"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,

Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,

Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,

Others will see the islands large and small;

Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high,

A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,

Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

 

--Walt Whitman, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

I've always wanted to enter New York harbor by boat. Crossing the beautiful Verrazano Narrows bridge by car for the first time, a couple of years ago, accentuated that desire. I gazed over the railing at the barges and merchant ships, the sailboats and tugs, and the busy ferries leaving white wakes as they sped toward their destinations across the magnificent harbor, toward the blue towers of Manhattan in the distance, and felt filled with a longing I didn't even understand.

Recently we were in Brooklyn visiting a dear friend. She suggested that we walk down to the Bush Terminal Pier, no longer used for shipping, but recently developed into a low-key waterfront park. We walked down the slanting Brooklyn streets toward the water, along the abandoned warehouses and railroad sidings, and finally out onto the pier.

There, at water-level, we were much closer to Manhattan than from the bridge, but with a similar view: the Statue of Liberty at far left, the new Freedom Tower of lower Manhattan at the right. We were nearly alone; a couple lay on the rocks listening to soft music, and a hooded man sat leaning on his bicycle and gazing across the water at the New Jersey docks.

I looked at the city, and thought about the few times I had been in a boat on this water. I had taken ferries across the Hudson from New Jersey, but had never been in the greater harbor beyond Manhattan. "When I was five, the first time I ever came to the city, my grandparents took me on a boat that went around the island of Manhattan," I told K.

"Yes, the Circle Line," she answered. "It's still running."

"I've always wanted to enter the harbor by boat," I said. "Maybe it's because of my ancestors who came to Brooklyn in the late 1800s -- I think I've always wanted to feel what it might have felt like for them, as much as that's possible now."

She thought for a moment and then said: "There's a ferry from here to Far Rockaway - it goes under the Verrazano and back - we can do it tomorrow!"

 

And so, we did. We left early the next morning and rode the commuter ferry -- a fast catamaran that, astoundingly, costs the same as a subway ticket -- out of the harbor, through the Narrows, and then east along Coney Island to dock at Far Rockaway, a narrow island that faces the open ocean.

From the pier, we walked across the island -- barely a ten minute affair -- stopping to buy a coffee and a bagel with lox to eat on the ocean-side beach, also barely-populated at that hour on a weekday.

After our breakfast on the sand, we walked barefoot on the water's edge for a while, foamy waves lapping at our ankles, as gulls flew overhead and sandpipers scampered with the incoming and outgoing water, and then headed back to the pier for the return journey and my long-awaited entry into the harbor under dramatic clouds heavy with rain.

I too many and many a time cross’d the river of old,

Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,

Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the rest in strong shadow...

 

When I posted some pictures of this trip on Instagram, my friend Lorianne of Hoarded Ordinaries pointed me to Walt Whitman's poem, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," which was included in the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass. As I read, I was moved, and felt the distance between the poet and myself collapse, just as he had written a century and a half ago.

I thought about my great-grandfather, who had come from England around the time Whitman wrote his poem, and had become a jeweler in Brooklyn -- the maker of a gold ring that was passed down to me, that I always wear now on the little finger of my right hand.

What is it then between us?

What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

 

Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not,

I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,

I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it,

I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me...

But my thoughts were also personal. I occurred to me that New York has functioned as a kind of touchstone, with my experiences here forming a series that mirrors different stages of my life, and growth; how the intensity and excitement I've always felt in this, my favorite of all cities, used to be accompanied by the insecurities of the small-town country girl that I once was, unsure of how to dress, positive that my inexperience and trepidation were obvious to anyone who saw me.

So many memories! Peering into the magical animated windows of Fifth Avenue shops when I was five, matched by the enchantment of seeing My Fair Lady and Camelot. Walking through scary dark streets near Times Square with a long-haired college boyfriend, now dead, during the gritty days of the 1970s, on our way to see "Fritz the Cat." The seductive energy of walking down Fifth Avenue many years later, on the day I received an offer from a New York publisher -- and how I had turned that offer down and driven out of the city, knowing I'd down the right thing, that the strings attached weren't worth it, or right for me. Marching through the streets in anti-war demonstrations, and looking down at them from the Empire State Building, as a little girl, or the World Trade Center in my forties; going back on a somber day to pay my respects after 9/11.

I thought of some of my closest friends, who've always lived here, and all the things we've done together: the art that fills the museums; the music that fills the theaters and clubs; the food from every corner of the world; the stores where you can buy, or at least look at, just about anything. There have been parties and weddings and funerals, countless meals in ethnic restaurants and New York delis, countless slices of pizza bought on the street. And even though I've become a city person myself, and live in a quite-different large city in a quite-different country, New York (where I've never lived) is still home, in the sense of a place to which I'll always return, a place I hope will remain, not just throughout my own lifetime  but, like Whitman, hundreds of years from now, for those who will come after me, because the anonymity and shelter of the great city are also major parts of its identity, just as they shape ours.

Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hemm’d Manhattan?

River and sunset and scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide?

The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter?

 

Will New York last? I looked at lower Manhattan, where a single tower has replaced the fallen twins. The waters of the harbor, too, will rise -- K. pointed out places that were devastated by Hurricane Sandy, which is unlikely to be an isolated freak event now that the oceans and land are in the grip of global warming. 

I don't know. As the ferry passed under the Verrazano and we entered the harbor, I wasn't thinking about any of that anymore; I was just feeling the wind in my hair, looking at the happy faces of the other passengers on the upper deck, none of whom seemed jaded by what was probably a much more routine journey. We overtook a tall white sailboat, and the impossibly dense skyline of the city came closer and closer: a fifty-dollar experience for the price of a subway ticket. Because that's New York, too, where some of the best memories have come to me free and unexpected, and through the hands of people I've loved.

It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,

Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,

Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,

Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d,

Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried,

Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

Comments

[am]

Thank you for these glimpses into your life and so many lives. What an unexpected strong upwelling of emotion as I read your post and looked closely at your photos. My father traveled from Minnesota to New York City and back with his father in the 1930s, when my father has just finished high school. My father brought my mother and me to see New York City in 1982 when I was 32 years old and had just finished college. Thank you so much for this reminder of how so many of us are connected through time and poetry and place.

[Martine]

Very beautiful, moving post, Beth. I was right there with you on that ferry.

[Peter]

This IS a beautiful post, Beth. It's interesting that you're reflecting on New York's timelessness rather than the characteristics, like energy, that people usually associate with the place.

[Natalie]

Wonderful post and gloriously melancholy photos,Beth. Did you visit Teju and Karen in Brooklyn? That was such a great encounter (how many years ago?) when we all met up there for the first time.

I remember various arrivals in and departures from New York harbor by ocean liner from and to Europe, back in those days. Always a thrill. Airports and airplanes never ever provide that kind of thrill.

[Dick]

Ckassic Cassandra, dear Beth. Beautiful and illuminating.

[Robb]

Kia Ora Beth.... Ataahua e hoa! Your moments, words, and observations blended around Mr. Whitman. Perfect.
Arohanui,
Robb

[Rachel Barenblat]

This is so beautiful, Beth. Thank you.

[Roderick Robinson]

I arrived by propellor-driven plane, courtesy Icelandic Airlines (very cheap), but my wife and daughter arrived four months later by boat (ship would be more nautically correct) since she was bringing our possessions to the New World. Both were delighted to be stepping on to the US alive. The huge ship, the United States, had been ravaged by storms mid-Atlantic, the ship's bridge had been smashed by monster waves and the passengers - who included Gunter Grass - had been forced to help man the damaged vessel. My wife was very, very seasick.

But their travails were not over. The New York docks were on strike and there was no one to manage the two big trunks. Nor was there anything to eat down by the docks. My four-year-old daughter proved to be the saving grace: in a loud voice she said she hated America and wanted to go home. Even in hard-nosed New York citizens can be touched and a passerby mobilised a family member with his pick-up who transported my woebegone relations to the hotel I had booked.

Six years later we returned to the Old World. The children (we'd added one in the interim) went ahead by plane, supervised by a stewardess hired for the occasion. Our possessions had multiplied and included a car; my wife and I were compelled to go by ship. Another large ocean greyhound, the SS France, making its last transatlantic crossing and destined for the breaker's yard. The logistics of getting all this stuff aboard left me completely exhausted, beyond Walt Whitman or any other poet. Unable to reflect on what I'd learned in this very foreign country I was leaving behind. I stood on deck, wholly knackered, as the France made for the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Then I became uneasy. Surely the ship's mast was going to foul the underside of the bridge. Should I tell someone? In fact I was too tired to accept this imaginary responsibility. The ship glided east, cleared the bridge and a new part of my life began.

All things being equal I'd say you chose the better, more civilised marine option.

[Duchesse]

(I am not sure why an earlier comment failed to show up.) This beautiful post reminds me of the maritime aspect of New York City, one that is so easily lost amid the canyons cast by skyscrapers. Some visitors never see the river, let alone the ocean. Yet it is in the air, and when I get on the water, I am always moved and much closer to its history.

[Brita Rose]

Lovely piece. Conjures up much of what I feel when I spend time at the water's edge in Brooklyn at our local Bush Terminal Park, and is beautifully blended with Whitman's reflections.

[Beth]

AM: Thank you for your comment. I'm glad this post seems to have stirred a lot of memories for different people, and appreciate hearing about your experiences and those of your father. We are connected through time and place - as Whitman wrote so eloquently.

Thanks, Martine.

Hi Peter -- well, from that distance, you don't feel the energy as much as a sense of coming and going, and with the Statue of Liberty and the changed skyline of lower Manhattan, there are a lot of associations and questions about what people must have felt seeing this particular view. I don't think the harbor is quite as bustling as when Whitman was alive, certainly not with small boats. It was actually pretty quiet and reflective to be on that Brooklyn pier.

Thanks, Natalie. Yes, we were with Karen but TC was in Norway. And I agree - it's not at all the same entering New York from the highway or air.

Thanks Dick, Robb, Rachel.

Robbie, thanks for yet another great story. I feel for your wife and daughter on their totally non-auspicious arrival after such a harrowing voyage! And for you, leaving so exhausted. I've never had the slightest desire to cross the ocean by ship, in fact I find the prospect rather frightening, and I have a tendency to get seasick. A ferry I can usually handle, though when they go very far into open ocean I take some dramamine!

Duchesse, sorry you had trouble commenting - I don't know why that happens form time to time. I agree -- many people never think of NYC as a major port or consider how close the ocean is, though most visitors do cross into it via a bridge or tunnel. But the coming and going are tied to its history, as you say. Thanks for this comment.

Brita, thank you - I'm glad to hear form someone who lives nearby and visits that pier often. And I'm grateful that what I wrote feels appropriate to you, since you know it so much better than I do. Thanks for writing.