burning rage: stop throwing cigarettes out the window!

I worked from home today, which meant I gave more attention to news. I have a feed set up to receive headlines from a variety of sources in a variety of places, including but hardly limited to home in New Jersey. 

What kept coming up was disconcerting:
Berkeley residents watch as firefighters battle to save their homes
Downe Township brush blaze upgraded to forest fire, affecting 1,500 acres

plus countless updates from Jersey Shore Hurricane News and friends on facebook who are seeing and smelling brush fires. 

 
Photo courtesy Frank Hennessey, via Mike

While causes haven't been mentioned as of yet, every time I hear about fires in New Jersey, I think about a particular experience I had during my commute back to Toms River when I was teaching at William Paterson. It had been a dry string of weeks, and it was a sunny, breezy day. While sitting in traffic just before getting to Silverton, I watched firefighters respond to a brush fire in the stretch of pine trees along Brick Blvd. After traffic let up less than half a mile down the road, I watched as the driver in front of me tossed a cigarette out the window. 

and I was enraged.

Now, don't get me wrong. I absolutely appreciate the beauty and intricacy of the fire ecology of the Pine Barrens. We as humans are not doing ourselves any favors by letting the biomass pile up until a stray flare or something results in disaster (and it's my worst nightmare that the Pine Barrens will burn down for one reason or another and bracken fern will take over). Here we are, trying to save communities from destruction today. But I cannot believe how ignorant so many people seem to be about how incredibly risky it is to throw cigarettes out the window.

Cigarette butts going out windows of cars is not just a New Jersey problem. The annual cleanup of Bayou Lafourche, which I recently paddled, counted 3726 butts in 2012 and 1302 in 2013, picked up along the 100 or so mile stretch of the bayou that the crews focus on (source: BTNEP). That's just the ones they found and picked up. You know you see tons of them in high traffic areas (especially areas of high auto traffic, where jerks are throwing them out their windows). 

It's not just a fire risk, either. Cigarette filters are not biodegradable (source: Longwood University). Seriously. They're not made of paper, or cotton-- they're made of a kind of plastic. They will not break down for a very, very long time.

And what about the water? Perhaps there's only trace amounts of chemicals left at the end of a cigarette, but that adds up, just like everything else we pollute our waterways with. I think it's pretty common knowledge these days that nicotine and other carcinogens in cigarettes aren't good for us. It doesn't matter if you're consuming it via inhalation or your drinking water. And don't even try to tell me that you can just get bottled water, because it's in there too. These chemicals can kill small animals and sicken children who eat them, too.

Obviously, it would be best if people stopped smoking all together, but the least we can do is spread a little knowledge. Please, please, please stop throwing cigarettes out windows. Would you throw them on the floor in your home? I do not live in your ash tray, people.


Hang in there, my beloved pitch pines. Hang in there, Jersey.

Nothing like driving across the state, through the Pines, on Route 70, enjoying the last of a beautiful day's sunshine, having three of your favorite girls in the recently cleaned car with you. Also awesome-- the destination was the Haddonfield Presbyterian Church, one of my stops on the Johnsonburg World Tour last year, to enjoy the beautiful concert put on by Baylor A Capella. Great day.

This morning I drove the guest director from yesterday's bell festival to Philadelphia airport. I had a few hours before work and our director, who organizes the festival, really needed someone to drive. I like driving. It worked out well.

I've driven out Route 70 through the Pine Barrens many, many times but tend to pick out different things to focus on each time. Today I was kind of contemplating the back roads that I never take, and what they're like.

On the way out to the airport, I passed a terrible wreck around 11:15 and probably ten emergency vehicles. A pickup was wrapped around a tree on the eastbound side, facing westbound. It was clear to me that the driver could not have survived. I have no idea how the truck went off the road like that in the middle of a clear, dry day.

The mess was still there when I was coming back from the airport two hours later. Traffic was being diverted onto one of those very side roads I was curious about. It was a single lane road that went by a few simple houses. A man was out for a run and probably wondering where all of these cars were coming from. It was interesting to get off Route 70 for a few minutes, but unfortunately a very sad reminder that despite my cold, despite my aches from the weekend, despite how tired I was and didn't feel like going to work later-- my day was most definitely not so bad.

Adventures with Abi

This weekend's adventures featured a copilot: Abi, one of the only Johnsonburg staffers who also lives in Ocean County. I did forewarn her about the adventures that she'd have to accompany me for, mainly a visit to a church a little over two hours south of camp. But first: Friday!

We left for camp from Toms River mid-morning. The weather was incredibly gorgeous, the ride plenty easy. The highlight: getting stuck behind a tractor going 20 mph on County Road 612 in Allamuchy. While this might sound like the antithesis of highlight for some, I was enjoying driving with the windows down and feeling like I wasn't in any sort of hurry. It was a nice reminder that we were in the country. It made me smile.

We were at camp to work a junior high retreat, which went very well, I think. It was much cooler out, but still sunny. We had a great group of people together to work the retreat, and a pretty sweet speaker. I always enjoying working with youth in that beautiful place.

So, today. Ridiculous. While the drive to the Woodbury church was long, it was pretty easy and mostly lovely, through a lot of farm country and small, historic downtowns (Route 206 most of the way, which is becoming more familiar). Leaving camp, it was quite dark and cold, but we were able to enjoy the super moon until the pretty sunrise over said farms about an hour into our drive. The visit went well at the church and it turned out to be a beautiful spring day.

Leaving the church, I told Abi how sometimes when heading home, I liked to just choose county roads with a certain whimsy and see what I could discover as a way home. She said, "Ok!" so we turned right instead of left, although that first stretch lasted about two blocks when we saw a Rita's and remembered that it was the first day of spring! free ice! and stopped. While waiting on line for them to open, I double checked that she didn't mind wandering, mostly through Pine Barrens, and her response? "Sure! I don't get out much."

She said I could quote her on that.

This is what happened next:

View Larger Map

So we didn't make a ton of progress early on due to roads lying about their cardinal directions ("Let's go south northeast!" -Abi) but eventually found some really peaceful stretches of the Pine Barrens. It ended up being free stuff day as far as we were concerned-- our free water ices were one thing. Later, we pulled over to take a picture in front of a ridiculous super hero woman statue in front of a tire place and a worker ran out and gave us a bobblehead doll of said statue for free.



A while after that, we found a sign that said Free Manure, but we just took a picture, didn't actually receive any manure. Honest.



We stopped by Bass River State forest but didn't really have a good enough map available to find that pygmy forest that I've become infatuated with, so we carried on and eventually hit the east coast in Tuckerton. Since we didn't end up making a pilgrimage to anything in particular, we visited Barnegat Lighthouse before getting Abi home. The light was closed "due to worker illness" so we walked around and enjoyed the salty air for a few minutes before bringing our adventure to an end, 18 Wawas later (+2 more for me between Forked River and home). Hooray for South Jersey!


no power lines in Wharton State forest means a glorious drive through untrimmed pitch pines

I will be breaking 153,000 miles on my car tomorrow.

I pine for... not the feller buncher.

Meet my arch nemesis: the Feller Buncher.


The first time I saw one of these in action, it was in the construction zone one Route 1 behind Cook Campus of Rutgers. The machine kind of hugs the tree and then saws right though its base. I was so in shock that such a machine would exist that I actually stalled my car staring at it all sorts of slack jawed and upset.

Well, we met again today. I didn't stall the car, but I may have yelled at the trucks, not that they listened as they chopped down my beloved pitch pines (which win the tree of the day award for a record fourth time as best I can tell from my own blog) along the Garden State Parkway southbound. And why was I driving southbound on the soon- to- be- wider- GSP South?

I spent the last two days in Atlantic City at the American Camp Association Tri-State meeting (which oddly enough involved people from all over the country). It was a great conference. I attended a slew of sessions about marketing and youth development and media and this crazy awesome lady. I got to have a lot of great conversations about how to build relationships with parents and how teens are interacting with media and each other and how interfaith communities can be about conversation and not conversion.

But let's be honest. In addition to learning all sorts of interesting things that are relevant to my job at camp, my work with the youth in my church and my life in general, I really enjoyed the drive. I rarely have an excuse to take the Parkway south through the Pinelands National Reserve. This time of year (not summer) it's peaceful and empty. No rush hour traffic. Hardly any traffic at all! I've probably mentioned before how much I love seeing the various stages of forestation in this region that, if humans would stop meddling, would be driven by fire ecology (although the human meddling part probably leads to some of the fires the pitch pine so desperately needs to propagate). I love that it's green even though nothing else is yet. I love seeing the vast stretches of wetlands around the Bass and Mullica Rivers, too.

I do not love feller bunchers, although I have to admit the name is kind of fun.

This morning I left home as the sun arose in a glorious way, with a few thin dark purple clouds stretched in front of the deep orange sphere. It was a beautiful day to make that drive with the windows down, that incredible smell of pine mixed with salty air. Goal for the (hopefully not so distant) future: visit Bass River State Forest (for the pygmy pines), Apple Pie Hill (the highest point of the Pinelands) and Brendan Byrne State Forest (because I've passed it a million times, every time I go to Virginia or anywhere else west or south of where I live), possibly all in one glorious Pine Barrens loving day...

So that's my green for the day. Despite my name being an Americanization of a Gaelic word, I did nothing to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. My bad. No beer of the day, not even Guinness or green beer (which I've never had, actually). Love those Pine Barrens though.

the Colleen authority of NY and NJ

At the end of last week, I had some unexpected journeying through New Jersey. While I love NJ dearly and am always excited to check out new places in the state, the circumstances were not the greatest-- the new beau was coming to visit for the weekend from Virginia and totaled his car en route. Taylor thankfully walked away unscathed.



And so I had the opportunity to drive to Bellmawr late Thursday night to retrieve him from a state police station, and down to Deptford the next day to help him empty his car and say goodbye to it. Both of these drives involved heading straight through my beloved Pine Barrens and hanging out in semi-rural Wawa country on the other side of the state. Not much going on down there, though we did stop for an afternoon snack at a perfectly legit Jersey diner. The drive was fine, and the grey skies actually provided a lovely backdrop for the changing leaves.



The weekend was redeemed with a trip to New York City that had been planned all along to see an exhibit of artistic maps at Pratt University. I mean, really artistic. Like the gelatin Lady Liberty and New York Skyline. The exhibit had the term "psychogeography" in the title... so not my particular branch of geography, but very interesting nonetheless. This was Taylor's original excuse to come visit, since he's a cartographer.



Other highlights of the city included discovering Odessa Cafe over by Tompkins Square Park and the Joe Strummer mural, a total gem of a diner with well priced good food; hanging out in Central Park (tree of the day: black maple that dropped its leaves all over the rock we sat on there); meeting up with one of Taylor's friends from college for a beer and to see Megamind, which I thought was pretty great. All in all, a good trip to the city.

sanity and insanity

So I went to that rally that's been in the news lately.

Actually, I did more travelling than that this weekend. And when I discussed it with a friend of mine, and someone within earshot of our conversation asked why I was leaving the state, my friend replied, "Because that's what Colleen does!"

I began in Philadelphia, visiting some of the historic/tourist sites for the first time since... class trips in elementary school, I believe. We spent some time around Independence Hall, seeing the Liberty Bell (and hearing Sousa's march a zillion times-- as a French horn player, I'm not Sousa's biggest fan, never having played anything but offbeats). We also stopped by the Christ Church cemetery, where Ben Franklin is buried, where I took pictures of ginkgo leaves in senescence (clearly the tree of the day).



Also, we spent some time at Yards brewery. Beer of the day: probably the George Washington Tavern Porter.

Like I said, I went to the Stewart/Colbert Rally in D.C. yesterday. It was difficult to get there-- we left later than we should have and every train was packed. We eventually got on the Metro at Courthouse, getting to the Mall just minutes before the National Anthem. It was a lot of fun, though we couldn't hear some of the time and were definitely not anywhere near the stage but got the occasional peek at a jumbo screen a bit ahead of us. There were so, so many people there. It was a bit crazy, but a beautiful fall day to spend outside.



Tree of the day: this incredible mulberry near the Washington Monument.



Leaving was ridiculous. Every Metro train was absolutely packed. Thankfully we were only taking it to the third stop in Virginia... passing it later on the highway I saw it was still absolutely jam packed. People were being really impatient self centered about it, too. Despite the conductor announcing at every station, "Keep in mind, you might not be able to get on this train, more are coming!" six people would try to replace every two that got off, and then would complain about how tight it was. Very frustrating, and very uncomfortable. I'm not a huge fan of crowds but occasionally overlook that in favor of some interesting adventure. I definitely enjoyed the day, especially the signs, but the insanity of the Metro was kinda lame.

Driving back early this morning, I had the joy of watching the sun come up in the Pine Barrens, so I guess the tree of the day is a repeat: pitch pine!


foggy morning in the Pinelands National Reserve

How to Lie with Maps was kind of cool to read after the fact. (It's also the title of a really great book I had to read in my undergrad Cartography course.) I'm not a conservative hater (I'll respect anyone's opinion as long as they can back it up), but I think Glenn Beck is kind of out of his mind.

50,000+ miles later

Rather than spending this week's day off on my graduate work, I instead spent it driving great distances within my beloved state to see my beloved undergrad advisor, who was vacationing with her family in Cape May Point. I figured, when in doubt about my masters, visit the person who has actually already successfully seen me through obtaining a degree. This was a great choice for several reasons:

1. I got to drive basically the entire length of New Jersey.
1a. This included going straight through the Pinelands National Reserve, pitch pines and wetlands galore, oh happy day!
2. I got to swim in the ocean (sort of, it was kind of where the Atlantic meets the Delaware Bay, but there were waves, and salt, and that's all that matters).
3. I got to chat about things, grad school related and not, with someone totally awesome.
3a. It's reassuring to discuss my challenges in grad school with Melina because she knows me as a student, and she successfully went through the same program I'm in.
4. Melina has really cute children. REALLY cute.

So, 380 miles over the course of about 36 hours was pretty sweet. I visited my parents and slept at home in Toms River, which was nice. The trip back to TR from Cape May was not so nice though. That part of the Garden State Parkway is under quite a bit of construction, and received heavy rains on and off during the day. It wasn't actively raining as I drove by the start of the construction zone, around mile 60, but I saw a truck a little ahead of me hit a pretty deep puddle, so I tapped the brake to slow down a little before getting to it myself. Unfortunately, the water started way sooner than I had thought, and I began to hydroplane a little. I stayed under control for a few moments before careening toward the guardrail along the left lane and then starting to fly toward the construction zone--and cars-- in the right lanes. I began to spin a little bit, and as the rear of the car headed perpendicular to the right side of the road and I saw a car heading toward my door, I panicked and slammed the brake, which sent me spinning into the construction zone, taking out a few of those orange barrels and finally coming to a stop, facing in the right direction in a huge puddle in the construction area.

I think I'm a pretty good driver; I do enough of it. In fact, this morning I broke 139,000 miles on my little (now scratched up) car, which is more than 50,000 more than I bought it with just over 3 years ago. That's a lot, considering I'd drive it to college and leave it parked for most of the semester, for the first year I had it. When I drive, I'm often more worried about other crazies around me than my own ability. However, yesterday afternoon, I am extremely grateful for all those around me on the Parkway who were on their game, paying attention and driving carefully. The fact that my faithful automobile and I weren't harmed means that we can enjoy more roadtrips together in the future, starting with this weekend, when I drive great distances in New Jersey again to deliver my friend Tim home to South Seaside Park for his birthday, and go to the Ocean County Fair to celebrate it with our friends.

mega musings

Timmy, one of my fellow Boston New Years celebrants, called me yesterday to ask if I could possibly drive him to Philadelphia airport today, since his family is all sorts of under the weather and his winter semester at St. Olaf starts tomorrow. Possibly? Of course! For one, this child is like a little brother. Secondly, when am I not game to drive places that I've never been before, really? I'm never too excited about interstates, particularly I-95, because you don't get to see as many interesting things as you might driving on more local roads. However, it's really the most logical/only way to get to Philadelphia airport. And so we went.

We took Route 70 straight through the Pine Barrens. I love the Pine Barrens. Pitch pines, the predominant tree in the region, are really kind of ugly, but there's something lovely about the vastness of it (similar to my impression of the Canadian prairies). There really is quite a bit of biodiversity. It's one of those situations where you can't judge a book by its cover. And speaking of books, I'm currently reading John McPhee's Pine Barrens for the gajillionth time. It's so good. If you have any level of respect for New Jersey, you should read it sometime. And if you don't... go away. Now.

It doesn't take long to cross New Jersey from the Atlantic to the Delaware. We crossed the Walt Whitman Bridge and got to Phila Airport in good time. We figured we could find some cafe or restaurant and grab an early dinner before he peaced out from the east coast for five months, but lo and behold, there is not a single eatery before security (at least in the D and E terminals, which we wandered through). What the--?!

I understand why security is so intense at airports nowadays (like that time I had to forfeit my shoes for analysis at Newark Airport...), but I was really disappointed in being unable to share a last meal with my friend before his trip. We ended up taking over a bench next to security and people watching until Timmy needed to get going. It was interesting seeing people separating and reuniting, it was like an emotional funhouse in there. We were at terminal E, which is Northwestern and Southwestern airlines. People were going all over the US from where we were. There were lots of pictures being taken, and I thought it awkward to be in the background of people's pictures, kind of like being immortalized in photo albums on their coffee tables and bookshelves forever in a weird sort of way. It's kind of amazing how interconnected everything and everyone really are.

Of course, I realized that with this little trip out to Philly, I have toured pretty much all of the US's Megalopolis in the last week. I've been from south of Richmond, Virginia to Boston, almost all via I-95. Overdevelopment makes me a little nauseas, but I find an interesting juxtaposition between the way the northeast corridor lights up in NASA's nighttime pictures and the very dark drive through the Pine Barrens on my way home from the airport.