The morning is soft and grey, every inch of it. The bridge is light and silvery. The river is holding still. The street lamps along the top of the bluff and line Hudson Terrace, shining through the trees like tiny campfires or signal lights - watch posts manned by young men charged with protecting the river approach to Fort Lee.
They say that after being a military outpost for the American Revolution, Fort Lee became the birthplace of the American film industry only to lose out to the more cheerful climate of Hollywood. A fitting story for the same place that once inspired Thomas Paine to write, "These are the times that try men's souls." It tried Thomas Edison's soul when the movie industry moved west and left his studio in the dust. Luckily, he had some other ideas in the works.
In 1776, George Washington ordered a major retreat from the British. His troops backed up what is now Main Street, a place where you can buy rolling shopping carts and mobile phone chargers and where signs are just as likely to be written in Hangul as English.
For thousands of years, before Fort Lee inspired the Thomases Paine and Edison, the land across the river was home to the Lenni Lenape people of the Algonquian Nation. And decades before Washington's troops muddied the road in retreat, the land was owned by a freed slave who received it in exchange for helping to shore up a road along the bluff.
Through this fine mist and rain, it's easy to imagine that the land across the river is no different than what it was in 1756. If we could slip back, Stephen Bourdette would just have purchased 400 acres from his neighbor, recently freed. Bourdette and his wife would be building their house and thinking about establishing Bourdette's Ferry to carry goods and travelers to and from Manhattan Island. Twenty years later, in 1776, George Washington would be standing with Stephen's son Peter and Peter's wife Rachel as they watched the Battle of New York rage on across the river. And even though the Bourdettes would take George Washington into their home and shelter him, it wouldn't stop him from calling the retreat, leaving the Bourdettes in the dust, their homestead open to plundering British troops. After all their hard work, the only animal that would be saved would be the horse that Rachel rode to safety.
It must have been rugged and beautiful land. Before the noodle shops and the brick buildings that went up in the 70s. Before Fort Lee became the birthplace of cinema and subliminal advertising. Of course, these things may have helped George Washington and the Bourdettes back in 1776. While slurping bibim guksu, the troops could've flashed signs at their British assailants. Instead of fleeing for safety, they could've held the British back with split-second messages such as, "Time to go home!" and "America's boring, Britain is better!" If it had worked, the British would've left of their own accord and Rachel Bourdette would still have the rest of her livestock.
Back in 2011, a cluster of birds loops and dives in unison. They cross my windowpane, a black shake of pepper, shadows caught in a windstorm - then tumble out of sight. I stand up to look through the rain and end up spoiling my view. My neighbor is counting money at his kitchen table again, his blue and black linoleum stretching out behind him like a ladder leading somewhere.
Today the river is still, shadows crossing it like hand puppets on a movie screen.
