The Niagara River Gorge: A Church Full of Joy

In many ways, the section of the Niagara River that races, swirls, and squeezes through the deep Niagara Gorge beyond the Falls behaves like a rowdy teen. The white, frothy, Class 6 rapids on top of the green, galloping river feel impulsive and moody but also energetic and slap-happy. That’s why it was so amazing to spend my childhood and teen years just three blocks from this natural wonder. 

The Niagara River begins in Buffalo, New York, and flows north from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. It also serves as an international border with Canada to the west and the United States to the east. Before connecting the two Great Lakes, the “upper river” flows around Grand Island (and later Goat Island), falls about 180 feet over Niagara Falls, and then speeds through the narrow chasm of the Niagara River Gorge (also known as the “lower river”). After a few frantic miles, the gorge walls shorten and widen, the water calms, and the river empties into Lake Ontario. 

My childhood neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York was called DeVeaux, and at the end of my street was a staircase down to the bottom of “the gorge” (as locals simply call it). My earliest memories of the gorge are captured in one of my favorite photos. There I am at about age eight, sitting on a large boulder at the bottom of the gorge with my father and one of my older brothers. We are on the Canadian side of the river, but the huge electrical power plant on the American side rises in the background. 

In my teen years, “the gorge” began to play a larger role in my life for several reasons. First, one of my first jobs was scooping ice cream on Goat Island, which sits just above the gorge at the Falls. Second, I ran cross country for the local high school and sometimes we would practice on the gravel trail that lines the top of the gorge. (Fittingly, our high school teams were all named the “Niagara Falls Powercats”). Third, and most importantly, my teen buddies and I discovered how much excitement and fun (but also danger) the gorge offered.

Indeed, once my teen friends and I were physically capable of walking the couple hundred steps in and out of the gorge, we were hooked. We spent countless summer days walking to the end of my street, climbing over a fence and guardrail, crossing the Robert Moses Parkway, and taking the Whirlpool Park staircase to the bottom of the gorge. 

The steps, however, do not take you all the way to the water’s edge. They end on a narrow plateau about 30 feet above the water. That is where the flat walking trail takes you along the river—in one direction towards the Whirlpool Bridge and ultimately the Falls, and in the other direction toward a natural cave called “Devil’s Hole.” The flat walking trail is like a palimpsest, in that it follows the path of the Great Gorge Route, an ill-fated sight-seeing train that existed from 1895 to 1935. Not surprisingly, the train system succumbed to a variety of rockslides, ice jams, and accidents before closing. The metal rails are long gone, but the flat route remains quite valuable to hikers. 

As teens, we loved the adrenaline rush of the gorge. We would explore less-traveled paths, find cool rocks and inlets, climb to increasingly perilous ledges and vistas, and simply enjoy the freedom from the adult world. In some ways, the gorge was a liminal space for us, an unpoliced, unparented paradise. Granted, that also meant that we were probably in more danger than we realized at times—e.g. rocks could tumble, water could rise, weather could impair the path, etc. But none of those rational fears could penetrate our irrational teen euphoria as boulder-hopping daredevils-in-training.

Happily, I can report that all of my friends survived our many teen forays into the gorge. And to this day, four decades later, we continue to hike the gorge at least once a year. (I have since moved a few hours away from Niagara Falls, but my friends who still live in the area visit the gorge many times a year.) When we hike today, we note some of the minor changes in the surroundings. For example, there is more signage now, some of which warns hikers about various dangers and discourages littering. There are also more hikers in general, as more awareness has been raised about the gorge’s natural beauty.  

For my friends and me, though, a hike down the gorge today makes us question Heraclitus’s dictum that “you can’t enter the same river twice.” For when we visit the gorge, our adult eyes love to see many of the same sights from the past—the sections of the path where old rockslides and tree roots still impact the route, the similar look of the wooded sides of the gorge, the same green-and-white color combinations of the river and its rapids. 

Most of all, our adult ears always revel in that same thrilling sound of the Niagara River, as water from four of the five Great Lakes roars its way through the narrow gorge walls enroute to Lake Ontario. For that soundtrack of our youth full of shared memories, we are forever grateful. 

In fact, long ago one of my buddies became so enchanted with the gorge that he dubbed it “our church.” He also began collecting sticks, pebbles, and slabs of driftwood and turning them into pieces of art with the word “JOY” on them to give as gifts. (One of his nicknames as a teen was “Wild Boy”). To this day, he continues to make driftwood “JOY” art to celebrate the sacredness of the Niagara River Gorge. I have an example on my desk as I write. Amen.