the rix mix

Elizabeth Fire Dept is having a bad day & night. I hear all the fire engines within a very large area. Fire headquarters is a few blocks away & there's a one truck station in Elmora. I hear all these trucks, plus the captain's SUV, the EMS, & the police car if they respond. From one side of Elmora to the other.

Rained hard & steadily all day. I reread for the umpteeth time John McPhee's brief, classic 1968 book about the Jersey Pine Barrens. Based on pieces McPhee wrote for The New Yorker, it was tremendously influential here. Although the isolated culture McPhee encounters is gone, most of the places, scenery, & flora he decribes are still there. To the extent the Barrens have been preserved & protected, McPhee can take a lot of credit. The Pine Barrens are famous now, an eco-tourist attraction. After the canoe trip, you can hear a phony hillbilly band at the folk center of the kind the old timers McPhee met didn't even have, singing Blue Ridge Mountain style with Jersey piney lyrics. I looked at the edges of the Barrens every time my family drove to & from the shore. Going south, they were miles & miles of boring woods to me before the highway popped out of them at the Mullica River, with a wonderful expanse of salt marsh, & we knew we were almost to our destination. They were depressing on the way home.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, New Jersey, weather, what I'm reading