How to Canoe to the World Cup in New Jersey
Recently, as I read transit-disaster stories from MetLife Stadium’s first World Cup match, between Brazil and Morocco on Saturday, it occurred to me that tournament planners from New York and New Jersey had overlooked the Meadowlands’ many creeks, canals, and marshes. A total of eight World Cup matches, including the final, will be held at MetLife throughout June and July, and transit options are severely limited for the eighty thousand fans who are expected to attend. Parking and private drop-offs are prohibited at the stadium. A few thousand spots at the nearby American Dream mall cost two hundred and twenty-five dollars per game. A ride on N.J. Transit from Manhattan to the area, which normally costs thirteen dollars round trip, is going for ninety-eight. Uber prices are exorbitant, and riders have reported waiting three hours for a pickup. Technically, you can walk—a writer and photographer for the Times tried a few weeks ago and had to resort to dashing across Route 120—but large “No Pedestrian” signs were recently posted on the highways around the stadium. Shuttle buses took an hour to go two miles. Some never showed up. Travellers could be forgiven for growing grim about the mouth. But MetLife is surrounded by water. There’s the Hackensack River, Walden Swamp, Mill Creek, Peach Island Creek, Berry’s Creek, and Berry’s Creek Canal. I had a press ticket to the next match, France vs. Senegal, on Tuesday, and, in the name of charting a more pleasant and efficient commute for the world’s soccer fans, I accounted it high time to attempt a passage as soon as I could.
I would set out the day before the match to pick up my press credentials at the stadium. If all went well, I could repeat the journey the next day. My friend Robert Sullivan, who canoed the area a lot while writing his book “The Meadowlands,” said that there was a straight shot from the Hackensack to the west side of the stadium, down Berry’s Creek Canal. “It’s been called the most polluted creek in the Meadowlands,” he said. Chromium, a highly toxic chemical compound, had leaked into the watershed from nearby Superfund sites. I should launch at high tide, when the water from the New York Harbor pushed the current north. Robert pointed out potential complications. Disembarking in Berry’s Creek Canal required skulking through some swamp and reeds, commando style. The Department of Homeland Security had designated World Cup matches a “National Special Security Event.” Skulking might not be a great look. Officers would surely be close by. They would have guns. And what would I do with the canoe?
Considering these obstacles, my own unseaworthiness was, perhaps, a liability. I thought it prudent to recruit a crew. My New Yorker colleague Diego Lasarte was the perfect navigator. He found an alternative anchorage point, near a bend in the Hackensack, at a public boat launch called River Barge Park. From there, it was a short walk to the stadium. No skulking. Our friend Lauren Harris, an editor at The Yale Review, agreed to be our patron. She owns a Kevlar-hulled Old Town Koru canoe, with newly refurbished gunwales. Lauren’s husband, Brent, had some questions, including whether I knew how to properly canoe. I was impressed with his gumption. Brent became our quartermaster.
The Harrises’ house, in the Heights section of Jersey City, is frustratingly landlocked. But we discovered a boat ramp onto the Hackensack behind a motel in Secaucus. It was just a short four-mile portage away. We set out at 7:30 A.M. To portage a canoe, one flips it upside down and stands underneath it, so that it balances on one’s shoulders and, sometimes, on one’s head, like an enormous bicorne. The canoe was seventeen and a half feet long and weighed sixty-five pounds. We took turns. Most pedestrians treated us with indifference. A few teen bikers, blocked by the canoe at an intersection, ducked and rode underneath it. Visibility under the canoe wasn’t great. Occasionally, we banged into street signs. For provisioning, we stopped at a McDonald’s on Paterson Plank Road.
With fresh supplies, we set off again, marching in our canoe hat past warehouses, over overpasses, on tiny sidewalks. Cars gave us narrow berth. One guy remarked, “That’s a big boat!” A few truckers blew their horns. The wind picked up. When it caught the canoe broadside, the stern tended to swing out over the roadway. This wasn’t ideal. It was tough on the shoulders. Also, it risked collision with the semis rumbling by. I was glad we enlisted Brent, who is six feet two, and strong.
A sign announced that we’d crossed into Secaucus. Underneath, it said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I felt that we were. As we walked past industrial parks and waste-management lots, a man called out, “I’ve got a canoe just like this!” His name was Gregory. He was a welder. He takes his craft on the Hackensack once a week, to go crabbing. “I cook them up, make some gravy,” he said. “Some nice fucking Italian shit.” (On account of the river’s elevated levels of cadmium, a carcinogenic heavy metal, and high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls from industrial waste, the N.J. Department of Environmental Protection strongly recommends against this.) But Gregory had recently grown tired of life on the sea. “I’m trying to sell it,” he said, of the canoe. “You want it?” As we chatted, I’d been holding our canoe above my head, bracing it against the wind. I told him that we were good on canoes for the moment.
We portaged on, over the New Jersey Turnpike, through downtown Secaucus, over a narrow pedestrian bridge above Route 3. We made it to the motel in less than two hours. The Hackensack appeared behind the parking lot, surprisingly broad and sparkly. Phragmites reeds lined the water, and the American Dream mall loomed over the far bank. It didn’t smell too bad. Except for the cars roaring overhead on a nearby bridge, a continuation of Route 3, it was pretty peaceful.
As the captain, I took the front. Brent steered in the back. Diego navigated, and provided ballast, in the middle. We were heading north, but Brent had us haul due west, so the vegetation on the far bank would provide a windbreak. We had the river to ourselves. One concern of mine was corpses. Bob Sullivan has found that bodies have been dumped in the Meadowlands since at least the Revolutionary War. People think Jimmy Hoffa is there. But we didn’t see any. Brent took us on a scenic detour of an inlet. We saw a beautiful white egret. There were ospreys, hawks, and a lot of tree swallows. The view was uncommonly broad, and the city skyline poked out of the eastern sky. I’d never experienced a more pleasant commute, though it wasn’t perfect. When we lifted our paddles from the water, the wind sent it spraying back at us. It was surprisingly warm. Some of it splashed in my mouth.
The trip took fifteen minutes, plus the detour. When we landed, Brent pulled out a camping stove and made coffee. The crew stayed with the canoe, and I finished the trek solo, navigating down a sparsely travelled access road. I knew these parts. I’m from New Jersey, and I grew up with season tickets to the Jets. Back then, similarly frustrated with the difficulties of the commute, my dad would park off the shoulder of the Route 3 off-ramp, in the mud next to a thicket of phragmites. The parking ticket was cheaper than a parking pass, and there were enough gaps in the cars whizzing by that we could scamper across. The authorities are stricter now. I strolled up Outwater Lane and turned north. I crossed the Turnpike for the second time. (Around the Meadowlands, the Turnpike turns confusingly fractal.) I turned onto something called Road D. It wasn’t so bad. Near the stadium, a worker on a cart zipped by, transporting what looked like propane tanks. His name was Mariano. He gave me a ride to the credentialling tent. From start to finish, the journey took less than three hours.
On the way back to the canoe, I stopped at Redd’s, a sports bar nestled among the cloverleafs right outside the stadium. It seemed early for rum, so I settled for a Bud Light. I sat at the bar next to two electricians on their lunch break and expounded upon my success with canoe commuting. They didn’t seem swayed. Throughout the tournament, Redd’s is running a private shuttle to the stadium, and charging more than two hundred dollars for a spot in its parking lot. The bartender, a woman named Taylor Roberto, said that scalpers had bought up some of the parking passes and were reselling them for five hundred. Some Brazilians and a few Moroccans had shown up, having bought fraudulent passes from scammers. Otherwise, Roberto said, “The traffic actually wasn’t that bad.” I settled up my tab and trekked back. I found Brent and Diego in a shady spot by the water. They reported a pleasant time waiting. A gang of prisoners in orange jumpsuits was nearby, supervised by a local sheriff, cleaning up trash.
On the river for our return trip, I felt the little sadness that comes near the end of an unexpectedly idyllic day. Next month, Brent and Lauren are moving out of New Jersey, and I didn’t know anyone else with a canoe, except for Gregory. To my surprise, when I’d checked in for my press credentials at the stadium, I found I’d been issued a coveted media-parking pass. If I had my own spot, of course, I’d be driving. In any case, after I returned to the canoe, I noticed that River Barge Park had published a warning that it would be shut down on World Cup game days. It was a shame. I was already picturing myself, hot and stressed, sitting in traffic on Route 3. As we floated closer to the motel, there was a pleasant breeze. Brent glided us toward the ramp. I was stepping out when I saw a blue crab splashing in the shallow water. We watched it scoot around for a while, but we decided not to eat it. ♦