River Years is an audio walk commissioned by Creative Time and Governors Island Arts made on the occasion of Moving Chains by Charles Gaines on Governors Island, the second chapter in the public art series The American Manifest. River Years is an historical journey with prompts that suggests that the human lifespan be reconsidered as the measuring device to understand our universe. This engagement personifies water as an elder observing human behavior. The walk is best experienced on Governors Island during the run of Moving Chains. As a Talk and Reception, participants are invited into the creative process and contemplations that brought this experience into existence which serves as a springboard for new understandings of the colonial era and time.