About the author
Paddling past Kearny, N.J.
I am a journalist, a biologist and a proud New Jersey native. I live in Washington State now. But I grew up along the Passaic River in North Arlington, N.J. The Passaic gave me the creeps as a kid. The river was slick and dirty and vaguely menacing. My mother told us not to play by it. I sometimes wondered how the Passaic had gotten that way. What had happened to it. Years later, I decided to find out. In 2006 I kayaked the Passaic and talked to advocates and scientists, bureaucrats and river rats in an effort to get to know my hometown river. The result is This American River. Part natural history, part personal history, part adventure story, the book is my narrative meditation on the wonder of rivers, the enduring ties of family and the power of water and loss.
My great grandmother had a saying: don’t shit in the nest. The Passaic River is an object lesson in what can happen when we ignore that simple, salty advice.
Mary Bruno
I lived close to the Passaic River (Passaic Township, aka Long Hill Township) and spent many a day as a boy along it’s banks, floating on it, wading in it, skating on it and occasionally swimming in it. Yes, it was muddy and polluted, even further up stream, but we were young and adventurous. I almost drown in it one time. I came very, very close to losing my life. It was a thing of a twisted sort of beauty back then and to this day it is “the river that runs through my dreams.” I hope some day it runs clean and free as it once did over a century ago.