Hey, We’re Portagin’ Here!
29 Jul
New Yorkers could be forgiven for rubbernecking recently when an artist portaged a canoe through Manhattan.
As reported in THIS New York Times story, Robert Starling and a companion paddled a 16-foot strip canoe into New York’s West 79th Street Boat Basin and then portaged it to the American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West. As if they were “some kind of large, undomesticated animal on the loose,” reporter Randy Kennedy writes, residents of the Big Apple took notice of the little boat and its carriers.
The canoe and the 125-mile trip Starling made with it to Manhattan from upstate New York commemorate an expedition that scientist Herbert Lang made to the Congo in 1909. Lang’s photos and specimens, it happens, were instrumental in the development of many of the museum’s dioramas.
Portage trails aside, New York City might be a better paddling destination than you think. A while back we reported, HERE, on the development of the New York City Water Trail.
