Chapter 1 - The Susquehanna Story

                    Blue,
                    the moon and you
                    - when I think of blue.
                    Below the surface of your face...
                    In your diamond eyes.
                    - take me back to the start.
                

Woman standing by the Susquehanna River at dusk

THE SUSQUEHANNA STORY

{may 1, 2022}

I want to know your story. But I want to know it from your perspective - not through the vision of a man. Let me see your angles... Let me help you flush them out. Blue hour's always your most beautiful, {I can't figure you out.} You're so beautifully depressing - or is it that you're just depressingly beautiful? I want to know how you make me feel the way you do, and why it hurts to look at you... Like melancholy art. I want to hear your heart's song - the one that hurts to sing. Let me sing your song for you. Let me be your voice. Let me love you where it hurts, please - Show me all your sorrows. -like drowning ghosts, I can feel them pulling you down. {Pulling me down.} Let me dive these depths for you. I get off on this sh*t. (Oh wait - I forgot - that's exactly what they're dumping in you...) • • • SHIT

Words by Rachel Grundon.

River Lore

444 miles long, the Susquehanna is the longest river on the East Coast of the United States that flows directly into the Atlantic system.
Its source rises at Otsego Lake in Cooperstown, New York, which is known for its rare mineral vein of Herkimer diamonds.
Its confluence is the Chesapeake Bay, where the river’s fresh water spreads into tidal influence near Havre de Grace, Maryland.
Its valleys are known for mist, mirrored water, and sudden weather shifts that give the river a distinctly mystical atmosphere.
Along its length, the river gathers dozens of tributaries, each one adding memory, sediment, and song to the main current.
For millennia, Indigenous nations treated the Susquehanna as a living corridor for travel, trade, and ceremony.
The river’s broad basin once carried bark canoes, ferry crossings, and later canal dreams that reshaped the valley’s human story.
Colonial and industrial eras left their mark here, but the river still carries the memory of older hands, older names, and older songs. Geologists estimate it to be one of the oldest rivers in the world, with its roots traced back to the Paleolithic era.

"No one deserves to live in a world built upon the degradation of human beings, forests, waters, and the rest of our living planet. Speaking to our brethren on Wall Street: No one deserves to spend their lives playing with numbers while the world burns." -- Charles Eisenstein

The Susquehanna's Sad Reality

"Pennsylvania's capital city discharges more than 800 million gallons of untreated sewage mixed with stormwater directly into the Susquehanna River in an average year. A solution is urgently needed for this public health disaster in the state capital." - Ted Evgeniadis, Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper.

TO BECOME MORE EDUCATED, OR TO FIND OUT WAYS IN WHICH YOU CAN HELP, CHECK OUT THE LOWER SUSQUEHANNA RIVERKEEPER.

An Interactive Journey

Susquehanna River landscape with rocks and forested hills

An estimated 4 million people share this same vein of existence.

Elan Kumankw

Lenape for "we are all related"

Through the thousands of years that First Nations People inhabited the physical landscape of the Susquehanna River Valley, this geographical area was not land to be exploited for human gain, but rather a cooperative venture in which all life forms participated as equals. Their belief was that the landscape did not exist to be remade, but rather, it served as a natural backdrop for their notion of cosmic harmony to thrive and prosper. They lived within the understanding that all humans, animals, plants, all of nature, and even supernatural figures cooperate to bring about a balanced and harmonious universe.

Tell Your Story Submission

Everyone has a story, but not everyone has a Susquehanna Story. We are listening...

TELL YOUR STORY