Life as a River

What's a first-time father, at age 41, fresh out of the Alaskan wilds where he counted fish for wildlife agencies, supposed to do for work in New York City, months after the collapse of Lehman Brothers?

For Connecticut native Mike Freeman, a reflective Gen X guy who feels more comfortable sidestepping grizzly bears in the wild than corporate stiffs on Wall Street, the logical answer was to paddle a canoe down 300 miles of the Hudson River in two weeks and write a book about it.

Drifting: Two Weeks on the Hudson isn't a travelogue. Freeman's first book, published by State University of New York last year, is a candid account of his attempt to make some sense out the looming recession as he accepts the responsibilities of becoming a new father at what's traditionally been the start of middle age.

Freeman looks at the river as both a metaphor for America's journey through its own midlife crisis-uncertain after 9/11 and shaken by Wall Street's financial meltdown-and the real-world environmental damage done by economic development. He traces this damage from colonial settlers and tree loggers through the manufacturing powerhouse years of the Industrial Age to General Electric's PCB dumping days and ongoing clean-ups, to current-day tourism and small-scale agricultural production, which herald a potential renaissance/recovery in some areas.

Full of personal musings and historical and literary anecdotes, the narrative reads rather like a night in the bar with political satirist P.J. O'Rourke and nostalgic Marley and Me author John Grogan, joined by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, the hot, flat, and smaller-earth guy. One minute Freeman is quoting Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville, the next it's Monty Python and Buddy Holly.

"The East is alive and growing wilder by increments," he writes, substantiating it with evidence of the wildlife and terrain he encountered.

Having canoed thousands of miles of southeastern Alaska, Freeman told me he never felt in danger among the natural elements. He was more in fear of bureaucrats or police badgering him for permits, which never happened. He traveled light, with an Old Town canoe, a tent, and a stash of energy bars, camping out most nights, and hiking inland occasionally for a hotel bed, shower, and restaurant meal.

His trip started in the Adirondack Highlands, down the white water rapids where men once bucked massive logs to saw mills and old dams are being removed to restore native fish populations. He takes us through the brick piles and decaying factories of America's first industrial ghost towns and the home of Rip Van Winkle, beyond the mysteries of West Point and the majestic bluffs captured by the Hudson school painters, which helped to define how Americans wed God to nature. He reflects on love and family after a night on land in trendy Hudson with his future wife Karen and their infant daughter. Then it's back on the water, through the flat, broad estuary that we now view from the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Ruminating on everything from the Indian and Revolutionary wars to fur trapping, clear-cutting, and log bucking to his post-paddle discussions with Bill McKibben, author and founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org, Freeman argues with himself over how environmental and economic sustainability cannot be an oxymoron, that conservation and capitalism have to co-exist.

"My generation is tainted by environmental absolutism-it's either the capitalist's solution or the hippies', not a collaboration of the two," he says. "Millennials [people born between 1980 and 2000] seem better at dealing with both; maybe they have the solutions."

It's an enjoyable read for those of us who don't remember American history and sociology, or how the engines of American capitalism and conservation have shaped us.

Why is this Hudson River book, written by some guy who now lives in Newport, Rhode Island, considered local dirt? Now a father of two girls, one almost 3 years old, the other almost 1, Freeman hopes to paddle and write about Connecticut waterways and river towns and coastal communities, focusing on the dramatic changes that 400 years of settlement have brought to our region. He plans to again blend physical descriptions from his canoe with the historical importance of each place, musing about how the natural and human communities are adapting to the modern world.

Let's hope we see a tanned, contemplative fellow paddling an Old Town canoe up the Mystic River, the Thames, or Jordan Cove, hanging out in the Niantic estuary, along the shoreline, or on the Connecticut River in coming months. If his next effort is anything like his first book, it will be well worth our time.

Drifting: Two Weeks on the Hudson by Mike Freeman (SUNY Press, hardcover) is $24.95; available by visiting www.sunypress.edu.

Suzanne Thompson's "CT Outdoors" column was selected best agriculture-related series in a weekly newspaper in 2009 by the Connecticut Agricultural Information Council. Catch her weekly radio show on WLIS 1420 AM and WMRD 1150 AM, Tuesdays from 12:30 to 1 p.m., Saturdays at 1 p.m., or Sundays from 7 to 7:30 a.m. She can be reached at sthompson@wliswmrd.net.