Wallkill River is a perfect tour guide

It's a great time to take canoe trip

By Rebecca Rothbaum
Poughkeepsie Journal

From its perch high on a leafless branch, stripped bare and smoothed by wind and rain, the heron stood as still as a statue, looking as if it has been carved from the blue-gray wood of its roost. And then the bird was off, slowly and almost awkwardly folding its stick-like legs and flapping its enormous wings.

I watched this scene unfold from below -- in a canoe. It was just one of the quiet thrills on a recent trip down the Wallkill, which brought me and a friend from New Paltz to the Rosendale border.

The Wallkill, which runs from the spring-fed Mohawk Lake in Sussex County, N.J., to Rosendale, where it spills into the Rondout, is one of the few major rivers in the country that runs north.

It was an invigorating way to spend the clear, crisp day, and to take in the brilliant fall foliage, which was mirrored in all its Technicolor wonder in the glassy surface of the river.

As Shari Osborn, a New Paltz resident who paddled the river with her family, put it: ''The trip was stunning, the views were beautiful.'' The herons were big hits with her sons Whitman and Holden Carroll.

River running high

We launched from a little shorefront park at Plains Road, off the Wallkill Valley rail trail, where we picked up the canoe from Green and Tan canoe rentals. After days of rain, the river was running high and fast, which, we happily noted, meant less work for us.

A moment after setting off, we spotted Skytop, the Mohonk Preserve monument and New Paltz landmark, through a break in the trees to the east. It was an auspicious beginning, an indication of the beautiful scenery to come.

The Wallkill gently bends and turns, a quality which is not only eye-pleasing in and of itself but which also plays with the surrounding landscape in inviting ways.

As the river meandered, the Shawangunk Ridge again and again appeared and disappeared, its white cliffs rising from behind the trees and corn fields. Much of the land along the river banks is undeveloped, although here and there houses, Springtown Road and even a golf course are visible.

The golf course we learned about the hard way, nearly getting hit in the head with a wayward ball. We were nosing down one of the swampy inlets that branch off from the river, when suddenly our idyll was interrupted by the sound of the ball splashing through the water, dangerously close to the canoe.

We returned to the river and tried our luck with another inlet farther down river. This time, it was pure tranquillity. The trees formed a kind of canopy over the channel, filtering the sunlight and casting lacy shadows on the calm water. The only noise we heard was the chattering of birds.

We reached our destination -- a state Department of Environmental Conservation landing off Springtown Road in Rosendale -- in about two hours. It was a perfect amount of time to allow for a later hike in the 'Gunks, but water-loving paddlers could easily continue to a landing in town or back to New Paltz.