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    • The Merritt

      The Merritt

      Running from the New York border to the Housatonic River and opened 80 years ago this year, the Merritt Parkway has maintained a nostalgic charm even as the volume of cars traveling on it test its limits.  Sure. I’m talking about a highway, but this one has personality.

      The Merritt was completed in 1938 as an extension of the Hutchinson Parkway.  It officially ends/starts at the Sikorsky Bridge, where the Wilbur Cross Parkway begins.  This is Route 15, but most people just call it The Merritt.  Like most people I have a love/hate relationship with The Merritt, and it’s directly related to the volume of traffic on it at the time.  The Merritt is a great alternative to I-95.  There are no trucks, buses or trailers of any kind on the Parkways in the region, and that makes for a more pleasant drive.  Unless there are thousands of cars jammed on this two lane highway, or there’s an accident that you have to wait out.  Or there’s road work or tree work being done.  Basically there are a lot of variables that make it a roll of the dice as to whether The Merritt is a good choice.

      But a drive down the Merritt Parkway is a time warp to when people viewed a car ride as an adventure.  The journey was as much a part of the trip as the destination.  We’re going out to the country!  We’re going into the big city for the day!  The Merritt wasn’t made for commuters, it was made for adventurers.  And its design makes it a part of that adventure.

      The first thing you notice when you drive the Merritt is the trees, which closely line both sides of the road and for much of it’s length in the median as well.  The trees create a feeling that you’re driving down a country lane to visit your grandparents, not commuting 90 minutes to your job in the Stanford.

      The second thing you notice about the Merritt is the bridges.  Each of the original bridges is unique, mostly in the Art Deco style from the period.  Art Deco was all the rage in the 30’s, and like Rockefeller Center you feel like you’re in a different time when you see the detailing.  That every bridge is different makes them a destination along the way.  They aren’t just another generic bridge that you’re passing under, they have a personality.  Stopping to smell the roses, or at least take notice of the bridge as your driving at highway speed, is a uniquely Merritt experience.

      The third thing you notice, especially if you are entering from one of the side roads or from the rest areas, is that the road was built for cars going a different speed.  Coming from a dead stop to 60 MPH is an adventure when there’s moderate traffic at highway speed.  When it’s busy and the gaps are few and far between it’s a different kind of adventure.  Pulling into one of the rest areas with their old brick facades makes you decompress immediately.  These tight little rest areas burst at the seams on a busy weekend, but during the quiet times you feel like you’ve pulled into the corner store.

      To me the Merritt really starts at the Heroes Tunnel.  Its name, changed from West Rock Tunnel, honors first responders.  West Rock Ridge has some interesting history that warrants its own blog post so I’ll save that for another day.  While technically part of the Wilbur Cross, the tunnel has that mid-19th century feel to it, meaning it’s not a soulless civil engineering project, but has a certain charm to it.  I’ll take that, because I’ve seen plenty of highway in my time traveling the country that has none of that charm.

      Up in Massachusetts, there’s a stretch of Route 3 that runs from Lowell to Burlington that was once very much like the Merritt Parkway.  The bridges were all sided with stone, and the highway itself was two lanes each way with trees tightly lining it, including the median strip.  Like the Merritt it was jammed at rush hour but it felt like you were in the forest anyway.  In the early 2000’s they widened Route 3.  Seemingly overnight the trees were cut down, the median bulldozed, the bridges torn down and wide new bridges replaced them.  Route 3 became another highway, slightly faster but without the soul it once had.

      They say that the Merritt Parkway is an endangered species.  That the fate of Route 3 will befall Route 15 at some point as the volume of cars demands changes.  I’m hoping that doesn’t happen.  There needs to be a place for old charm in our modern world.  And at some point something will replace the infrastructure of roads and gas stations that we’ve built up to support our primary method of transportation.  As our population grows and rents increase, there’s a tendency to expand outward.  Urban sprawl demands taking more of nature to ease our commuting times.  It takes grassroots support and political will to resist those who would bulldoze the old to make way for the new.  With changes in how we work and talk of new mass transit options perhaps the demands for ever expanding roads will ease.  Let’s hope the Merritt remains it’s charming old self.

    • Cod Tongue

      Cod Tongue

      Newfoundland doesn’t waste time flirting with you – its beauty drops your jaw to your chest at first sight.  The flight into St John’s reveals the rugged coastline and the rolling ocean swells that define it.  Cape Spear is easy to find with its old lighthouse and its newer replacement reaching up to the sky to greet us.  Newfoundland is a rocky coast, much like Maine, Ireland, Portugal and other North Atlantic coasts that feel the wrath of the ocean.  I feel at home here immediately.  This is a place I could live in…  or at least return to again soon.

      Newfoundland is strongly associated with the Atlantic Cod, a lovely freckled fish that fed generations and once thrived in the ocean from here to Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  So thick you could walk on them its said.  At least until massive overfishing fueled by highly efficient bottom trawlers scooped up cod by the millions.  Scientists were slow to sound the alarm, but eventually the entire fishing grounds were closed in 1992.  With the closing of the fishing grounds the lives of tens of thousands of fishermen and their families were changed.

      Almost 30 years later the cod are slowly rebounding.  The fishing industry, which shifted to crab and shrimp but never fully recovered, isn’t there just yet.  Cod offers a great lesson in sustainability, responsible self-governing, corporate greed, weak political leadership and tradition that dies hard, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.  The climate change, coal and fracking debaters today would do well to look closely at the Grand Banks to see what happens when you aren’t open to facts that differ from your current point of view.

      Cod tongue is a uniquely Newfoundland treat.  I ordered it at a bar in St John’s Harbor just to try it.  Frankly it was a bit fatty and chewy for my tastes, but I finished the appetizer anyway.  I like to try new things, just as I like to visit new places.  And I don’t like to waste food.  Especially endangered food.  Cod borders on mystical in the land of Alexander’s Map, and by God I was going to give it a go.  It’s not really the tongue, more like the cheek of the fish.  Kids would cut out this throwaway part of the fish to bring home to the family to cook.  Over time it came to identify this place almost as much as the unique Irish-Canadian brogue identifies the people here.

    • Ice Out

      The changing of the seasons is well underway in the northeast.  While the calendar says spring, Mother Nature decides when it’s really upon us.  In New Hampshire spring is marked by Ice Out; the time when the ice on Lake Winnipesaukee has melted enough that the Mount Washington can sail to all of her ports of call on the lake.  This is determined when one designated guy, currently Dave Emerson, flies over the lake and gives it his blessing.
      In 2017 Ice Out was on April 17th.  The year before it was on March 18th.  Looking at the dates it seems like the average is late April over the last 131 years.  Honestly, it’s a big deal if you’re on the lake, but for the rest of us its check box indicating another winter has passed.  I live in Southern New Hampshire, where the local ponds thaw out a little faster than Lake Winnipesaukee does.  A walk around town over the weekend showed that we’re getting close.
      Back when I rowed, melt off got us out of the weight room and erg room and onto the water.  It was a huge milestone after a long winter.  Being on the Merrimack in college, the melt off meant a swollen river.  The coxswain and coach had to keep a sharp eye out for floating debris.  I recall a few bumps as submerged logs were detected a bit too late.
      They say back in the early days of our country that people would walk across or skate up the river.  That seems insane now.  You never know what the current on a river does to the thickness of the ice, and nowadays you just don’t seem to have that kind of sustained deep freeze that would build up the ice to those levels.
      Climate change is happening, no matter what the fake news crowd says.  Facts don’t lie.  As much as I embrace spring and the chance to be on the water again soon, I wonder what kind of planet we’re leaving for our grandchildren.

    • Sap Moon

      Sap Moon

      Tonight I watched the moon rising through the trees and illuminate the night.  Sometimes the universe gives you just enough.

    • Clusters

      I read a great book called Geography of Genius that focuses on the tendency of communities of like-minded people to form and thrive, often changing the course of history.  Essentially people feed off each other, and are inspired by the geniuses around them to do more in their own lives.  Rome, Athens, Vienna, Edinburgh and other places are covered in the book.

      It got me thinking about the clusters of geniuses in the northeast.  Maybe we didn’t have Beethoven, Mozart and Freud running around Boston as Vienna had, but we sure had Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott and Nathanial Hawthorne roaming around Concord, Massachusetts at roughly the same time, and all are buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.

      Down in New York in another Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, you have the titans of industry Carnegie, Rockefeller, Chrysler all clustered in their final resting place after building empires just down the river from Tarrytown.  The New York Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is where Washington Irving, writer of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, is buried.

      In Boston, you can visit the graves of Sam Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere and other notable figures from the Revolutionary War at the Granary Burying Grounds.  They fed off each other in life, building on each other’s ideas, one-upping each other.  In death, they’re still neighbors.

      Down in Hartford, Connecticut you had Mark Twain living right next door to Harriet Beecher Stowe.  Talk about a literary one-two punch.  While the neighborhood has changed significantly, becoming grittier, the homes of these two literary giants remain much as they were when they lived there.  I’ve toured the Twain house, and will carve out time for Stowe another time.

      As the weather gets warmer, I’m going to spend a little more time visiting the homes of notable people.  Walking around the homes of Robert Frost and Mark Twain reinforce that they were just regular people with extraordinary talent and the grit necessary to produce.  Visiting their graves reminds you that their time was brief, and so too is ours.

    • Blackbirds

      They’re back.  The rebel bike gang of the skies have come back to New Hampshire.  Where I once filled my bird feeders once or twice a week, I have to fill them daily when these swarms of Red Winged Blackbirds and Common Grackles come to town.  They swarm the feeders and you can almost watch them empty in moments.  There’s no taking your fair share and moving on with these thugs – it’s all or nothing.

      I’ve read up on changing up the feed, putting chicken wire around the feeders, or buying new feeders that they don’t like to go to.  But I’m not spending money or time on that.  With a snow storm coming in tonight, I’m not taking down the feeders either.  I’m going to fill them up and let them run out – quickly mind you, but unnaturally natural.  Maybe the desirable birds will get their fill too, maybe not.  But sometimes you need to let nature decide.  The feeders come down in a month.  I’ll continue to feed the bluebirds, which has been a pleasant success in the yard.  Maybe even the finches, depending on how quickly they blow through the thistle.  But the cardinals, jays and other birds are going to have to live off the land once the snow melts.  For now it’s ever bird for itself.

    • Kills or Creeks

      New York, and particularly the Hudson River Valley, was once part of the Dutch Colony of New Netherland.  Manhattan was once New Amsterdam, and the region is sprinkled with names that hint at the Dutch influence.  As a New England, I’m always intrigued by the unique names in the Hudson Valley.  Towns like Rensselaer, Guilderland and  Watervliet have distinctly Dutch names.

      Perhaps no place name turns the head more than Kill.  It means body of water, and you’ll see it used often in the region.  Peekskill, Fishkill, and from my rowing days the Schuylkill River.  Normans Kill, Fall Kill, Owl Kill, Batten Kill, Saw Kill, Fall Kill….  and so on.  I drive by these places and wondered for years what this kill thing was all about.  Google and Wiki solved that mystery for me.

      Doing business in the Hudson River Valley, I run into people with Van in their name, which is uniquely Dutch.  Rip Van Winkle is a character right out of this valley.  I’d imagine that if old Rip were to wake up now he’d hardly recognize the towns, but he’d know from the river and the hills exactly where he was.

      The Hudson River Valley remains a strikingly beautiful corridor despite the encroaching development of the region.  For Henry Hudson and other explorers to this region, it must have been an extraordinary trip up the river.  The Dutch were a relatively small footnote in the settling of North America compared to the English, French and Spanish, but they picked a region that strongly influences the rest of the country.  New York and Pennsylvania hold on stubbornly to the Dutch cultural influences.  One could say you can’t kill it off.

    • Cellar Holes

      New England is full of ghosts.  A walk in the woods will bring you across old stone walls by the mile.  In places that you feel like you’re the first person to ever walk in a place, you’ll come across hard evidence to the contrary.  Settlers and the farmers who came after them cleared this land, raised crops and the next season did it all over again.  New England’s gift to these farmers were the stones that would come up with the frost, which the farmer would toss drag to the edge of the field to build stone fences to mark the property line, or the line between crops and grazing fields for livestock.  It was a hard life, compounded by hard winters, disease, wars with the native population, and a whole host of other things.

      These early residents lived in modest houses built over stone cellars.  The houses are mostly long gone now, and many of the cellar holes are too.  But many remain to tell their story.  Coming across an old cellar hole in the woods is like a telegram from the people who once lived in the house it sat on.  Cellar holes and the stone walls are often the only thing left to mark the existence of these people.

      This cellar hole in Hampstead, NH was once the foundation of the house that Job Kent lived in.  Job was born in 1743, bought land from his father to farm, and built a house on this site around 1770.  Job fought in the Revolutionary War as a Sergeant in the Northern Army, and he died in 1837.  He’s buried in the Town Cemetery in Hampstead, making his stay in town permanent.  Today his farmland is conservation land, hopefully making the land a permanent monument to what once was; forest and, for a time, farmland.  The stone walls criss-cross the land marking the fields that sustained Job and his family at a significant time in our nations history.  The walls and his cellar hole marks where he lived his life.  Quiet now, this cellar hole was once the foundation of a busy family enduring the struggle of living off the cold, unforgiving New Hampshire land.  Job Kent didn’t make a large dent in the universe, but he lived a life of significance, fought for our nation’s independence, and returned to his farm afterwards to work it season after season.

      I spent a little time inside this cellar hole and walking around the woods in November 2016.  I didn’t hear ghosts calling out to me at the time, but this hole and the man who built it still stay with me 17 months later.  Almost 52 and I’m still building my stone walls.  I’ve got a good foundation beneath me, and hope to make my own dent in the universe, however modest that dent might be.

    • Starting Again

      I started a new job two weeks ago, which coincides with my last post on this blog.  It’s not that I didn’t have the time, it’s that I didn’t have the focus.  I was starting again, and there’s a lot to think about when you start again.  New processes, new names and faces, new technology to learn, new relationships to build and old relationships to re-kindle.  When you sell technology some people want to dance, and many others don’t.  My last company had a lot of the latter.  I saw it early but wanted to see it through.  My reward was some interesting travel but not a lot of money.

      Money.  I went to my previous company because I was running away from a dead end and chasing the big money.  Bold claims of big commission dollars and what looked like a strong and differentiated product.  But the timing was bad, the market said no thanks and so here we are.

      In a better place, with a culture of longevity and great leadership.  Drinking from the fire hose, but mostly around product differentiation and such.  The rest I know.  I’m starting again, but its not such a climb this time.

    • Walking in Circles

      In my attempt to keep some frail momentum going in my 21 day challenge to work out every day, I got up early and walked the circular driveway that rings the front of the Sheraton Mahwah.  I’m not a runner.  Walking is my thing and I managed to get about 2 1/2 miles or 5000 steps in before I had to come back in to get ready for the day.

      The show at 5 AM is unique, the darkness is different from the evening walks I take with Bodhi as you start to see a gradual brightening of the sky to the east (obviously) and the celestial show has shifted completely.  This March 6th sky in Mahwah brought the march of the planets, as Jupiter, the star Antares, Mars, Saturn and Pluto followed the moon from right to left across the Southeastern sky.  I’ve been guilty of geeking out over stars before, and this morning was no exception.

      Thankfully there were no witnesses in the cold dark circle.  Well, except for three wild rabbits who glanced at my warily as I marched past them every ten minutes.  The Mahwah Sheraton sits in a bowl rings by hills, with I-287 cutting through the valley on one side and the Ramapo River doing it for a lot longer on the other side.  The hotel sits prominently in the valley, pointing towards the sky.  It’s a classic 1980’s hotel style; bold glass and steel that looks out of place in this beautiful valley.

      Back on my walk, I run through my checklists of things to do today, take stock of a few aches and listen to the constant rumble of trucks and cars grunting along I-287.  The highlight was the march of the planets, gradually fading in the coming day.