Beauty and Commerce

Erie Canal, Lock 13
42 56.02 N 074 26.82 W


I've written several times before about how lucky boaters are. There seems to be a veneer of nature and pretty scenes lining the water front in almost all places. The ugliness of the lives of 300 million people are largely out of site. I estimate that 90% of the water fronts we see are pretty and undeveloped, 8% developed but attractive, and only 2% ugly.

Why should that be? The prices for waterfront properties are sky high. One would expect that much more of it would be developed. I'm sure there are many reasons to go with many places. This summer however, I became more aware of a significant factor -- railroads. In New York and Vermont, the railroads bought right of way and laid their tracks right on the shores of the rivers and lakes. I presume that almost all of that activity occurred in the 19th century, before the population was as large as today.

In most cases, the tracks are so close to the shore that there is too little room to build a house or anything in the narrow strip of land. Even if one could build a house in that strip, one would have a very noisy and high traffic railroad line right outside the back door. It is a major deterrent to development of shore front propery. I can hardly be the first to notice this effect. There must be countless real estate agents grinding their teeth in anguished frustration over this durable barrier to waterfront development.

As I write this, we are sandwiched in a valley floor about 1/4 mile wide. It is heavily used. From South to North crossing the valley floor is (1) A RR track (2) NY Route 5S (3) I90 the New York Thruway (4) The remains of the old Erie Canal (5) The river (6) A swampy strip (7) A RR track (8) Another RR track and (9) NY Route 5, (10) A 500 KV power transmission line, the backbone of the New York State grid. Not seen are the pipelines, cables, and fiber optic bundles which I presume are under ground by the dozen. Pretty heavy commercial use. Nevertheless, as I look around I see water, and trees, and greenery. I get only tiny glimpses of all those man made things.

Over the centuries, trees grow up between the tracks and the shore, thus hiding the tracks themselves. Therefore, at least along the Hudson River, the Mohawk River, and the western shore of Lake Champlain, there is indeed a marvelous and very thin veneer of nature lining almost all the shores. Lucky us to see it from the water side.

We have also entered the Mohawk River Valley. Libby and I know from years past how beautiful the vistas are in this valley. The best views are not from the river, they are from the hill tops. Unfortunately, the vistas grow less beautiful every year. That is because fields are being replaced by woods. A valley filled with fields and meadows is much more beautiful than one filled with trees. It was noticeably more open and pretty in our youth. It was stunningly beautiful in the 18th and 19th centuries. We know because we can see the many oil paintings depicting the beauty. Even in the Smithsonian Museum last summer we saw beautiful paintings of the Mohawk Valley. Back then, there were more fields and less forest.



So it's a mixed blessing, the trees that hide the roads, tracks, buildings and ugliness from us when on the river, also hide the beauty of the valley when seen from the hill tops.