6. THE BURNING RIVER, PART II

We sit in our kayaks in front of the ArcellorMittal blast furnace, marveling at the spectacle. A giant bucket extends down, over and over, gobbling up chunks of raw material, which it then dumps into a feeder, like a claw hand at an arcade. Off to one side, train car after train car of coke — super-refined coal — sits waiting. A huge bulldozer and an equally large dump truck totter past.

The industrial scenery continues for what seems to my poor muscles like miles. From the water, I can see why Clevelanders so easily forgot the Cuyahoga: a wall of pipes, gray buildings and railroad tracks stands between the river and us.

As we round Marathon Bend — named for the small facility that the Canton refiner keeps there, complete with a “Welcome to Cleveland!” billboard exclusively for boats — Ridge fiddles with his phone and calls out: “There’s a freighter!” Using an app called MarineTraffic, he has sighted a massive boat rounding the curve ahead. We hang on the bulkhead while all 634 feet and 10 inches of the immense Sam Laud passes. The bulkhead rumbles and pulses with the gush of its engines.

With more people like us on the river — kayakers, rowers and fun-time boaters — collisions are increasingly becoming a hazard. Commercial boaters and recreational ones have been eying each other with unease. In 2013, two freighters were moored on opposite sides of the river from each other, cutting off the route for a planned rowing race. An accident would heat that already-hot cauldron to boil. Not today, though. High in the cockpit, the pilot sticks his hand out the window and waves.

“See?” Ridge says, after the ship passes. “Commercial and recreational can get along.”

At Collision Bend, underneath the shadow of the Terminal Tower, we see what the Sam Laud left behind: chopped-up bits of gizzard shad. The fish, unaccustomed to the Cuyahoga’s warm temperatures, have gone belly-up. The Sam Laud’s engines turned their bodies to chum, spraying the water with parts and a fish market stink. I nearly flip my kayak over as I grab a fat torso out of the water. It has no eyes, and its tail has been walloped off, as if by a machete.

“The signal for water quality is not just chemistry, but fish,” Jane Goodman, executive director of Cuyahoga River Restoration tells me later. “It’s what lives there and how healthy the things that live there are. It’s fish and bugs, basically.”

There are still considerable ecosystem challenges in the Cuyahoga. Goodman points to road salt, which seeps unseen into the river’s 800 miles of watershed and, eventually, into the river itself. Both Akron and the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District are also in the midst of a decadeslong process to get rid of their combined sewer systems, which empty bacteria into the river, at a combined cost of roughly $4.4 billion. And, Friends of the Crooked River’s Marsh says, new development along the banks could have unforeseen consequences. “Environment is a dynamic thing,” Marsh tells me. “We can never assume we’re done with the river.” But eyes or no eyes, the presence of the stinky shad torso I toss overboard is a sign of a recovering ecosystem.

I am flagging as our group enters the final bend, passing The Foundry rowing and sailing academy, the sculptures of Hart Crane Memorial Park, the Merwin’s Wharf patio, the Cleveland Rowing Foundation and the cabin of Lorenzo Carter, Cleveland’s first permanent settler. After six miles of constant paddling, my shoulders ache. Each stroke is like heaving boulders through the water.

Finally, the river mouth is ahead. The sky has darkened, and the temperature has dropped — a sudden April storm. It is, I realize, very cold. I lose feeling in my hands. The kayak rocks back and forth dangerously as the swells get higher and higher. For the first time, I am very aware that below me are 23 feet of unforgiving water.

Up ahead, the railroad bridge at the mouth is down, and we race for it. Cold water soaks my pants and has managed to get inside my coat. It’s running down my back, and pooling in the kayak seat. I pull my hood up to guard against the spray.

A train rolls over us as we pass under the bridge. The plan was to round the Coast Guard station, to the beach at Wendy Park. But as we emerge on the other side of the bridge and eye the swells, some of which are about level with our heads, it seems wise to call that off. “Let’s get out over here!” McBride calls. I angle for where he points, a miniature bay beside the bridge. We climb out of the river in a sudden Lake Erie squall.

I started my Cuyahoga journey knowing of the fire and little else, and ended it having seen a river that is the healthiest it has been since the 1969 blaze, and maybe since industrialization began along its banks.

I saw a river we used, and abused, and are using again. Parts of it smelled bad. Parts of it could have killed me. Parts of it were exploding with life. But in the strange industrial way of things in Cleveland, and the quiet, dangerous way of those in nature, the Cuyahoga I saw was beautiful.

As I stagger up the bank from my kayak at the river’s end, my legs spasming from sitting in the same position for half a day, with no feeling in my hands and the lake winds freezing my soaked clothing, I feel oddly fond of the river that has done all this to me, like a little fire had been lit inside me, one that will not soon go out.