Translated as “river that flows two ways” or “waters that are never still,” muh-he-kun-ne-tuk was the name given to the Hudson River by the Mohican people who lived on these shifting lands in their natural state. The river was called upon for its changing flows due to its diurnal tidal cycle. Like all tidal movement, the ocean is pulled by the gravitational forces of the Moon, and as the Earth rotates, the river experiences ebb and flow twice a day. This tidal movement creates both horizontal and vertical changes in the river’s flow, with varying intensities depending on its proximity to the ocean. Where the Hudson River meets the ocean lies Manhattan Island today. Opening up to the ocean, this is where the river rises and falls the most, yet this planetary movement is hardly noticeable in the urban city. The shifting lands the Mohican people once lived on are now dry and defined. Concrete walls bordering the city shorelines hide the approximately 150 cm of water level change in the tidal river. Looking out to the river from the city streets, this movement, which repeats every twelve hours, seems nonexistent—as if the shorelines were always made out of concrete, and were never an estuary.
It only takes a two-hour train ride along the Hudson River away from New York City to find this ever-changing landscape and to understand why the Mohican people called it “waters that are never still.”
Or it only takes a hurricane to flood the city, and the river takes over where it once flowed every day, twice a day.
