Author: Brownski

Piermont is a cool little town. It sits on the southwestern edge of the Tappan Zee, the wide spot on the Hudson River that forms a sort of a quasi-lake near the NY/NJ border.

It has cool restaurants and shops, a bunch of expensive new condos and marinas full of fancy boats. But it also has neighborhoods filled with charming little houses and people who have lived there since long before the hipsters arrived.

The pier that gives the town its name is now a park where people can walk out and enjoy the views up and down the Hudson. It’s location and ambiance makes it a destination for road bikers from the city on summer weekends. People love Piermont; pretty much all people.

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This offseason, my paddling explorations have been curtailed by other commitments. On Saturday morning I had business in Albany. I figured if we got back on the road by mid-afternoon we’d have time to squeeze in a short paddle on the way home.

There is a good variety of choices for kayaking between Albany and my home in the southern Hudson Valley. With only a few hours to get out, I settled on a stretch of flatwater for kayaking near Saugerties: the mouth of Esopus Creek. I’d had an eye on this stretch of water for a while. Last season my curiousity grew when I paddled Rondout Creek, just a little further south.

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Last year I found myself part of a captive audience for a long presentation from the Rockland County Historical Society. It covered a lot of local area history. One story that caught my attention was about the collapse of a couple of blocks of the town of Haverstraw (originally called Haverstroo by the Dutch) in a massive landslide in 1906.

I knew that brick making was a major industry in the area but hadn’t given much thought to why that was. An abundance of natural clay deposits was the reason the brick factories were located in Haverstraw. Extensive mining of the clay more or less directly under the town led to erosion that eventually caused a giant landslide.

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