On this episode of Field Trip.

We're On this episode of Field Trip, we're headed down the Mohawk River.

To get a historical tour with the Schenectady County Historical Society.

Let's go.

My name is Michael Diana.

I'm the director of education here at the Schenectady County Historical Society.

We started the kayak through history tours.

Gosh, maybe five years ago now.

And we're really always trying to leverage the historic and natural landscape around us, because we have a lot of cool stuff in our historic buildings and our museums, a lot of cool things in our collections that we can put out and on our exhibits.

But honestly, we'd be selling ourselves short if we didn't take advantage of just the environment around us, which can tell these stories much more vividly than we could within the confines of any four walls.

And with the completion of the new Mohawk Harbor, and kind of all the buzz and energy surrounding that, we felt like it was just a natural opportunity to start to work with.

There's a kayak vendor there, Donna Larkin from Upstate Kayak Rentals, who is super helpful in getting these, these kayak tours, to, to happen.

And it just seemed like a natural partnership.

This is good.

weeee Coming at ya This is great.

okay...

Here we go!

Hi, Nicole.

What are you most excited about today?

Oh, I just want to be out on the water and learn something.

Go on a field trip.

Me, too.

All right.

thanks.

So, I think we're going to start by heading out of the harbor onto the main Mohawk River itself.

We'll talk a little bit about the geography.

First and foremost.

So follow me out into the current globally.

We'll judge the conditions.

I'm a little nervous.

So here we are on the Mohawk River.

We are going to turn to our left and head upstream.

And as we're heading upstream, you're going to see the city of Schenectady on the left and the village of Scotia on the right.

That's kind of a wooded portion of the village of Scotia.

So you won't see a whole lot until we get further along our way.

But I like to use this section just to get everyone kind of comfortable in their kayaks.

How are you doing?

I'm doing good.

So how are you feeling so far, guys?

Doing okay?

I feel great.

Great, because we've got quite a bit further to go.

Did you announce who won the race to the buoy?

Nicole did win the race to the buoy.

I don't know if you knew that you were racing, but Nicole did, and she won.

Oh.

We did the medal ceremony when we got back.

Thank you.

And, And.

Yeah, when we, cross under the bridge, we can see a bridge, a railroad bridge on the horizon.

That's when we're going to enter the Stockade Historic District.

And what we're really seeing from the riverside is, well, Riverside Park, this beautiful little park which you can explore on land.

But we can see it from from the water here.

And you can see, various different alleys or streets that meander the way down from the stockade towards the river.

And a lot of historic homes and architecture which are situated on those, those streets.

It's a it's a very interesting skyline that we can see here on the left and to the right.

We're beginning to see the end of Schonowee Avenue in Scotia.

So the central theme of our kayak tours, and this is often a theme in historical research, right, is the influence of geography on human settlements.

And at the same time, the influence of human settlement on geography.

And for our town, for Schenectady, again, the the Mohawk River is the defining natural, geographic feature.

The first and most important thing is it forces you to reorient yourself, your conception of space and time around river based travel.

Because when we're talking 1661, when Schenectady was built, that's how the people of that era conceived of space and time and traveling.

It wasn't about taking a highway across open terrain.

It was about navigable bodies of water, the oceans, lakes, or in our case, a river.

So just kind of getting a sense for and the feel for just how long and difficult it can be to roll your way, not so gently up that stream or down that stream, you know, getting a sense for what these people would do just to travel from point A to point B, you know, if your farm is a couple miles up the river and you got to get your produce back into town, well, you could take the road, but the river might just be your your best option as well.

So just kind of getting that, that sense for, for the river and how we would move along it.

And it's important for us connected history.

That's what I think is so crucial about these tours.

I've arrived.

That was fun.

Maybe.

Good thing I didn't wear jeans.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Field Trip.

For more information, go to wmht.org/fieldtrip and tell us where you think we should go next.

With dragonfly.

And Crow.

It gets really.

Dark, like just exploring.

Yeah, we're not going.

That's where the clowns live.

Yeah.

Hello?

Wow.

Hello.

This is pretty cool!

Im not scared ... what was that?

Yeah.

Oh.