Will We Ever Swim in the East River?
A new essay for Vital City
The print edition of my latest short story, “Greyhound,” is available for online purchase from Serpent Club Press here.
In 1679, a Dutch journalist named Jasper Danckaerts visited New York City, looked around, and started writing.
“It is not possible,” Danckaerts recorded, “to describe how this bay swarms with fish, both large and small, whales, tunnies and porpoises, whole schools of innumerable other fish.”
I think of Danckaerts, whose account is conveyed in Eric Sanderson’s essential New York natural history Manahatta, every day during my walks along the East River, a body of water whose status over the course of modern history has been relegated to the butt of a Seinfeld joke. In fact, the current state of New York’s unapproachable waterways is a historical aberration, a blip in the long natural history of the region. And I, more than anything, want to jump in.
I’ve been thinking about all of this as the weather warms up here in New York City and I’m reminded yet again of the force of nature, its indomitable presence both on the street and in my heart, especially after witnessing the spectacular beauty of the California coastline on a visit last month. It’s a fallacy to presume that nature doesn’t exist here—the island of Manahatta would have been the most ecologically biodiverse of any of America’s national parks had its environment been preserved—but there’s a certain day-to-day integration of the natural world in urban life on the west coast which is sorely lacking here. I’d like to remind readers that such cohesion, as surprising as it may seem, is indeed achievable here in New York, too.
This premise undergirds my latest essay, “Will We Ever Swim in the East River?” published yesterday in Vital City. Do New Yorkers have it in us to reimagine the city as one embedded in, and not separated from, the natural world? Will we ever dare to jump?
I want to thank the team at Vital City for supporting the piece. You can check it out here, and, as always, spread the word if you like what you read.
Happy summer, everyone. Back with more soon.
Nicky
