The Catskill Chronicle

Story and photos by Leni Santoro

Day Two of our River Road Trip is almost a blur as I sit here writing. We went so many places and got lost so many times, but each time it seemed with some hidden purpose directing our actions that was revealed in the coincidences that followed. Coincidences such as taking a wrong road out of Lambertville the night before that led us to backtrack into Lambertville the next morning, where at the coffee shop we met a group of people who agreed to take our flyer-invitations and spread the word to their friends and the organizations they were connected with. Our success was such in Lambertville that we decided to get in touch with Watershed.org when we returned and rather than attend the Butterfly Festival (which we are sure was a beautiful event), instead we headed back up the Delaware.

Frenchtowner.com states on their website that, “The story that makes up our [Frenchtown, NJ’s] history is one that begins and ends with the river. Frenchtown, NJ is tucked into a lazy fertile valley on the Delaware River. It is here that two small creeks that originate in the high plateaus of Western Hunterdon County meander on their own separate paths down into the valley where Frenchtown lives.”

It is a beautiful little town and driving through we knew immediately we had come to the right place to leave our flyer-invitation; for strung across the Main Street was a banner proclaiming Frenchtown’s Annual River Fest Weekend that would take place on Labor Day Weekend.

We stopped to talk to people on the street and visited with some of the shopkeepers, including Donald Schaible, proprietor of Schaible’s Barber Shop. He graciously allowed us to hang our flyer on his bulletin board and copy the e-mail addresses of several of the local newspapers from the pile he keeps for his customers.

After Frenchtown we headed to Nockamixon, PA. Liz had a contact person there from the list she had brought with her and as we got closer to Nockamixon we gave Nancy Janyszeski a call. No one answered so we left a message on her answering machine and began to leave Nockamixon.

But, as “our luck” would have it – if you call heading out of town the wrong way luck – just as we were turning around we got a call from Nancy. She would love to meet with us and had in fact known we were coming because Barbara Arindell of the Damascus Citizens for Sustainability (DCS) had alerted her to our trip. In fact, Nancy had already posted the information about the Light Up the Delaware River Party on the Lower Delaware River Wild and Scenic site and at Nockamixon.us. Nancy is the Pennsylvania Chair for the Lower Delaware Wild and Scenic River organization. She is also the Supervisor for Nockamixon Township in Bucks County, PA.

Sitting at Nancy’s kitchen table she explained how the issues in regards to natural gas drilling were playing out in her area.

“In 1984 there was an oil well here, in the exact same location [where natural gas drilling may be occurring in her area soon]. They did not find oil.” said Nancy. “What they felt they found [was] the geology for natural gas. The oil well went to 3,000 feet; the gas well will have to go to 10-12,000 feet. Its adjacent to a stream…

They came to my door with a gas lease, a copy of the deed to my property, some of the pages were already pre-notarized. They had the tax parcel, how much you paid, how much land you had and all they wanted you to do was sign your name at the bottom of this page…and you would get $20 an acre and the promise of retiring on this money…and people have signed.”

Nancy and Liz went into Nancy’s office to exchange information. I stayed behind at the kitchen table taking advantage of the fact that Nancy had wireless service. Till Nockamixon I had been unable to connect to the internet, via my laptop computer, for any length of time. This might be my one chance to let people know where we were and how we were doing and I didn’t want to blow it.

Before leaving Nancy took us to the wellhead site just down the road from her house. After we left Nancy’s we went back  to photograph it as a visual for our trip. Thank goodness for long lenses, tall trees and Photoshop.

Meeting up with Nancy Janyszeski re-charged our batteries. From Nockamixon all the way to Milford we stopped everywhere we could think of. We hung flyer-invitations in a laundromat, we stopped at a roadside store to get coffee and hung them up on the bulletin board. The man running the store told us about a tavern up the road and we stopped and Liz went inside to talk to people and hand out cards and the flyer-poster. Eventually we took the wrong road yet again, but…

At the Mt. Bethel Deli Liz saw a store with a Live Bait sign in the window. We had already added fishing and camping stores to our agenda so it was just natural to stop. No sooner had she given the literature to the son of the owner than the owner herself arrived. Liz got a good chance to speak with her and another friendship was forged.

By this time it was getting late and it was decided that we would head for Milford, PA and find some place to stop for the night. That’s when the Two Grannies met up with the effects of the 40th Anniversary of the Woodstock Festival taking place at the Bethel Woods Art Center in Bethel, NY.  As far as Matamoras, PA all the rooms in every hotel and motel were filled.

The final adventure of the day came when we pulled into the Great Western outside Matamoras. Liz went inside to check for a room. She was gone some time and so I, sitting in the car, began to hope for the best, but Liz came out shaking her head and laughing. This is how we found out that it was senseless to keep looking for a room.

It seems that a couple of bikers who had been to the concert at Bethel Woods got the last room just as she entered the lobby. They felt so bad, she said, that they had offered us to share it with them. She politely refused. I’m still trying to picture it, Two Grannies and some bikers…hmmmm…Anyway, thanks to whoever you are, it was indeed a thoughtful offer.

Instead, we decided that since we were really only about an hour or so from Wurtsboro we would just go home and set out again in the morning for Milford and then proceed up to Hancock; all the while thinking to ourselves that, we may have missed Woodstock but really we were doing it instead of listening to it.