FINDING SANCTUARY IN THE HUDSON
Story & Photography by Eva Deitch
After taking this photo, I later asked the woman if I could take her portrait. She told me she had come to the river to find an answer to a problem she was solving.
N
ature has always been where I’ve known people go to clear their minds, reset, and reconnect with themselves and their surroundings.
When I moved from Chicago to The Hudson Valley two years ago, my daily life was transformed by the new and vastly different environment I experienced when I stepped outside my front door. Rather than obstructing the natural elements present, this environment encouraged a direct relationship with them, the most critical being the valley’s river, The Hudson.
This view out my plane window was the first time I returned to The Hudson Valley from a trip and felt like I was coming home.
The tides reveal and hide.
I believe that the success of humanity and our planet relies on the existence of quiet places like the ones I find at The Hudson’s edge or gliding across its surface.
These quiet places are not areas of deafness, but contemplative sanctuaries of peace, places where societal identities and “busy” tendencies are given a sobering reality check. Quite places don’t demand productivity, growth, and answers, they just invite you to show up as you are.
I see many people fishing the river, mostly to catch and release, but sometimes people keep the fish for consumption.
When confronted with time in the form of a passing current or the rhythmic lap of waves, you begin to touch something a little deeper inside yourself and the lines that have been drawn between human and nature begin to weave themselves into something more collaborative.
These images are less about a geographical location and more about a state of mind that can hopefully be carried into the world once you’ve left the water’s edge.
Again and again, I’m shown that a union with nature shapes a union with oneself and union with oneself transforms into a union with all life.
A group of kids down the shore made this and pushed it out to sail on it’s on. It slowly made it’s way to me.
“The Sitting Rock” is a place I return to often to think, write, meditate and connect with the natural world.
Everyday the water pushes new sticks, rocks, seed pods and garbage to the shore.
Eva Deitch is a Hudson Valley based freelance photographer currently attending The International Center of Photography for Documentary and Visual Journalism.
Since moving to The Hudson Valley, Eva’s life inquiries have led her to explore concepts and better understand issues that revolve around ecology and inner life. This exploration led her to the work of Jon Bowermaster and Hudson River Stories. When not on assignment, you can find Eva on the shore of an inlet along The Hudson River where “the sitting rock” lives.
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