Rick Van Noy, a son of Titusville, has written a memoir about nature and life, set in our backyard, the Delaware River. The story plays out in the context of two canoe trips Van Noy took, a year apart, from the source of the river in upstate New York back home to Trenton. The book, Borne by the River, was published just last month by Cornell University Press and is recommended reading for anyone who needs a little break from the everyday – contemplating the world as you meander downstream.
A former Pennington School teacher, Van Noy is now a professor of English at Radford University in Virginia. His previous books include Sudden Spring, A Natural Sense of Wonder, and Surveying the Interior, which, respectively chronicle climate change in the southern U.S, connecting kids with nature, and the work of literary men who wrote about mapmaking. The latter, based on his dissertation, inspired a lifelong interest in writing about the environment. He saved, during the interceding 25 years, a wealth of information about rivers and these are used to great advantage in the memoir as he weaves together a solo canoe trip, a later trip with members of the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania, and a trip by J Wallace Hoff in 1892.
Like Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, Van Noy brought along his dog Sully to share his adventure; but Steinbeck was on a road trip – this, as Van Noy describes it, is a float. As Van Noy depicts his journey, his prose eddies and flows – there are rapids and then slow drowsy glides as Van Noy considers mortality and relationships, strikes up acquaintances along the way, dips a toe into environmental history, and talks fondly of growing up on the Delaware.
River Rats will appreciate the many remembrances of Titusville – Jim Abbott’s marina, Lambertville’s shad fest, skiing at Belle Mountain. Van Noy’s mom and step dad, Tim and Elene West, are there, as are the Millers and the Canes. But, it is a book anyone can enjoy – grab it from Amazon or ask your local bookstore, then pick a patch of grass along the bank in Washington Crossing State Park and spend an afternoon reading while the river runs by.
