Park by Hudson River along empty stretch of road. Low, sandy, no-man’s land. Mountain behind us. Odd to find riverfront undeveloped this close to New York City.

Walking along road shoulder, discover why. Line of scrub opens to reveal two giant concrete domes. Indian Point 2 and 3 nuclear power plants. No sign of people or activity over there. Stillness like a monument.

Roadway littered with usual plastic trash/broken bottles. Also, 100 or more spent highway flares: white plastic caps, few inches around. Major accident? Or prank? Kids want to take some home. “Maybe later.”

Start hike just past old sand quarry. Low willows and swamp maple, tangle of blackberry, leaves with that dusty, side-of-the-road look. In undergrowth, sections of carpet, rusted machinery, a bedspring. Kids delighted. This is better than nature.

As trail heads up, forest starts. Oak and birch, exposed gray granite. Then, suddenly, set of moss-covered stone steps. Kids sprint up, whooping. Discover tunnel –  twenty-foot long tunnel – in middle of woods. Goes nowhere, connects nothing. Inside, not quite dark. Man-sized sandstone blocks let light seep in. Spray-paint everywhere: “Fuck,” “Jesus Saves”; lots of names/dates. Like a cemetery. Or a news flash. “I was here. I was here. I was here.”

Outside again, check guidebook. Tunnel is from proposed Spiral Railway. 1889. Visitors meant to dock by river at hotel/restaurant (near sand quarry), then ride train to top of mountain. Two big steam generators – one halfway up, one at peak – to haul trains by cable over this tunnel, 900 feet to top. Ten minute trip. At peak, another hotel with observation tower/gardens.

“Visitors will be startled and awed by the sublimity of the views on every hand. Near and far they will behold a panorama of scenic grandeur that can be equaled nowhere on the globe … Elevations of thought and impulse, as well as bodily vigor.”

Elevations of thought and impulse!

But real pay-off to follow: trip down via gravity. Nine-mile spiral, three switch-backs, swerves, swoops, zoom through tunnel to starting point by river. Whole mountain transformed to thrill ride! Estimated train speed: fifty m.p.h. Estimated visitors: 2,000 per day. Site only thirty-five-mile boat trip from NYC.

“The toiling millions of people who take an outing once or often during the summer in search of strengthening, invigorating, life-giving oxygen of a pure air, and the healthful stimulant of a radical change from the monotony of their daily toil. …”

Life-giving oxygen of a pure air.

Ruins more obvious higher up. Old packed gravel rail bed, scars from dynamite, boulders stacked to side. Out through treetops: bits of blue river, houses on hillsides, green lawns. Routes 9 and 9-West follow curve of Hudson. Off in distance: Bear Mountain Bridge, traffic circle. Path gets steeper. Adults short of breath, kids looking for shade. Buzz of insects amongst oak, maple, pine. Then, boom!, woods gone.

Whole region hit by forest fires this summer. Newspaper pictures of men in smoke masks. Here, groundcover burnt black; big trees on ground, tops still green. Like pick-up sticks, or giant safety matches. Standing oaks have blue jelly residue around trunks: flame retardant. Kids’ sneakers gray with ash. Orange plastic “EMERGENCY” ribbons. Discussion of causes: global warming, natural cycle, bad forestry, God.

In spring 1890, crew of 200 worked here. (Italian immigrants?) No trees then: forest all clear-cut for lumber. “… A vast track of inhospitable mountain and rock. ….” Deer next-to-extinct. Workcamp down by road in flats. Big canvas tents, cookfires, streams of pack mules climbing barren switchback trail.

Eight months later: “[Progress is] considerably impeded at present by some trouble between the contractors and the company.” Grading two-thirds finished, huge steam generators ordered. National economy booming, but major strikes in Homestead, Pennsylvania; Coeur D’Alenes, Idaho. Wall Street panic on the way. Newspapers predict the full force of men will go back to work [on Spiral Railway] after the first of January.” Never happens.

Past fire site, kids find another tunnel. This one dug straight into mountain. Dank air at rubble entrance, walls cold. As eyes adjust, floor littered with soda cans, trash. Too dark (high?) to see ceiling. This to be sudden shrieking entrance into chill passage, then back out into roller-coaster sunshine. Never completed. Pick marks still in rock, drill holes waiting for dynamite. Not a tunnel, after all — a cave.

Outside, sit on cliff edge, feet dangling. “Panorama of scenic grandeur.” Tiny cars on tiny roads, no sound. Keen of marsh hawk riding thermals. Dark river cutting green hills, making pine islands: how many thousand years? Glimpses of suburban houses. Pop. more than 17,000 within two miles; 75,000 within five miles; 250,000 within ten. But hidden by trees. On opposite bank, almost small enough to forget, concrete domes.

2:31 p.m.: Snack on pepperoni and cheese. Below, sensor in Indian Point 2 shows temperature problem. Workers assume false alarm (similar incident four days earlier). But reactor automatically shuts down; emergency generators kick in. Management decides routine glitch: good chance to catch up on regular maintenance.

3 p.m.: Start back down. Circuit breaker pops in back-up generator. Calculated odds of this malfunction: once in 1.4 million years. Later explanation: “Auxiliary transformer load tap changer” left in manual position by mistake. Emergency generator no longer feeding batteries. Water pumps/emergency core-cooling equipment not receiving enough power. Potential result: inability to cool reactor, meltdown.

No sirens, no sign of disturbance.

3:45 p.m.: Reach bottom after climbing over railbed, past scene of forest fire, through lower tunnel, down stone steps. Kids told to leave old highway flares alone. Car safe where parked, hot from sun. In case of “risk significant event,” escape plan calls for mass evacuation along this two-lane road.

4:35 p.m.: Slow drive home. Radio playing pop tunes, sports talk. Stop for ice cream.

8:30 p.m.: After dinner, kids to bed early. Tired from climb. Sweet snoring within minutes. Adults watch TV: nothing on. No news flash.

9:55 p.m.: Back-up batteries providing electricity to plant fail altogether. 75% of control room instrument panel goes dark. Start of official “Unusual Event,” level one. (Three Mile Island, 1979 = level four.) Public still not notified. Per owners of reactor, “operated in the red region of risk” but only one-in-500 chance of damage to nuclear core.

One-in-500.

10:30 p.m.: Adult bedtime. Management of Indian Point 2 makes first call to notify local authorities that plant “continually deteriorating” and on “Hot Standby.”

3:43 a.m.: Everyone sleeping. Reactor enters “Normal Hot Shutdown.” Plant exits “Unusual Event.” No story in next day’s paper. Six months later, when pipe in steam generator leaks, Second Level Emergency declared. Radiation escape. Again, no sirens.

6:21 a.m. Sunrise. Mountain in silence. Vegetation growing over Spiral Railway. Marsh hawk?

Daniel Wolff