Morning Landscapes on the GSP

A dawn commute on the Garden State Parkway has its compensations.

Late last fall, I became a commuter – one of millions that course through the asphalt arteries of northern New Jersey every morning. It was a fate I dreaded; one I had avoided for decades. How could I possibly endure this new life?

For almost twenty years I was a sole practitioner whose farthest distance to the office was a five-block walk downtown. A few years ago, I eliminated even that short inconvenience by relocating my firm to the top floor of my home – a place I affectionately call the Crow’s Nest.

Each day at around 10 a.m., I climbed the stairs to my office to begin the work day. I remained there until early evening, when I would turn the computer off and return to domesticity downstairs. Several days might pass without going outside, except to get the morning newspaper and the mail. If some bad weather swept through the area, I would peer down from my cozy third floor windows for a few minutes to see how the neighborhood was surviving. Then I would go back to the computer.

I left the comfort of the Crow’s Nest not long after Hurricane Sandy, when I took a leave of absence from my firm to work with FEMA as a historic preservation specialist. The New Jersey Joint Field Office (JFO) is based in Monmouth County, an hour south of my home town – a location that was perhaps the single most significant drawback to the job.

No more consultants’ hours for me. No more leisurely breakfasts; no more scanning through the Star Ledger and the New York Times over cups of coffee.  My new work day begins at 8:00 a.m. This means that my alarm goes off at 5:45 a.m. By 7:00 a.m., I should be backing the car down the driveway if I want to be at my desk on time. I bring my coffee with me in a thermos and the newspapers in my backpack to read over lunch.

I regard any kind of traffic slow-down as anathema. Don’t get me wrong: I really love to drive. But I will take any route, no matter how far out of the way it is, just to stay in motion. The thought of hours trapped in the horror known as Morning Drive Time was daunting.

However, over the course of the past three months, I have been seduced by the beauty I see through my windshield each morning. Perhaps not the urban and much more familiar leg of the journey, which passes through West Orange, Newark, and Irvington. But once I reach the Raritan Bay it becomes an ever-changing, entrancing spectacle.

 

Main Street, West Orange, NJ - the first leg.

The winter sun is just rising above the horizon when I cross the Driscoll Bridge over the Raritan, silhouetting the 1926 swing-span metal truss Victory Bridge in the mists hovering over the river. Looking in the other direction, I can see the city of New Brunswick, 10 miles distant, above the clouds of seagulls that rise from the peninsula just west of the bridge.

The historic Victory Bridge over the Raritan River,
between Perth Amboy and Sayreville, New Jersey (1924 -1926).

A few miles south of the Raritan Bay lies Cheesequake State Park, a 1,610-acre preserve that straddles the Garden State Parkway in Middlesex County. For years, I thought that “Cheesequake” was just the name of the Parkway rest stop near mile marker 123. Certainly not a vast and serene wetland landscape with an interesting history.

The park was authorized by the New Jersey legislature in 1932, but money for the transformation of former the Favier brothers' farmstead was not committed until 1937. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was enlisted to demolish the 3-story Civil War mansion and other farm buildings, and then it set about establishing the network of trails and park roads, building shelters, fireplaces, and other park structures.

The landscape near Cheesequake State Park.

Cheesequake is unique because not only is it caught between a densely urban area to the north and rural Monmouth County, but it also lies in a transitional zone between two different ecosystems – coastal and uplands. In fact, the name “Cheesequake” reportedly derives from a Lenni-Lenape word meaning “upland.” If you venture into the heart of the preserve, you can find open fields; saltwater and freshwater marshes; a white cedar swamp; stands of vegetation similar to that found in the Pinelands much farther to the south; and a northeastern hardwood forest -- all this in one relatively small area.

A few miles further south, between Exits 120 and 117, the Parkway passes over Matawan Creek and the marshes and streams that are part of this tidal estuary. Matawan Creek became infamous in 1916 as the site of two of several shark attacks along the Jersey shore that formed the basis of Peter Benchley’s novel and later film, Jaws. Unfortunately, the towns near Matawan Creek were heavily damaged during the storm, as the waters of the Raritan Bay surged up the waterway.

By this point in my ride, I am only 10 minutes away from my destination. The sun is blinding -- just high enough to be above the trees, but not high enough to be blocked by the visor, no matter which way I twist it. 

Horse country near Middletown, NJ.

I leave the Parkway near Red Bank and take the road that leads into the horse country of Monmouth County. Sure, I knew about Monmouth Park Racetrack in Oceanport; the United States Equestrian Center at Hamilton Farms in Gladstone; and of course the annual steeplechase at Far Hills, NJ – famous to many non-horse people because of the participation of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. But this urbanist from North Jersey never suspected that the middle of New Jersey is a Mecca of horse culture, looking more like Kentucky than anything this far east of the Mississippi deserves.

I am sure that my hour-long daily commute will get old after a while, but for the moment, I feel sufficiently rewarded, not only by seeing the world at dawn (a previously rare occurrence), but also by the magnificent landscapes that unfold each morning around my car windows. It’s nature’s way of compensating, I suppose, for having to get up so damn early.

Morning Landscape from the Garden State Parkway.

Resources:

Cheesequake State Park, State of New Jersey. Official website. http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/parks/cheesequake.html

Far Hills [N.J.] Race Meeting. Official website. http://farhillsrace.org/

Horse Park of New Jersey at Stone Tavern. Official Website. http://www.horseparkofnewjersey.com/welcome.html

“Purchase Land for Cheesequake Park.” Matawan [N.J.] Journal. 27 January 1938: 2. http://173.12.11.248/data/1925-49/1938/1938-01-27.pdf

United States Equestrian Team Foundation, Hamilton Farm, Gladstone, NJ. Official Website. http://www.uset.org/home.php

Victory Bridge, Spanning Raritan River at New Jersey Route 35, Perth Amboy, Middlesex County, NJ. Historic American Engineering Record. Record No: HAER NJ-120. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/nj1642/

Wright Kevin, “An Introduction to New Jersey’s Natural Parks and Forest Reservations.” A Century of Forest Stewardship in New Jersey 1905-2005 (2005). http://www.newtonnj.net/pdf/NJParks_Forest05.pdf

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