Four Bridge Walks Across the Hudson River

A good bridge exists as both engineering marvel and symbol. It connects people and regions. And time is clearly organized on a bridge. The shore behind you? The past. The shore ahead of you? The future. Where you stand? That’s right now.

Seventeen bridges cross the Hudson River between the Battery in Manhattan and the Federal Dam at Troy, just north of Albany. The George Washington Bridge is the southernmost one while the Collar City Bridge, in Troy, is the one farthest to the north. The bridges become shorter as the river narrows the closer it gets to its source at Lake Tear of the Clouds, an Adirondack oasis so remote it can take two days to hike in and out.

This spring, I decided to walk these bridges when I was recovering from an illness and I needed to move. In the winter this meant walking malls, though by March, I ached to get outside.

But to my mind, fall is actually the best season for the bridges. It’s the nip in the air, the wood smoke on the wind and the way the autumn weather, as Sinatra sings, “turns the leaves to flame.”

Below are some field notes on my four favorite bridges, north to south.

A New Perspective

The Walkway Over the Hudson — no cars, no trucks — was built for trains in 1889, which meant steam and coal, gondolas and boxcars, hobos with feet dangling as they crossed the black water.