Life on the Delaware

Monday, September 22, 2008 at 10 pm

Life on the Delaware takes an intimate look at the people of the Delaware River watershed. Rather than taking a dry, academic look at complex "issues" or pitting the environment against the economy, the documentary approaches the complex Delaware from an accessible, highly personal point of view. It is a travelogue in which the narrator shakes aside her own assumptions about this "working river" and brings viewers into the lives of some of the extraordinary individuals who have committed to making the Delaware a healthy waterway for the generations to come.

As the narrator journeys from the headwaters in New York's Catskill Mountains through the familiar "industrial zone" and on to the beautiful estuary, she meets a cast of characters who introduce her to "their" Delaware. Along the way, she learns how little she really knew about the river — and how so many people are doing their part to protect the precious waterway that ultimately belongs to all of us — and to the rest of the world.

We meet people like Joan Wulff, an energetic grandmother who is renowned for her fly-fishing school. Joan may teach her students to cast a mean fly, but her lessons are as much about environmental stewardship as her love of the sport. And Ruth Jones, who annually provides thousands of people with spiritual rejuvenation by forging a personal connection with the Delaware, based on recreation and fun.

By getting to know such a diverse group of people, visiting "a Garden of Eden in the middle of a concrete jungle," and encountering the strange creature she'd always considered a "smelly nuisance along the beach," our narrator realizes that there's much more to the Delaware than the urban river she thought she knew. It is a water-based highway that is critical to the region's economy in so many ways. But it is also a living ecosystem, a shared resource that is being cared for by people like Ruth and Joan and hundreds of others who have never met and probably never will. It is a national treasure that is essential to millions of human lives and many times that number of species that make their home in the natural world.

Photos GreenTreks Network, Inc.