I’ve been hesitant to write on the subject of the HRWA and it’s possible dissolution. In the past, I have gotten carried away by my passion and what I thought of as arduous zeal has often been characterized as a frenzied outburst. So that said, I’ll try and keep my flippers out of my mouth.
The HRWA has had many faces and, hopefully, will have many faces still. The group started as an access and advocacy group. In the fall of 1990 I solo paddle from NYC to Whitehall, NY, the terminus of the Champlain Canal, and, in the process, was almost arrested on several occasions for camping on public land. I was outraged, what did public land mean anyway?? Returning home, I wrote about my adventure and put together a slide show for the local paddling club. The slide show was a success and soon found myself presenting it at a variety of local venues. Somewhere along the line, the folks at L.L. Bean read one of my articles and invited me to be one of the guest speakers at their 10th annual paddling symposium in Maine. It was in Maine, ironically, where the HRWA was born. At breakfast after my slide show, I met John Middlebrooks, a planning specialist who worked for the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation in NY state. John became our go-to man and was responsible for connecting the dots for our fledgling organization. It was through his efforts that the OPRHP, PIPC, DEC, The Hudson Greenway Council, Scenic Hudson, Sloop Clearwater and the Dutchess County Planning Department were all in attendance when we connived our first, formal meeting with the state at the Bear Mountain Lodge on January, 1992.
The organization’s face changed soon after that first meeting and we slowly morphed from an advocacy group to a paddling club. There was much dissension in our ranks about some of our more social and sometimes non-Hudson related activities. Maybe the naysayers were right. Still, I feel it was all our activities that fueled our volunteer base. You could always count on even the dullest work project to turn into a party. When we built the Croton Point campsite we had approximately 25 people turning out for the combo paddle / camp-out / BBQ / work weekend. The park was so impressed with our group and our intentions that they sent over a man with a bulldozer to speed things up. I must point out that once the naysayers got their way and we suspended our non-Hudson, non-advocacy activities, the volunteer pool dried up and has never returned to those enthusiastic levels.
The next face change came when we picked up NYCkayaker. Again, many in our group thought we were diverging from our mission statement by getting into the internet business. I didn’t understand that criticism at all. Fortunately, neither did Cliff Landsman and Craig Poole who set up and kept the whole thing running. Good spot here for me to salute Jeremy Speer who — if memory serves — holds the record for the most years of manning the ship; also a special thanks to Rich Kulawiec, the gentleman currently hosting NYCkayaker.
The next controversy, believe it or not, was right after Ian Giddy accomplished his super human task of writing up the Waterway guide. Many in the group felt that HRWA was an advocacy group and shouldn’t be in the publishing business. I suppose there is merit in their criticism. It was a lot of work, updating the guide, mailing it out, etc. Still the guide creates massive amounts of name recognition, PR, revenue, clout, and just plain old good karma; and that’s a currency that should not be given away lightly. Yes, the guide was and is a lot of work; and in the past, we have subbed out some of that work using paid volunteers. The guide should be updated. Further, it should be expanded and put on-line on our website, so that pages can be printed out, making trip planing for our members even easier.
As far as Bronck Island is concerned, I would prefer passing it on to a management group like the Greenway or Scenic Hudson. In the past, as we developed the HRWA, several pieces of property had been offered to us, and we passed on them. I did not feel then, nor do I feel now, that the organization was ever set up to manage real estate.
Realistically, for an organization to stay vital, it must change it’s face every few years. But if I understand the current thinking there is no need to evolve any further because all the work has been done. I must take issue with that. In our original mission statement, our primary goal was to establish a water trail along the Hudson River by maintaining wilderness campsites approximately 10 to 15 miles apart. Is that done?? Succeeding with that phase, the idea was to expand north through Lake Champlain to the Canadian border and west through the Mohawk River and Erie Canal to the Great Lakes. Are all these pieces really in place??? No, our work isn’t done.
What is needed is for the HRWA to not only change it’s face yet again, but to reclaim it’s face of old. Access issues still abound. Developers will never stop trying to develop and, to a certain degree, exploit waterfront exclusivity for the profitable few, rather then promoting access for all. The HRWA, at one time, was leading the fight for waterfront access. Where were we during Yonkers? Insurance issues continue to be a problem. The HRWA could serve as an umbrella group, working out insurance issues for local community paddling groups and events. New paddlers are continually entering the sport. The HRWA was, and should be again, a disseminator of information. What happened to our seminars and cold water workshops? We have a marvelous webpage. Why isn’t it being utilized for issues and information? What happened to our presence at the trade shows?? When HRWA was being formed, the leaders here in NYC made many trips to Albany and various upstate locations. Where then, when the NYC Water Trail Association was being formed and looking for input, were the HRWA leaders from upstate and Albany???
For those of you who feel that the work on the HRWA isn’t yet complete, please attend the meeting at St. Philip’s Church on Route 9D in Garrison on November 8th at 1 PM.
I’ll be there. BRING A VOTE!!
