Lakes, Falls, and Racial Disparities

Posted On July 25, 2020

Last we left y’all we saw the Thousand Islands in the St Lawrence River. Heading west, we found a rock slabbed beach off of Lake Ontario. And y’all… listen. These huge ass lakes and rivers are driving me bonkers. Like, I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my head around them.

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I was born and raised along the Gulf of Mexico, where I spent nearly every weekend between May and September out on the boat. We’d ride through the Destin Harbor or the Pensacola Bay. Once or twice we went passed the Destin jetty and into the actual Gulf. Since then, I lived in Monterey, CA. So about all the experience I have of boats being on water, people having paddle boards, people kite and wind surfing, and waves and currents revolves around salt water. The only thing anyone does in fresh water, in my life, is go kayaking or tubing. And once we went boating in the Colorado River.

So, let me tell you how baffled I get with these rivers having ISLANDS?! And that you cannot see the land on the other side, yet it’s still a frigging LAKE?!?!?!

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And how every time I see the waves come in or see a marina I think, “Ahh, the ocean.” Until I realize it isn’t. Then we drive along the coast and I’m blown away by vineyard after vineyard that stretch straight out to the water. And I wonder, “How do they survive so close to the salt?” Until I realize they don’t. And sometimes I ponder about the dolphins and whales and hope to maybe see them in the distance. Until I remember I won’t. Because it’s frigging FRESH WATER and we aren’t in frigging India, Pakistan, or the Amazon! Wild. Just wild.

Speaking of these massive lakes (or the Great Lakes, as I like to call them) that we’re driving by: back in the day people used to think that if they or someone else threw their waste into the streams, rivers, or lakes, then it would only affect that area.

So, it was a totally acceptable practice, because “mind ya business.” That is, until they realized that everything was connected and someone’s waste upstream would pollute the waters downstream. Eventually it got so bad that people could no longer use the Great Lakes as a water source. They couldn’t eat the fish in the lakes or drink the water – whole livelihoods were destroyed due to practices of others.

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To this day, pregnant women and preteens are advised against eating the fish in these lakes.

To quote a plaque outside of a closed museum we visited, “A person who eats one meal of lake trout from Lake Michigan will be exposed to more PCBs in that single meal than in a lifetime of drinking water from the lake.”

It also states that “Animals at the top of the food chain – lake trout, large salmon, and fish-eating birds like cormorants, ospreys and herring gulls – may accumulate concentrations of toxic contamination high enough to cause serious deformities or death.” To this day, microplastics and other pollutants like it are a concern.

Regardless, the US and Canada did finally realize that they have an affect on each other. What one does, despite how seemingly severed and isolated, impacts others. And they now work on conserving the Great Lakes for they are a vital fresh water source. They make up 20% of the Earth’s fresh water, making it the largest fresh water lakes in the world and second largest (to the ice caps) fresh water source .

Anyway, I thought it was funny how this seems to parallel the state of the world today (in more ways than one).

The day after the rock slabbed beach (i.e. the 19th) we stopped by the High Falls in Rochester, NY. The falls were rather gorgeous. I love waterfalls, as y’all can probably tell from every trail we ever go on having waterfalls.

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Unfortunately, the rest of Rochester hurt my heart. Walking around downtown was dilapidated house after downtrodden house, which had all been subdivided into apartments. The stores and shops all had barred windows and cracked foundation. The area was a near ghost town. And most of the people there were, unsurprisingly, minorities.

Meanwhile, not far down the road, there were packed marinas, beautiful houses, numerous mansions, free parks, clean beaches, and thriving restaurants. It screamed of money. And nearly all the people there were white.

Rochester, NY has one of the largest racial income gaps in the country with the median household income for people of color being $30,000/yr and the median household income for white people being $62,000/yr.

Some might try to explain the gap as laziness and welfare mooching. However, when white men are more likely to be forgiven for behavioral problems at school, more likely to get a call-back for an interview, less likely to get pulled over by the police, less likely to get their car searched, less likely to get incarcerated for weed possession (or anything, actually), more likely to survive if they had an altercation with the police, more likely to be taken seriously when at a hospital – leading to better medication and quicker healing times (meaning less time off work), – more likely to be trusted, more likely to be promoted, more likely to buy a car for less, more likely to buy a house for less, etc. then it becomes harder and harder to claim anything other than the fact that systemic racism and white privilege play a huge role in these socioeconomic disparities.

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What causes systemic racism is largely something called implicit bias.

Implicit bias isn’t meant to make people sound like they are ignorant or dumb about their own racist behaviors. It’s meant to show how our own unconscious biases can affect others, despite the fact that our conscious thoughts seem so severed and isolated from such racist thoughts. You are not a bad person for having implicit biases. It isn’t even your fault for having implicit biases. Literally every single person has them, myself included. Study after study has proven this.

However, being aware of your own biases can help you to recognize them in your thoughts before they become actions. You can’t change the world, but that doesn’t mean you need to be a part of the problem.

Rochester was a much needed slap in the face. And this is a part of what it means to explore the United States. This is America. And this is one of the many issues we need to fix.

My heart always grows fraught with frustration and helplessness when being faced with inhumanity, and I tend to obsess over it.

That made for a difficult transition from the shameless injustice of the city to the indescribable purity of Nature. It almost felt wrong to be at the Niagara River because I just wasn’t in the right headspace.

We sluggishly got out of the car at the Devil’s Hole trail, just east of the Falls, and climbed down the steep, boulder steps from the road to the river some 200 feet between. The dogs were in bliss to be sheltered away from the heat by the canopies of the hemlock and sycamore. I, meanwhile, was trying to recover from my mood and my nearly constant motion sickness.

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While the vibrant blues and greens of the river were mind-blowing to the eye, the turbulent rush of water colliding every which way (into itself, against rocks, and along the shore) made me feel even more queasy. Nick, meanwhile, was beside himself with fascination and excitement at not just the river, but also at the seemingly chaotic course that the boat guides took as they made their living from nearly flooding their tourist-filled boats with the rapids of the whirlpools.

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As the day was drawing to an end and we left the trail, Nick insisted that we couldn’t leave the Niagara Falls for the morning when we were so close to them.

So we went.

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Y’all. asdfjkl;

Like… cannot compute. Like… what?! Get the frick out. Shut the front door. Do not pass Go and do not collect $200. Just no.

Okay, I’m calm. But also, not really. The Niagara frigging Falls are up there with the first time I saw snow as the single most amazing sight to have ever struck my eyes.

We saw through our windshield the mist spraying up over the town before we actually saw the Falls. As we walked in their general direction, I about started to run. Normally I don’t mind getting excited and allowing my body its freedom to jump, skip, leap, or run, despite how public the event. But I really wanted to savor this.

The color of aquamarine struck me first. It was so vibrant and intense.

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The land seemed to float and then disappear under all the water. A single, thin strip of land was visible, and it was as if this little strip was all that was holding up the 75,000 gal/sec of water that relentlessly and unabashedly scoured through it.

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This is where the world ends. The thought wasn’t sincere in its seemingly ominous meaning, rather it was a morbidly beautiful escape into an infinitely unfinished novel that exists only to me.

And that was when I realized I was overwhelmed. In the 3 or 4 seconds I had to comprehend the Falls, I felt myself falling with the water into a deep sense of awe and beauty.

The mist is constantly rising above the falls themselves. It forms clouds of itself down below that are so thick you can’t see where the Falls ended. If there are rocks or boulders, you can’t tell. You know the bottom only from the river farther away.

As your eyes travel back up to the top of the falls, you hear Nick’s voice, a practical whisper among the rush of water that is nearly swallowed up by your own inability to settle with your current surroundings, “It’s almost as if the water is moving so fast that it takes a foot or two for gravity to catch up.” And you notice the water skidding a foot or two past the land’s end before it falls.

And all you can do is laugh. This. Is. Wild.

That was my first impression, anyway.

I couldn’t understand how the water could be so thick that we couldn’t see the land that it stood on, that provided the very foundation for that thin strip of land above. I couldn’t understand how the water must not be all that consistent for the mist to rise higher at some instances than it did at others. I couldn’t understand how the falls could be so brilliant. The color alone had me at a loss. They looked like currents of carved stone similar to those we saw formed in the Luray caverns… except they flowed.

I was struck. I was beside myself. I was blown away.

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We walked along the rest of the falls – there are three: the American Falls, the Bridal Veil Falls, and the Horseshoe Falls. The American Falls were the ones we first came across and the ones for which I had the experience above. We spent a good four or five hours marveling after each falls and the rapids that came before them.

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At one point we came across a spot in the river that was slow moving, and geese, seagulls, and ducks were sunbathing, preening their feathers, and resting along the rocks. It seemed tranquil, which, as Nick pointed out, was ironic when compared to a hundred feet down the river where the calm quickly turned to chaos.

Farther upstream, far beyond our current reach, were the four out of the five Great Lakes that supplied the Niagara Falls.

15 people have been eccentric enough to try barrelling off the Falls, and, surprisingly to us, 10 of those people survived. The first person to try using a barrel to go over them was Annie Taylor in 1901. She thought she’d become rich and famous for doing the stunt. She survived with little more than bruises, and though she became famous for a little while, she didn’t become rich. Another one was Robert Overcracker who tried to go over the Falls in a jet ski and parachute. He was trying to promote awareness for homelessness. Unfortunately, his parachute didn’t open, and he died, which is now a promotion for parachutes, apparently.

While those few took the more risky route, the next morning we decided the best way to get a view from the bottom of the Falls was to take a ride on the Maid of the Mist.

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Riding out there was an adventure and answered one persistent question I had about the American Falls. There are indeed boulders at the bottom.

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By the time we reached the bottom of the Horeshoe Falls, the boat was swaying fiercely from side to side. The shards of water that ricocheted randomly off the surface of the water and into our eyes certainly made for difficult visibility. During the few moments of relief, we found ourselves with just enough time to become wholly overwhelmed and intimidated by the power of the Falls as they slammed into the river below. Not to mention, the miniature whirlpools that were knocking us around caused us to second guess our life choices. However, the captain seemed to have a rough idea of what he or she was doing, and, really, our worries were fairly useless as it was all out of our hands at that point.

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When we got back to shore, we were completely soaked. And Nick was laughing off his unease.

We made it back to the dogs, and began to wonder what was next.
The thing about vanlife is that we don’t really get much time to process and sit on an experience. It’s a welcomed problem to have. But it can be a bit exhausting.

I really wanted a day by the lake or in the woods where all we did was sit. I wanted to just relax and process. But, it was hot, and we weren’t near any free spots that we could sit and soak at. Plus, there waaaassss oneeeee more thing I wanted to do before we left the area.

That led us to the Eternal Flame Falls Trail.

What? You thought the Niagara would be enough falls for me? I laugh at thee! But I do not bite my thumb.

The Eternal Flame Falls are a really pretty, though small, falls that continuously seep out natural gas. There’s a small concave that you can light in order to ignite a flame that, while not eternal, does dance behind the falls long enough for multiple groups of people to take turns to pose for pictures while maintaining a Covid-safe distance from one another’s familial groups. And the falls are super cute. It’s an easy trail too, hence the people. Totally worth it, regardless.

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With the day nearly over, we headed back to the coast and ended up staying on Dunkirk Pier.

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I’m always surprised at the places we stay at without getting into any trouble by the cops. I’m also well aware of how Nick and I have the privilege in that we don’t have to be afraid that, were the cops to show up in the middle of the night, we might get shot for no more reason than the color of our skin.

I’ve realized that most people who do vanlife are white. I think that the biggest threat of vanlife, were we any other color, would be the police. As it is, our biggest threat now is probably ourselves and our own carelessness. It’s a stark difference between living while white and living while black. I think this is an important and sobering fact to keep in mind throughout our travels of America.