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INTRO Since I was a kid I've wondered about the source of the Hackensack River - a modest waterway near my home town in Rockland County, N.Y. Where did the river begin, exactly? When I recently read about Sir Richard Burton's 19th century expedition to find the source of the Nile, I felt inspired to embark on my own expedition up the "The Hack" to finally satisfy my old childhood curiosity.
Pg. 1 - The Holy Hackensack YOUNG JOYOUS RIVER Just how does a river begin? Some rivers like the Mississipi and Ganges spring forth fully formed from a lake or cave. Not so the Hackensack. According to my local map it emerged at no determinable point from the intermingling of nameless brooks and seasonal tricklets in northern Rockland County. Well, if I couldn't designate some majestic lake or alpine glacier, I could at least pinpoint some tiny spring or humble pond. I already had a name for it: "Hack's Head." Such were my hopes in April, 1998 when I pulled on my mud boots and started hiking.
It made sense to begin my trip at the river location I knew best - the spillover of Lake DeForest, a reservoir named after a local developer who had de-forested many a wooded tract in the name of progress. For much of my childhood this was the largest "waterfall" I had ever seen - the Niagara of my youth. Even now the bursting, clouding overflow caused by the Spring rains made an impressive view. The upper Hack that enters DeForest and the lower Hack that exits DeForest look like two different rivers. The upper Hack has the brisk, gurgling character of a mountain stream. The lower Hack is slow and silty. It continues south and feeds two additional reservoirs before dramatically widening into a estuary that drains the New Jersey Meadowlands before finally emptying into Newark Bay, NJ. (see map)
This is the upper Hack, just before it enters the reservoir.
The Skunk Cabbage that grew along the muddy banks glowed in the clear
sunlight like stained glass. NEXT PAGE
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