Fulbright riffs, 1991 — day 60, Sunday July 28th
I had been apprehensive about today’s schedule, though I was to be proved wrong. When Rowland announced that he was organising a canoeing trip with eight of us along the Delaware River my first response was to fear mis-hap (remembering what happened on his caving expedition a few weeks ago). Best not take the camera! My second was to query the ‘joining instructions’. There are indeed some last-minute calls to replace those who have chosen to drop out for one reason or another , and he has already forgotten to tell me that I was supposed to pick up two of the party before 8. Even so, by 8.40 we’re ready to depart, in two cars with three canoes lashed onto the top of the Oldsmobile.
Our excursion companions are drawn from Rowland’s circle of this year’s students. They are mostly about 20 years old and address Rowland as “Mr Bennett”. Our destination is the Delaware Water Gap in the Appalachian Mountains. It’s about a ninety-minute drive.
In the first of the three canoes are Bernardo from Malaga, with his German girlfriend Sonya; in the second, Rowland with Maria from Ecuador (she’s in business rather than working as an au pair like the others) and Karen from Munich. I’m paired with Louise, a lively lass from Liverpool. She’ll be 21 tomorrow and hardly stops talking all day. She’s been spending this year working out who she is and what she wants to do but has now decided to go to university then into journalism. Karen is into tourism and all things German, Sonya is into Bernardo (and vice versa), while Maria tells me a lot about Ecuador and its music, such as the sad genre of dance music called danzante that can be traced back to the Incas.
We paddle gently down the Delaware to where we left one of the two cars, with frequent stops for swimming, eating and drinking. It takes seven hours during which time we get well sun-burned despite plastering ourselves with lotion.
The river is low and there will not be any white water excitement, but at the first sign of surface disturbance Louise drops her paddle and I have to clamber back over the rocks to retrieve it. Later in the day, Rowland and I swap canoes and I manage not to see some submerged rocks which we duly nudge, inoffensively, which momentarily raises the pulse.
Further down the Gap, the 400-million-year-old Silurian strata (part of the Shawangunk Formation) are tilted almost vertically, another reason for not looking where we’re going, daydreaming about life before agriculture, industry and written culture.
When we get to the car, Rowland and Maria drive off to retrieve the second car and I am left behind to tell jokes to the rest of the party, but we’ve all had a bit too much sun and fresh air. Besides, they are all more interested in talking about Les Miz. (They have to explain to me that this is the musical, Les Miserables, which has been having another successful re-run on Broadway).
The early evening air is beautifully clear: on the distant horizon, as the road descends from the hills, we catch the glint of the Twin Towers on Manhattan.