Riverbank History
The Old Gorge Path and the Memory of the Trackers
FIELD PORTRAIT
Before mechanised shipping, paths cut into the rock, work chants and ropes together kept traffic moving upstream.
Photo: Fxqf · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
“Every groove in the rock left the weight of moving upstream on the bank.”
A transport history cut into rock
The old tracker paths are not grand. They read more like a thin line repeatedly revised by the river and by human feet. Surviving rope holes, roadbed and local testimony give that labour of navigation a concrete shape again.
Travelling the river today, slowing down enough to pick out these traces is the way into the Yangtze that existed before the modern channel.
A transport history cut into rock
The old tracker paths are not grand. They read more like a thin line repeatedly revised by the river and by human feet. Surviving rope holes, roadbed and local testimony give that labour of navigation a concrete shape again.
Travelling the river today, slowing down enough to pick out these traces is the way into the Yangtze that existed before the modern channel.
