ’80s, all the commercial rafting took place during the six to eight weeks of rain- and snow-melt-swollen runoff in the months of April and May, when temperatures were often in the 30s or 40s and it could be raining, sleeting or snowing.
On this day last August, however, cardinal flowers lined the banks of the Indian and Cedar Ledges below the mouth of the Indian in the Hudson, almost as far as Mink Pond Falls (painted by Winslow Homer, along with other scenes along the river). The leafy understory shaded and darkened the banks where the sun had previously shone on bare ground or unmelted ice. We wore shorts and sandals, instead of wet suits and neoprene booties. Our guide, Asa “Ace” Connor, 26, of Burlington, had a light touch and guided our 14-foot self-bailing raft flawlessly: my wife, Sue Kavanagh; my longtime friend, fellow ex-guide, and North River outdoor recreation legend Dick Carlson; and me. All three had been there in the first bloom of commercial rafting on the Hudson. We
