dr_whom

I know they say you can't cross the same river twice or whatever, but I get very excited about the fact that you can. When I visited Cooperstown for fieldwork in 2008, I wasn't excited about the Baseball Hall of Fame; I was excited about the fact that I got to cross the Susquehanna River right at its source—especially since earlier that month I'd driven across the Susquehanna at almost its endpoint, the I-95 bridge where it empties into the Chesapeake Bay. It felt like I had accomplished some epic journey, making it to the source of this mighty river at a lake up in the hills.

Anyway yesterday Cendri and I were driving through the Adirondacks and I saw this sign and audibly yelped and I immediately stopped the car and asked her to photograph me with it:

And I mean, it's not even accurate? There are varying claims as to what counts as the real source of the Hudson, but it's definitely not the place where Route 28N just happens to cross it. And I knew that. But I still got way more emotional about it than I expected to—this stream in the middle of nowhere is responsible for the existence of the city of New York. I'm very thankful I had someone with me to document the encounter.