The Genesee River cuts a gash through the heart of the city of Rochester, and along its banks it shelters a wildness that most of us seldom associate with an urban center.
I thought of this when in the middle of January I set off with my wife Ursula and daughter Abigail to explore the next bridge along the Genesee River. Or, more exactly, what I thought was the next bridge, on Smith Street. To get there we headed west on the 104, south on Lake Ave., then crossed the Driving Park Bridge to St. Paul. As we drove south on St. Paul, Ursula noticed a sign for a park near the river and then what looked like a railroad bridge that I hadn’t known was there. So rather than continue on to Smith St., I turned around and we went to check out the park.
The park itself was down Brewer St., a steep road that dead ended at the river. The first thing we noticed when we parked were thousands of crows roosting on the trees. Their raucous cries gave a weird, unworldly feel to the scene, conjuring up a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. When confronted with such a large group of them it’s easy to understand why a flock of these birds is more properly called a “murder” of crows. They gather together in the winter in such large groups to find safety in numbers from predators such as owls, but they’ve become somewhat a scourge to some in downtown Rochester, prompting the city to spend thousands of dollars to try and get rid of them. Their immediate effect on us was to make us feel as if we were already in a place apart.
At that point, the Genesee cuts a deep canyon between two high banks, and the water runs fast, making it the perfect spot for a Rochester Gas & Electric hydroelectric station at Middle Falls. It turned out that the dam had a walkway over it and was, in fact, part of the Rochester Riverway Trail. Well, my definition of bridge is somewhat loose–any permanent structure that allows people to cross over a river–so I figured we’d stop and explore this as our next bridge.
As it turned out for me of more interest than the walkway itself (which was rather short and not terribly memorable) were the evidences of the natural world in this part of the river. Some were live like the geese swimming, but others were vestiges of animal presence: tracks in the mud, vertebrae (I assume from a deer), and lots of shells scattered among the debris deposited by the river. These shells were the most curious because they were so large, and they were scattered in great abundance along the bank.
I’ve tried searching but I’m not sure what kind of mollusk they are. Given how large they were they reminded me most of oysters, but I suspect they are some kind of freshwater mussel. Perhaps there is someone out there who can enlighten me! (I did find this very interesting article from 1920 on the beneficial effects of cleaning up pollution on the overall health of the flora and fauna of the Genesee River)
Certainly there was lots of evidence of manmade artifacts as well, as the river bank was littered with the detritus of civilization.
One of the more interesting discoveries was when Abigail uncovered a container of rice that looked like it had been secreted in an old pipe. We weren’t sure why it was there. It still looked quite fresh. Kept there perhaps by a homeless person? Or perhaps there was something stashed inside the rice? We didn’t explore it too closely….
And we got a better view of the abandoned railroad bridge that Ursula had spotted when we first were driving in the area. That would be the next bridge to explore!
Yet despite these intrusions of the human on the natural world, there was still an overpowering sense of the eternal presence of nature in the scene. One had the feeling when down by the river on this spot that just as the Genesee River long predated human inhabitants–let alone the city of Rochester–it would also outlast them. In the long run, in the race between mollusks and men, I put my money on the shellfish.
But in the meantime, we had fun exploring this hidden side of the city!
Bridges of the Genesee River 