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It was one of those August nights when the breeze is like dog's breath and the city makes you crazy. We hooked up the boat trailer and pulled out of the alley. Fifteen minutes later we lowered the Halloween down the public boat ramp in Anacostia Park, ignoring the stinking garbage and floating soft-drink bottles. The outboard fired up easily, and we scooted under the railroad bridge.

It was high tide, so we had to watch our heads. Fortunately there was no train passing. The water is soothing at dusk, like the gentle arm of a parent around your shoulders. Slowly we motored up the river, past the manicured edge of the National Arboretum, past the restored wetlands of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, and on up the dark river into the wilds of . . . Bladensburg. We felt completely alone. Then, on a bluff, we saw a man. And a fire. He was bare-chested, his hair wild and bushy, standing there in the gloom, smiling like a maniac as his fire burned brighter against the darkening sky. He was us: an escapee from civilization. He was not us: primeval, living by his wits and probably a toxic fish he'd caught and was about to cook, happy in his fire and his food and his wildness.

If we had been birds, we could have flown to the Capitol in 15 minutes. We were that close. And that far.
Other great cities -- London, Paris, Rome, Philadelphia, Boston, New York -- love their rivers. Even in a dinky little place like Vicksburg, Miss., the roads lead you to the river. Prime real estate is near it, within sight of it, regardless of the possibility of flood.

In Washington, we treat our rivers like animals in a zoo, caged for easy viewing. We've put them behind highways and bridges that service commuters whose only thought of the water is how to cross it most quickly. Here, the roads lead from the rivers, not toward them; we can see them, but it's hard to figure out how to get to them.

Back when the national capital was moved to the District in 1800, Georgetown and Alexandria were already full-service ports. George Washington envisioned the new city as the industrial capital of the country. He saw mills powered by the rivers' streams. He saw coal, iron and timber being shipped down the Potomac from the Appalachians. He saw farms spreading out in fertile lands from the riverbanks, sending their grain down to the docks. For most of the 19th century, a tributary of the Potomac flowed past the door of Congress. A canal was dug to connect this tributary to the docks of the Anacostia.

But when the railroads were built and the heyday of river transit passed, Washington's commercial aspirations passed with it.

There are no longer farms on the banks of the Anacostia, and Bolling Air Force base replaced the Victorian resort that once bordered the river in Southeast. The brick and stone warehouses that used to line the steep banks in Georgetown have morphed into a few boat clubs, office buildings, Washington Harbour and -- soon -- a luxury apartment complex. Except for the boat clubs, the river is merely a scenic backdrop for Georgetown.

Now, the channels are choked with silt and are too shallow for most commercial traffic or even, in some places, sailboats. There are tour boats and day rentals, and the occasional delivery of sand, gravel or airplane fuel, but only one regular river business remains, and that is Alexandria's Robinson Terminal, where some of the newsprint The Post is printed on arrives by freighter from Newfoundland.

What little waterfront activity we have is mostly tourist stuff, restaurants, parks anointed with plaques that describe glory that once was. We've dumped so much sewage and plastic and cars and bodies into the waterways that the cops who work them have to get shots to protect themselves from disease. The government owns nearly all of the waterfront property -- through either the National Park Service or the military, with the Army, the Navy and the Air Force each controlling attractive chunks that for the most part might as well be in Fairfax, for all the use they make of the rivers.

But now there are plans for Washington's waterfront: a hotel in Georgetown, more workers at the Navy Yard, a multi-use development on the west bank of the Anacostia. As if the city were awakening, slowly, to this treasure in its midst.

In the meantime, there are people who have been using the rivers, who love the rivers, who are drawn to the small marinas and docks, who row or kayak, or sail or motor their boats, or sit grandly at a table in an air-conditioned tour boat. Or fish, from a bass boat on the Potomac or a lawn chair on the bank.

Like so much of Washington, there's an uptown and a downtown to the rivers, a class system under which the Potomac is called mighty and the Anacostia is scorned. But there is still mystery to be found on Washington's waterways. A river city.

There were people who laughed when I married Boatman. They predicted disaster and divorce in short order, and knowing now what I didn't know then, I can't blame them.

To put it simply: Boatman loves boats. His idea of fun is sailing into a hurricane, or putting up the spinnaker to go down the Cape Cod Canal. He does not mind being awakened at 2 a.m. to start his watch, enjoys cooking on a swaying stove and thinks that little closet they call the head is a luxury.

I don't like to get too far from a plug for my hair dryer. Whenever I set foot on a sailboat I fall down and get an enormous bruise, vomit over the side, and turn pink from sunburn. Where Boatman is fearless and knowledgeable, I am terrified and incompetent.

How could this marriage be saved?
By building a boat. A small boat, a 20-foot dory, that would have an outboard motor. A boat that would not go on any body of water where you couldn't see land on two sides. There would be no bunks, so you didn't have to sleep on it, and no head, so you'd have to come home before too long.

We built it on Capitol Hill, in our back yard, which is about as big as a picnic table. I say "we," but Boatman and the kids did the actual work; I stood around saying discouraging things like, "How are you going to get this OUT of the back yard? And WHEN?"

Finally it was launched. It is best not to dwell on the maiden voyage of the Halloween, except to say that improvements were made and no lives or picnic baskets were lost.

And so we began to explore the waterways of Washington.
It is barely dawn at the Anacostia Rowing Center, home of the Capital Rowing Club, but two guys and a woman are stretching their leg muscles, leaning against anything they can find. One of the guys is Boatman. He has been rowing longer than most of the others have been alive, but he gets respect for (a) being good at it, and (b) still doing it.

By 5:30 there are more than 40 people stretching and putting on or taking off sweat shirts, carrying the long oars down the ramp to the floating dock where they launch the boats. The smaller people are the coxswains; they order the bigger people to pick up the boats, hoist them over their heads and walk them down to the dock, shift the load into the water, and get in.

To be perfectly frank, the rowing center is not in a very scenic spot. It is located under the 11th Street Bridge, whence comes the unending percussion of vehicles thumping over asphalt. There is a chain-link enclosure for the boat racks, oars and other gear, and a cavernous "office" housed inside one of the bridge pilings, containing other boats, signs, course markers, barbecue grills and a few chairs. Outside there are a couple of picnic tables fashioned mostly from river trash.

Near the dock, a beaver appears and then slithers off with a splash.
The boats have names that play off the club's name: the Capital Offense, the Capital Punishment, Das Kapital, Capital Gain and, of course, Capitalist. That the Capital Rowing Club also has Russian coaches is just a bonus.

Guennadi and Elena Bratichkos are world-class medalists in rowing who left Russia to make their way in this country seven years ago. Guennadi came first, and answered an ad the club had placed in a rowing magazine. Now he is also the strength training coach at George Washington University, and Elena coaches the women's crew at George Mason. They recently bought their first house, in Northern Virginia, where their two children are rapidly losing all traces of their Russian accents.

Under the stern management of the tall and handsome Bratichkos, Capital crews have medaled in regattas up and down the East Coast. The workouts on the Anacostia are well attended partly because Guennadi does not smile on those who fail to show up and suffer.

Each morning he makes up the boats, reading the names of those in the first eight, the second eight, a four and so on. Elena and Guennadi each get into outboard motor boats and buzz up and down the river, following after first one boat and then another, shouting admonishments through a megaphone.

"Number 2, no cheeken weengs!" yells Elena at the second man in an eight-person crew, who is allowing his elbows to stick out inefficiently.

"Come on! Relax, return. Take your time. Up! Up!" I have no idea what Elena is telling them to do. It's an unexpectedly chilly morning for mid-June, the wind is up and the rowers are complaining about it, saying the water is heavy. As the sun begins its climb in the direction of Bladensburg, we pass the ugly Col. George J. McNally Building at the Naval Air Station, which contains a White House communications center, and then the marina where military officers and employees can keep their personal vessels (mostly powerboats).

"Vonderful job, number 6!" Elena shouts. Number 6 can't help smiling. "Control! Control!"
A tug from Baltimore, the Donna Kay, comes along, pushing a barge toward the Army Corps of Engineers depot near the club's docks. The corps picks up large debris, like huge logs, and is responsible for dredging the channels whenever Congress authorizes it to do so. In the Navy Yard, on the opposite bank, cranes and other heavy equipment are visible, part of a $200 million project that is transforming the yard from an underused relic to a hive of office workers. Over the next few years, the working population will grow from 5,000 to 11,000 as civilian employees of the military are transferred from rented office space in Crystal City and Baileys Crossroads to renovated buildings here in Southeast Washington.

As we pass the Navy Yard, the sun is emerging like a large egg yolk. I hear what sounds like firecrackers popping. A detachment of Marines is practicing funeral salutes.

The rowers go no farther than the South Capitol Street Bridge, where the current begins to change as the Anacostia merges into the Potomac. They turn and head back on their two-mile course, trying to keep the oars dipping crisply into the water as they slide back and forth in unison. After nearly an hour, their faces are straining with exertion. By 6:55 they pull back into their floating docks, lift out their boats and put them back in the racks. They do this every weekday from the end of March to October.

The rowing club has had its eye on one of the buildings next door to its current quarters. Until recently, the city's Department of Public Works used it to store tunnel-washing tools and welding equipment and a broken tractor or two, but Mayor Anthony Williams made it a "priority" to let the club have the place. Wearing a Wilson High School crew cap, Williams came down to the club area April 8 and said the "grand plan" was to make the building a community rowing center for Anacostia, and, incidentally, a place where he can keep some of the many canoes he apparently left behind in St. Louis.

Anacostia Rowing Center co-founder Jim Connolly envisions a charming renewal of this scrubby area, with kayak and canoe rentals for the community, a home for the rowing club, and maybe boat-building projects like those of the Alexandria Seaport Foundation to keep area youth off the streets. The Anacostia Community Boat House will be a nonprofit entity, hosting regattas for high school rowers or even Chinese dragon boat races put on by the National Capital Area Women's Paddling Association.

Two years ago, an Eagle scout from Wakefield High School in Arlington, with his friends and family, built another chain-link enclosure and several boat racks, adding a small plaque to certify that it was Aaron Parde of Troop 143 whose service project is here on view. The Wakefield crew began using the space, and this spring -- chased out of Georgetown by construction -- other high school crews found their way to this homely spot.

Gabriel Horchler of Cheverly also uses the Parde enclosure. In the fine-weather months he leaves his house around 5:30 a.m., loads his sculling boat on top of his car, and drives a few minutes to the port of Bladensburg, where he launches and rows about five miles to the Capital Rowing Club landing. From there he has a five-minute bike ride to his job as a business and economic cataloguer at the Library of Congress. All told, his commute is about an hour and a half, but he's done his exercise and avoided the traffic.

"And if I took the subway, it would cost me $3.20," he says.
Somehow it comes as no surprise to learn that Horchler, 55, has five children, all daughters, ranging in age from 4 to 18.

"I am completely alone on the water," he says. "It is the only time I am completely alone. No disrespectful teenagers, no telephones, no one asking me for something."

The "port" of Bladensburg is one of the most pathetic ports you've ever seen. Despite a continuing effort to recapture even a small measure of its former glory as a major East Coast depot, you can almost walk across the water at low tide. Horchler can't even launch his scull in that shallow a puddle. At high tide, it's a grand three feet.

The channel is supposed to be eight feet deep, according to the Army Corps of Engineers, which dredged as far as the marina this past winter, a mere token of the effort needed to make the area navigable. The locals, who are responsible for the boat basin, haven't managed to do much more. "Our dredge needs a new cutter head," says Charles Montrie of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. But even with dredging it's a tough battle against the silt, fought only six months a year around the EPA-protected spawning season (February 15 to June 15).

The main thing in the port is a modest brick building fronting the water. It has an impressive plaque announcing it to be the Prince George's Marina, part of the Anacostia River Basin Flood Control and Navigation Project constructed between 1954 and '59.

The building is abandoned. Weeds grow out of the steps. On the road side of the structure there's a newish awning and a cheerful sign: Visitor Center. But there are no visitors. There is nothing to visit.

The sign on the chain-link gates to the port says on one side: "Welcome to the Historic Bladensburg Waterfront Anacostia River Park." And on the other side: "Park Closed. Under Construction."

There is also a big shed, used by the M-NCPPC for a carpentry shop and storage. And there is some construction visible: Where once there were several collapsing docks and pilings, now there is a very nice new dock, and a rebuilt sea wall, all of which cost $1 million. The $2 million second phase began this spring -- reconfiguring the parking lot, rebuilding the old boat ramp, landscaping and so forth. The park is scheduled to reopen in September.

Meanwhile, people like Gabe Horchler can't use the new pier, because the park isn't officially open.
The polar opposite of the port of Bladensburg is the port of Alexandria. It has well-kept parks filled with babies in strollers and athletes jogging. It has waterfront real estate -- office towers and town houses and restaurants that face a lovely stretch of the Potomac -- and boats that carry tourists up the water for a picturesque view of Washington's monuments. It has a commodious building for the Alexandria Rowing Club, and the discreet quarters of the private Old Dominion Boat Club, established in 1880. There's a 10-year waiting list for its members-only boat slips.

The city employs a dock master and an assistant for him, and even has a Waterfront Committee of citizens to watchdog any changes. The dock master has a small, air-conditioned command post on the waterfront, from which he rents city-owned boat slips (sold out on fair-weather weekends) and gives directions to tourists.

Here, too, there are businesses, mostly remnants of the days when water was the highway. The Potomac Arms Corp. sells weapons and their accouterments from a funky old building south of the Strand, and the old brick buildings of the Interarms gun business are nearby. And there is the Robinson Terminal, the only remaining dock for commercial shipments.

The Alexandria waterfront is clean, bright and controlled. Fishing is not allowed. Live-aboards are not allowed. The Chart House Restaurant blasting top-40 radio music across the boardwalk is allowed. This seems to be the waterfront of the future -- an L.L. Bean kind of place, with touches of Nantucket in the old buildings and white trim, and nearby shops. Occasionally there is a freelance busker, looking out of place amid all the well-keptness, like the mime last summer who carried a sign that said "Eating Pork Is Bad for Your Health."

As you leave the Anacostia, the current changes, and if it's running strong our little craft bounces like a ball on asphalt. The kids love that.

We pass the graceful old brick buildings of the National Defense University on our right, located on the 100 well-kept acres of Fort Lesley J. McNair. You can see some of the houses that high-ranking officers live in, and a bit of the golf course. During the Civil War this base housed the Washington Arsenal, where 21 women making gun cartridges were blown up when a bin of gunpowder exploded. In the latter part of the century Walter Reed researched malaria in the marshes then here. Fort McNair is now the headquarters of the Military District of Washington.

Once past Buzzard Point, then Greenleaf Point, you can turn into the Washington Channel, or carry on around Hains Point. The channel is a busy avenue that hosts the only full-time waterfront life in Washington: the Harbor Police and Fire Department, a subdivision of houseboats, restaurants, a hotel and the fish wharf.

The Southwest waterfront exemplifies some of the absurdity of a city where government agencies vie for the opportunity to neglect city resources. The area was created by filling in swampland many years ago, but who does the land belong to? Who is responsible for maintaining the piers and the sea wall and acting as landlord to the fish boats and businesses and the lonely Washington Marina?

Basically, the feds own it, D.C. collects the rent, and every time something needs to be done the tenants have to appeal to Congress. As a result, the popular fish vendors and the marina have been living with month-to-month leases for years, which means they have little incentive to undertake any improvements themselves. Roomfuls of high-priced lawyers have not been able to agree even on the dimensions of the property. Meanwhile the piers are rotting, the oldest market building (city-owned) is in disrepair and a popular, lively and genuinely racially mixed spot is hanging on by a fish head.

One evening we took my teenage godson out for a boat ride. We headed for Georgetown, pointing out on the way the deserted steps where Washingtonians used to sit and listen to the National Symphony Orchestra playing from a barge anchored in the water, a summer treat long since chased away by the noise of airplanes at National Airport.

On our way back, we were stopped by the Harbor Police. It turned out one of our running lights was out. The policeman began to lecture.

"Have you taken a boating safety course?" he asked Boatman.
Inwardly, I trembled, fearing a reply somewhere along the lines of: "Boating safety course? I've sailed across the Atlantic three times and you want me to take a boating safety course?"

But Boatman said the right thing: "No, sir, but I certainly will. And I'll fix this light right away. I'm terribly sorry, I didn't realize it was out."

We were warned to go directly home -- otherwise our boat would be confiscated and we'd get a ticket.
The Harbor Police, established in 1861, is the oldest specialized unit in the Metropolitan Police Department. Its commander also has the title of D.C.'s harbor master. I, for one, am glad our city has a harbor master. It sounds like we really have a harbor. In addition to him, there are 21 officers assigned there, and 12 are certified scuba divers.

The divers find cars (12 in 1998), guns and, sometimes, bodies, for which they call Homicide. They deal with the jumpers, too. When notified of a potential jumper, the police divers suit up and head for the bridge in question, knowing that if it's the 14th Street Bridge (about 33 feet) the poor soul is likely to just get wet and embarrassed. But if it's the Key Bridge (85 feet), the outcome could be worse.

But the real crucible for the Harbor Police is the Fourth of July, when just about any yahoo with floating real estate will decide to bring himself, his friends, his family and his booze to watch the fireworks from the Potomac. The Harbor Police and the fire and rescue unit work basically a 20-hour shift on July 4, handing out tickets to intoxicated skippers and sorting out collisions. Inevitably a few boats run aground at Shepherds Landing above the Wilson Bridge and have to be hauled off.

It's the one night a year the river really is a zoo.
As we began to discover the river, we also found the riverbanks. There are still some sections that haven't been tamed by the National Park Service or enclosed by the military, rough paths that are nearly hidden from view.

One Tuesday morning, on our way back from a walk along the west bank of the Anacostia, we encountered a strange apparition emerging from another path. He had long black curls, and was wearing black pedal pushers, a lovely strand of pearls, high heels and a purse. There were leaves and twigs stuck to his back.

He didn't like our dog at all.
In these untraveled spots we always see people, especially in cold weather, who we think must be spies or detectives or maybe even up to no good at all, furtive seekers of isolation. Why else were those two men talking to each other from their cars, parked so that the drivers were facing each other in the winter-empty lot of the Columbia Island Marina? And why did someone leave a Ford with Virginia plates down the road from the DPW buildings and then set it on fire? The trees overhead are singed, so you know it was burned there. It took several days for the debris removal staff to go down the block and remove the debris.

Another mysterious fire turned the wooden footbridge at the so-called Children's Island into charcoal. The tide was so low the fire boat could not get in far enough to help douse the flames, which the Fire Department's incident report says was started with "flammable liquid." Hmmm.

And what about the animals the Anacostia Debris Removal Project has found sucked into the open arms of its trash skimmer? Dogs and cats with their legs tied, and throats slit, as in an animal sacrifice.

One night Boatman and a friend were chugging back from a rowing regatta on the Georgetown waterfront when, as they entered the mouth of the Anacostia, they hit something big. Each time they tell the story the object becomes more impressive -- at first it was a log. Then it was a Buick.

Whatever it was, it knocked the motor off its mooring and into the water. Fortunately, it was lashed to the boat with wire. And there were emergency oars on board, so once the waterlogged engine was hauled back in, the two men could paddle themselves back to the boat ramp.

That was the year -- 1997 -- the skimmer pulled 470 tons of junk out of the river. In 1998 it got 400 tons. All from a two-mile stretch of water.

The Halloween is being replaced by a new boat, a sleeker, 19-foot skiff that has also been built in our back yard, with the help of our friend Tom Bowes. This one will have benches for seats instead of beach chairs, and a steering wheel instead of a wood tiller. Boatman wants to name her Surf Girl, but that hasn't been finalized.

We will find changes on the river in the new boat.
An entrepreneur has gotten permission to launch Potomac RiverJet, a commuter service that will use the Potomac as a 38-mph highway from Woodbridge. The plan is to open sometime after Labor Day at $9 per round trip. Another new hotel is planned for a lot opposite the Washington Marina. A developer from Texas is planning to build on a plot of land owned by Washington Gas that borders the west bank of the Anacostia. This space -- bounded by highways and access ramps -- is supposed to contain a hotel, restaurants and shops, designed to service the anticipated hordes of consultants and contractors doing business in or near the revamped Navy Yard, and, of course, the Capitol.

This hotel plan has prompted the National Park Service, hitherto an admittedly neglectful landlord, to take a look at the property. Not surprisingly, the Park Service wants it to look more like a park, not a funky collection of boat clubs, equipment depots and a marina full of boats functioning and otherwise. The NPS vision, judging from initial proposals, is for something more like, well, Alexandria.

Even Alexandria wants to look more like Alexandria. The city has announced a plan to create more park space, more paths and trails along the waterfront, right through the few businesses that remain.

And there's Opryland on the Potomac, also known as National Harbor, a $1 billion hotel, shopping and conference center planned for Oxon Hill. Public officials, salivating at the prospect of jobs and tax revenue, are eager to begin paving over this part of the waterfront.

At times it seems that what the Park Service really wants are rivers with no people on them. Just views. I exaggerate, of course, but we regular users of the water can't help noticing that there is only one free public boat ramp (in Anacostia), and that there are increasingly unfriendly conditions for boats, ships and marinas, what with the waits at the Wilson Bridge drawbridge, the undredged channel and rising rents.

"I do not believe there is any mandate to get rid of the boat clubs or the marina," said John Hale, superintendent of the National Capital Parks East, which includes the west bank. "They are an important part of what the river is all about . . . But we do have a responsibility to take another look at whether they are being charged an appropriate rent."

Try telling that to some of the folks down there. "They've been trying to get rid of us for years," said Charles "Bob" Martin, 70, a co-founder of the Seafarers Boat Club and a lifelong river user. When the Park Service held a "visioning" session in June 1999 to talk about possible changes along the waterfront, it held it midweek and during the day, which made it impossible for the working people from the clubs to attend. They noticed.

The Seafarers club was founded in 1945 to "offer African-Americans the opportunity to engage in the enjoyment of the waterways through safe boating and gentlemanly sportsmanship," according to its official history, and is on the way to being declared the "oldest minority boat club" in the country. There are about 55 members, Martin said, who pay a $350 initiation fee and around $250 in annual dues. They hold regular fish fries to make the nearly $1,000-a-month rent.

A far cry, perhaps, from the venerable Old Dominion Boat Club, which requires $500 and the sponsorship of two current members to join, and annual dues of nearly that much. There are more than 100 people on the Old Dominion waiting list. But then, they too may have to make way for a Park Service trail through their property.

I don't know how it will sort out. But I guess it's worth remembering one thing an experienced river person told me: In order to have a 20-minute fireworks display from a barge anchored off Alexandria to celebrate the city's birthday, thirteen government agencies have to be involved.

Could take a while.
Megan Rosenfeld is a staff writer for The Post's Style section.

© 2000 The Washington Post Company