What I like to try to do,
assuming I have the proper juices flowing to write a blog entry worth your
time, is mix up the quality of entries—to follow a strategy of a “White Album” esthetic. As you may know, if
you are a Beatles fan, and whether you consider their album The Beatles (1968; a.k.a. “The White
Album”) to be their best or close to it, there is definitely a strategy (inadvertently)
followed there that some may say conduced to the tastiness of the overall content,
and that others may say undermined the album’s overall quality.
That is, some songs took a lot
of work (e.g., “Back in the USSR” [lots of dubbing of little parts], “Happiness
is a Warm Gun” [three days to record], “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide…”
[McCartney had a punishing time ringing a fire bell for a long period of
multiple takes]), and others were crapped out in short order (e.g., “The
Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill,” done in about three takes, or “Wild Honey
Pie,” McCartney virtually goofing around in off-moments).
Some of my blog entries can
follow this strategy: I can work hard (maybe too hard, in the view of some) on
some entries (like my Jersey Boys
installments), and others I toss off. Hopefully, the content involved with each
justifies this. Sometimes you, the reader, may feel like reading E-Z toss-offs,
other times you want art (or what passes for it in this venue).
Here’s a “Bungalow Bill”–type
entry.
##
Two days ago I was taking a
hike, actually just a walk along roads (in less-than-wonderful shoes), from my
home to the Highland Lakes post office, which I do pretty regularly, largely
for exercise. It’s about two-plus miles one way, and I stop at a convenience
store near the P.O. for a late-morning repast in the process (some of the food
relatively unhealthy, quick calories for burning up in mindless physical
activity). Sometimes I mail letters. By the time I’m almost home, I’m physically
tired, with achy feet.
The route starts from about the
center of Barry Lakes (which is a bedroom community, approximately hourglass-shaped,
with hundreds of homes on dozens of local roads, wedged within what is now
Wawayanda State Park [the park was added to by acquired land over the years;
now, as wasn’t the case 20-30 years ago, the park basically surrounds the
entire community]). Because this state park is one of the prime areas of the often-rural
Sussex County (N.J.) that bears roam in—the
park is partially in West Milford, in Passaic County, where bear sightings and other
bear incidents have made the news at times (and bears often have appeared in nearby
parts of the Sussex County bedroom communities of Highland Lakes and Lake Wanda,
which both abut the park, also)—it is not unusual to see bears cross Wawayanda
Road in the wooded area it runs through; this road runs between (1) a three-way
intersection in Lake Wanda and (2) Barry Lakes to the north (the intersection
is of three roads: Canistear Road [named after the nineteenth-century town, now
long gone, associated with an old-time bloomery—a sort of iron-ore furnace];
Wawayanda Road; and Breakneck Road).
Between “the last of human civilization”
in Lake Wanda and “the first bits of human civilization” in Barry Lakes, the
road twists through a wooded area, sometimes swamp-abutting, which might give visiting
city dwellers the creeps and in which, yes, you can spot bears (but not too
often). If I hadn’t been familiar with this stretch of road going all the way
back to the late 1960s—and after in the late 1970s I had walked this route
(there were no bears in the area then) when dropped off by the late school bus in Lake Wanda following
after-school activities—I might never walk this route. This indeed is where I
encountered the turtle that I wrote a blog entry on in July 2013. And I have seen bears on this road, but usually
when I was in a car. (But once I did see one in a swamp off the roadside, when
I was doing this same kind of hiking—this was in spring 2013.)
##
Well, to cut to the chase, I was
heading out on this past Wednesday, and was walking along a part of Wawayanda
Road (traveling south) that starts to go down a little hill to come alongside
the beach in Barry Lakes, and a man in a construction-related truck pulled over
beside me, traveling north, in an awkward spot in the road (no shoulder), and I
thought he wanted directions. But he warned me about a “big bear” back from the
way he’d come, which had been on the side of the road; did I want a ride? I
said no, thanks…and with a few more equable words, we parted.
I walked on a bit more, and
there I could see—down the road about 700 feet, in an area maybe 200 feet past
the community clubhouse on the left and the beach on the right, where the “no
man’s land” between Barry Lakes and Lake Wanda started—two bears. There was
first one, ambling into view, then a second bear, ambling in the same
direction; both were about 300 pounds (they weren’t small enough to be “yearlings”),
and they crossed the road in their dark-profiled distinctiveness. A car was
parked on the right side of the road maybe 75 feet south of them (on the other
side of them from where I was), its four-way flashers on. I surmised the person
had pulled over because of the bear presence. Maybe she was there to warn
drivers coming along.
I walked a little further south,
in the direction of where the bears had been. I wasn’t quite sure how I would
handle this situation, as I was set on doing my full hike, and usually I deal
with whatever eventualities come up. The bears had gone out of sight into
bushes on the right of the road, and I was still about 500 feet north of where
they’d been.
Another vehicle, headed north,
pulled over, this time with me on the right side of the road. This was an
elderly man from, as his vehicle’s decals showed, the county Meals on Wheels
program (a service for senior citizens). I didn’t know him. He warned me about
the two bears…this time (and I still wasn’t sure I’d continue my hike), I
talked a bit more forthcomingly with him than with the earlier man. Trying to
show the humorously optimistic attitude I had, I volunteered that I had pepper
spray with me (and I showed it to him). He shook his head a little
dissuasively. I said thanks for the warning, etc. He moved on.
I knew I would play this situation
my own way (he was an old man, who maybe lived in the area the county seat
numerous miles to the south, where bear sightings weren’t so common; he wasn’t
familiar with what we mountaintop people in the county were acclimatized to).
##
I walked tentatively on, to
about where the parking lot for the beach was, about 200 feet or so north of
where the bears last were visible. The car that had been on the side of the
road with its flashers flashing turned around in the road and came north,
stopping near me, a woman inside. She warned me about the bears. I said I’d
seen them….
I walked back north a bit
(75-100 feet) to the beach house, which has bathrooms, a lifeguard office, etc.
No one was using the beach now. I decided to wait out a bit at the beach house,
giving the bears time to—as I suspected they were doing—keep going to the west
in their trek through the woods. (All indications were they hadn’t seen me; they
had not been at an angle to.)
Killing time can be educational.
There was a bulletin board in front of the beach house that gave handy
information on different kinds of snakes—poisonous versus nonpoisonous, etc.
After maybe 15 minutes of killing time, I decided to continue my hike,
continuing south. I passed through where the bears had been, unusually alert. I
checked the bushes to the right, where they’d gone, and the brushy woods to the
left (I was on the left side of the road). Sometimes forging on with just the dogged
“bravery” of continuing your business, one foot in front of the other, is the
best policy. (Kind of like Donald Trump, but without the conceited remarks.)
I had a ton of sun block on,
some “foo-foo”-scented stuff…I wondered if the bears, if they were nearby (not
necessarily the case), could smell that and think it smelled like food. You had
to hope not….
I thought that it may be “easy”
to pass through this area now, on my leg out, but what when I was heading back,
and would inevitably be more tired? (It was not being overly pessimistic to
remember that this area where the bears had crossed was always, independent of
the issue of any wild animals’ being around, where I was most weary and under
strain coming back—it was a bit uphill, in a rather drearily “nowhere”-type
area before you were among what seemed the relative safety of the beach area
and the first few houses of the community.)
Well, about 30 minutes or more
later, when I came back, I exercised heightened alertness again, but felt that
the likely thing was the bears were even further out of the area, a good bear’s
trek to the west.
I forged on, got into an area among
houses, and finally got home. No bears to be seen anywhere (as usual).
##
Over the years, once or twice I’ve
talked with my mother about the way bears get covered in the media, and
recently she made a mocking remark about the statistics of “bear sightings.”
She remarked how she’d seen bears in the immediate area many times, and hadn’t
reported them to the state. I said, yeah, if I reported every time I’d seen a
bear (over several years), the state would have to add about 35 or so sightings
to its numbers.
See, we mountain types have
different ways of regarding bears. Those in the ritzy suburbs, if they have a
bear get stuck in a tree, raise issues, with however much equanimity, such that
they make the news. You see intriguing video of a dark bruin stuck discomfitedly
in a tree, and police on hand to mitigate the situation. Here, we see one pass
through the yard or on our immediate street now and then. No big deal.
And having two cross the road I
was about to walk down on my habitual hike almost made me abort my hike. But
not quite.
(In the more developed areas of
the state, you might not bat an eyelash over news that some shady operators had
been running a multi-million-dollar scam out of a warehouse, but it would be
more stirring news for us if such a thing happened in the immediate area. What
would faze us more about bears here is if one turned up in the yard, standing
on its hind legs, wearing a dark shirt and white tie with jacket, and said in a
growly voice, “’Ey you. Ya talk to Fish an’ Game, ya get two in the head. Just
load up my paws with edible food and no one gets hurt.”)
