Changed by a trip along Mohawk
“Are you camping here?” the New York State Trooper asked.
His cruiser lights were shining on my tent. Denial didn’t seem plausible.
“Yes?” I said, more question than answer.
A snowplow turnaround at Mohawk Spring State Forest isn’t exactly a camper’s paradise and the trooper wanted to know more. I like a nice campsite as much as the next guy and if I hadn’t rolled in at dusk, I would have searched for someplace better.
“Stay safe,” the trooper said after hearing more than he wanted about my trip.
I’ve always had a river in my life. As a child of the Catskills, it was the Hudson. My world was small then and had two parts — this side of the river, and the other side.
I’m no longer a child, my world is bigger, and my river is the Mohawk. I run to it, bike beside it, and canoe its waters. I’ve long wanted to find the Mohawk’s source and follow the river back to my Electric City home.
This September, after a family vacation in the Adirondack town of Inlet, I bikepacked from
Inlet on the TOBIE Trail, then on backroads crossed the Moose and Black rivers to the Tug Hill plateau. Mohawk Hill, 23 miles north of Rome, is the Mohawk’s official source. That’s how I found myself camping beside a noisy road at Mohawk Springs State Forest.
The next morning was chilly and rainy. After packing my bike I followed a gravel road west to a small stream near a meadow of goldenrod. That stream was the infant Mohawk River. I wanted to explore more but the land was posted and sunrise door-knocking seemed unwise.
The clouds vanished and the morning exploded in sunlight as I pedaled through farm country, the Mohawk tucked behind the trees across the fields. In the three days of my trip, I would spend more time on the bike than I would sleeping. That is not a complaint.
In a store in West Leyden, the young woman behind the count
er fed a fussy baby before ringing me up. Outside, I sipped coffee while truck drivers looked over my loaded bike.
I followed the fledgling river south in the gathering day to where the two branches of the Mohawk meet. I wanted to know all of the river, so I followed the west branch up into the hills just outside Ava.
Mennonite kids played with a cart near the source of the Mohawk’s west branch. I turned and flowed downhill with the river as it gained strength.
Near Westernville, the river flows through farm fields. It was my last glimpse of it in its natural form as the river is dammed near Rome to form Lake Delta. I ate copious amounts of fried food from the Lake Delta State Park snack bar and looked out over the beach and water. A few picnic tables away, a family grilled lunch and tossed a Frisbee in the grass. Soft, salsa music played from their radio and the dad smiled and shook his head when he looked at my bike.
I thought of the Mennonites I’d seen where the river began.
I’d come to see the river but saw my state.
The river gives everything it has to the Erie Canal at Rome and there isn’t really a Mohawk anymore. I rode the Empire State Trail east and slowly, like Lazarus, the Mohawk rose again, fed by a combination of canal overflow and Oriskany
Creek.
I pitched my tent at Lock 20 Canal State Park without police intervention. Other long-distance cyclists rode through and chatted. “What do you use for navigation?” one of them asked. I told him I followed the river.
Two old men sat on a bench near the lock, collecting stories and telling jokes. We talked about the river while fishermen tried their luck in the canal. The sun dropped behind the trees, a soft pink and orange.
I woke the next day with one thing on my to-do list: ride 85 miles home. Near Utica, I lost the Empire Trail or it lost me. I accidentally followed a gravel road for miles that ended abruptly at a tributary to the Mohawk. I unloaded my bags and rock-hopped across before going back for my bike.
Outside Utica, the big, brown river I see several times a week is no bigger than Kaydeross Creek. I followed it through towns I’ve only seen on Thruway signs – Frankfort, Ilion, Mohawk and Little Falls – as the river grew and became something more familiar.
In Amsterdam, I met a young couple riding west on old Schwinns that looked to have been dragged from their parents’ garages. Camping gear crammed into milk crates was held to their bike frames by bungee cords. The young woman leaned back in the grass, munched a carrot and said they were slow because their gear flew out of the crates when they hit a bump. Her tone was partcomplaint, part-bemused understanding that things don’t always go perfectly, that the river makes some unexpected turns. I understood.
Heraclitus tells us no one steps in the same river twice, because it’s not the same river and we’re not the same person. My wife and daughter met me near Rotterdam and we traveled the last miles together. I was grateful they ’d let me go on this crazy trip, grateful they welcomed me back, and grateful that the river had a chance to change me.