Pine Barrens Peat Water, Mullica River    cfe

Between drought and development, it is hard for others, even for New Jersey natives, to credit our slogan, “The Garden State.”

NJ WILD readers know, I celebrate New Jersey’s wild beauty wherever and whenever I can find it, even right in my own (near Rocky Hill) rocky hilly foresty yard.

But sometimes, I must go far afield, gulp great ‘draughts’ of New Jersey Beauty.

As. recently, to and from my cherished ‘Brigantine’ - Wildlife Refuge, otherwise known as Edwin B. Forsythe.

The blessings of visiting ‘the Brig’ are beyond measure, starting with the long silent even winding drive through the Pine Barrens to Smithville and Oceanville.  Due east of those tiny pre-Revolutionary towns stretches the 8-mile dike drive among bays and impoundments, rare birds at all times and in all seasons.

Come along with me on last week’s spur-of-the-moment, if not even desperate, flight to beauty.

Queen Anne’s Lace, Mullica River, Pine Barrens      cfe

Beyond the dock, fortunate kayakers make their way up the Mullica, without whose Revolutionary waters and watermen, we wouldn’t have a nation:

Mullica Kayakers,    cfe

Cloud-Studded Salinity-Managed Waters of Brigantine    cfe

FIDDLER CRABS, OUT FOR LOW-TIDE LUNCH, Brig     cfe

NEW JERSEY BEAUTY - CLOUD MAJESTY   Brig     cfe

There were great egrets everywhere, like archangels at the Nativity, as well as black-bellied and American golden plovers, ibis beyond counting, a few skimmers not skimming, and osprey families everywhere we looked — some feeding young, one ‘mantling ‘ - waving mature wings to cool the immature!

Successful Osprey Family, The Brig    cfe

Duck and First Marsh Mallows of the Season     cfe

Glossy Ibis and Marsh Mallow, Brig    cfe

Wild Flowers (water lilies and Sagittaria) and Cranberry Bogs Near Chatsworth, #563,

The Empty, Beauty-Bracketed Route Home     cfe

As you can see, beauty and wildness are with you every step of the way to and from ‘The Brig.’

(”The Pretty Way” will have no cars to speak of, even on major holidays.  Route 1 South to 295 South to Columbus Exit to 206 South to Carranza Road/Tabernacle to 532 (stop at Russo’s for fresh-made cider doughnuts and very local produce).  532 east to 563 South to (I forget the number -[579?]) left to New Gretna below Chatsworth  Route 9 South, moments on GSP, Exit 48 Smithville, back onto Route 9 South below Smithville to left turn to Forsythe Wildlife Refuge after fire station, Lily Lake Road. See Noyes Museum of Art while down there.  Eat breakfast at The Bakery in Smithville; any time at Smithville Inn, and Oyster Creek Inn at Leeds Point, if it’s open when you’re there…)

When both branches of the Millstone River, at #518 and Canal Road, show more pebbles than water

When you can see white rocks, like rip-rap, ringing islands and fringing land along the Delaware River

When the Mississippi River, in an aerial view, is more beige than blue - with surf-like curves of blonde sand like corn-row haircuts and her barges cannot carry full loads, and their pilots describe “the new river”, “the unknown” river      when the Mississippi has turned from “The Big Muddy” to “The Big Sandy”

When a meteorologist shows you a pie chart that is 90% hot red, 10% blue - (pie chart representing the year 2012; blue sliver cold extremes; all-conquering red being heat extremes) and she terms this a mere “anomaly”

It’s time to face the C-words:  CATASTROPHIC CLIMATE CHANGE.

When Terhune Orchards reports most fruit crops coming in one month early at least

When any farm stand showed you that our strawberries not only began early, but finished bearing early

When corn was head-high by the Fourth of July, some even tasseling out, now browning, then blackening with ceaseless drought

It’s time to admit “the times are out of joint” weather-wise, as we have been warned for decades, re our ceaseless unremediated carbon emissions

When there is no more soft rain, but only monsoon-blinding-downpours on the heels of waterless weeks

Pollan and Hansen and Gore have alerted us for decades that extremes are the toll we pay for carbon excesses

When hours of thunder and lightning don’t even dampen paving stones out my study window

When trees along local highways, in July, sp0urt yellow brighter than highway stripes and it’s not flowers

It’s time to FACE IT

Not only is the weather severely out of balance in our time — it may well be past the famous tipping point.

What we are experiencing on all fronts is the logical outcome of runaway consumption, ice-cap melt, glacial melt, and so forth and so on, ad infinitum the sky IS falling and nobody’s drawing correct conclusions, let alone turning excess around

As your NJ WILD reporter, I cannot rhapsodize about nature, today, let alone insert pretty pictures.

Nature is turning into a corpse before our eyes, and we’re talking about the equivalent of curls and manicure upon a corpse.

Yes, I’ve been to what’s left of her beauty, a forest here, a river there, kayaking on the canal.

I feel no better than Nero, fiddling while my beloved Nature burns, sometimes quite literally up in flames…

Who is doing WHAT to turn this around?

(to paraphrase Pogo re meeting the enemy) — There is extinction on the menu, and it is us.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT?