This is the year of the Quadricentennial in which we celebrate Henry Hudson, perhaps without examining too carefully what he represents. Yet we express our values by what we celebrate, unless we have forgotten altogether why we are celebrating.

Early this year I took a dissenting look at Henry Hudson's Quadricentennial and that of Robert Fulton, which is not a centennial at all, but sort of a "piggyback" celebration of 1807. Hudson looked at the river and decided it was not what he was looking for; after killing nearly a dozen inhabitants, he sailed away and never returned. I had to smile at the quip of one writer suggesting it was the Hudson River that discovered Henry Hudson. Fulton used family political influence to build - not the first steamboat - but the Hudson River's first steamboat monopoly.

Did we overlook something in this centennial year? Could this be the anniversary year of someone whose contribution was much more meaningful to us personally in the way we relate to our great river? On a sheer numerical basis, a 400-year anniversary sounds much more impressive than a 150-year anniversary. As we attempted to sort out the bewildering problem of how to celebrate Hudson and Fulton in the year 2009, we have neglected the anniversary of a figure who, in my opinion, has a far worthier connection with the Hudson River. Unlike the other two, Washington Irving forged a lifelong, intimate relationship with the river that transcended the solving of transportation logistics and the furthering of commercial schemes. He also showed us - and still shows us - that the river is capable of infusing us with something fine, beautiful, and spiritual if we only will let it.

The father of American literature was born and died along the Hudson. The last thing he saw from his window, 150 years ago in November of 1859, was a glorious sunset over the Hudson River. In his eyes the Hudson was like a friend of the heart or a cherished family member. Early on, Irving proposed to Americans that it is the river itself that must be the object of our celebration.

To Irving, the Hudson Valley was the Garden of Eden. But any earth-bound garden can be destroyed by brute disregard. He wrote, "If the Garden of Eden were now on earth, someone would try to put a railroad through it." Later, near the end of his life, he reflected this way on the Hudson: "I fancy I can trace much of what is good and pleasant in my own heterogeneous compound to my early companionship with this glorious river. In the warmth of my youthful enthusiasm, I used to clothe it with moral attributes, and almost give it a soul. I admired its frank, bold, honest character; its noble sincerity and perfect truth."

Washington Irving was born at 128 William Street in Manhattan, about seven or eight blocks from the Hudson River and four or five blocks from New York's seaport on the East River. He was born on the cusp of America's industrial age, but also the Romanic Age with its characteristic reverence for the sublime in nature.

Irving took his first extended voyage up the Hudson in 1800, at the age of seventeen. At the time of this youthful journey, the farthest Irving had ventured along the river was Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow in the summer of 1798. The river was to become the touchstone of his life. "My first voyage up the Hudson was made in early boyhood, in the good old times before steamboats and railroads had annihilated time and space, and driven all poetry and romance out of travel... I sat on the deck as we slowly tided along at the foot of those stern mountains, and gazed with wonder and admiration at cliffs impending far above me, crowned with forests, with eagles sailing and screaming around them; or listened to the unseen stream dashing down precipices; or beheld rock, and tree, and cloud, and sky reflected in the glassy stream of the river. And then how solemn and thrilling the scene as we anchored at night at the foot of these mountains, clothed with overhanging forests; and every thing grew dark and mysterious..."

In his lifetime, Irving was politely antagonistic towards the environmental impacts of "progress" on the river. He was not a political activist, but he was sensitive to what was being lost during the first half of the nineteenth century. He noted the accelerated speed of travel along the Hudson River and harkened back to the days of sail; "We enjoyed the river then; we relished it as we did our wine, sip by sip; not as at present, gulping all down at a draught, without tasting it."

As the anniversary of Washington Irving's death approaches in late autumn, we might reflect on his example as a lover of the Hudson River. We might look for some of the things that he found in its grandeur and beauty, and take his cue as the artists of the Hudson River School did. Maybe we can resist the temptation to turn the Hudson's post-industrial shoreline into an alley of condominiums and even help to reclaim some of the river's lost glory. Realizing that small dream might depend on our ability to love the Hudson with some of the intensity that Irving did.

"I thank God I was born on the banks of the Hudson! I think it an invaluable advantage to be born and brought up in the neighborhood of some grand and noble object in nature; a river, a lake, or a mountain. We make a friendship with it, we, in a manner, ally ourselves to it for life. It remains an object of our pride and affections, a rallying point, to call us home again after all our wanderings.... The Hudson is, in a manner, my first and last love."

Henry John Steiner is the village historian of Sleepy Hollow and the managing broker of Steiner Real Estate Associates; henry@SteinerRealEstateAssociates.com