Musings of a visitor
The river beckons me. It is a life force that attracts me and propels me downstream in its surging waters. Civilization crowds both its banks in all its grandeur and humanity traverses its banks in all its humility, overawed by the pull of the current. It is majestic, it is wide, and it is deep.
Yes, the Hudson River is the life force of New York City. Every morning people are drawn to its banks. Walkers, joggers, mothers with babies in prams and strollers, young and old, men and women, people of many nationalities, black and white. They revel in its company, the river flowing alongside.
Every morning commuters spill out of the many ferries that intersect its waters from the other bank to Battery Park and other destinations in New York. For them the morning ride on the swell of the waters is over as they go to work.
The river is the start of an adventure for holidaymakers as the smallest and the mightiest of ocean liners begin an exciting journey. Ever so often a vast cruise ship laden with waving vacationers on its railings go out to sea. For Heath Slocum it fulfilled the promise of a PGA trophy at the Liberty national Golf Course on its banks. Chesley Sullenberger became a hero by landing his huge plane on its belly on the Hudson in critical moments between life and death.
Yes, it brings death too. Several Italian tourists died when a plane crashed accidentally into the helicopter on a joy ride over Manhattan, sending shock waves far away in Italy.
What impresses me most is the free women who walk, stroll, jog, run in the brightness of the warm august morning, mindless of any care and mindless of the less fortunate women elsewhere who do not have the joy of that liberty. with earphones stuck in their ears, their beautiful, robust, athletic, sturdy bodies, covered as it pleases them in brief comfortable clothing, they know not the indescribable restrictions imposed on women in other parts of the world. I salute the women in the parks, they are the beacons of liberty, of beauty, of form, and god’s grace.
It is the magic of the Hudson
Tagged beauty, hudosn river, liberty, new york, travel, women
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