Posted by on Aug 29, 2018 in awareness, TRAVELING, Yes | 2 comments

 

It’s hard to believe that this is the last week in August, and that we’re only here on the New Jersey shore for another month. There are less shorebirds at the refuge, the ospreys have all fledged and, in the next few weeks, the waterfowl will be arriving for their winter layover. The marsh grasses are fading from their bright summer greens, and starting to show hints of gold and yellow. And a few leaves along the lake trees have already turned red.

 

We’ve been exploring more of the area with a visiting friend this past week, including a trip to Atlantic City to walk on the boardwalk. As a kid, our family would meet my Philadelphia relatives for a week at a hotel on the boardwalk. My cousin and I would spend most of the time in the hotel pool because we could only go to the beach with an adult, and my mother hated the sand and the sun. In the evenings, the families would take a walk along the boardwalk, and I’d stand against the railing watching the waves rolling far out in the ocean.

Very little is the same, 50 years later. The dunes have been built up so you can’t see the sand or the ocean from the boardwalk. The beach is much shorter, and the boardwalk has lost its famous clomp clomp sound when you walk across the wooden boards.

And there are casinos and bars and thirty-inch TV monitors mounted every 500 feet, screaming commercials for the nearby hotels and restaurants. A senior man sitting next to me on a bench said, “I come here to get away from the TV and then I have to listen to this?”

But men are still pushing the three-wheeled wicker chairs up and down the center of the boardwalk, and bikes are only allowed until noon during the summer season.

We went on a sunny day, and it was a little warm, and none of the benches are in the shade. We walked through the Korean War memorial, past several t-shirt stores, and a Chinese massage place with an older woman sitting out front, inviting us in.

The contrast of old architecture with modern wares was everywhere. The Mr. Peanut store, with its fresh roasted peanuts smell and a larger than life Mr. Peanut was long gone, replaced by a Made in China souvenir shop that is still called Peanut World. 

But James Salt Water Taffy, a favorite from my childhood, is still on the boardwalk between New York and Kentucky Avenues. We picked our favorites, and I also got some chocolate covered taffies, always the coveted flavor from the two-pound box my family would bring home. And when we walked out of the store I could almost see my grandmother, sitting on the bench across from us, waiting.

One day we drove to Margate, another beach town a few miles south of Atlantic City, and home of Lucy the Elephant, the oldest roadside attraction in the US. I never went to see Lucy as a kid, so this was an adventure for all of us. We climbed the spiral stairs inside her front legs, and stood in her wood paneled belly, and looked out her eyes toward the ocean. Our tour guide told us about her history, first as an attraction to sell real estate, then as a bar and hotel, even a private home, and how she was almost torn down in the 70’s, and then saved by the community.

Another day we climbed the 228 steps to the top of the Absecon Lighthouse, the tallest in New Jersey. Each step had a plaque with the step number and the name of a person. It still has the original first order Fresnel lens, and, even though the light has been decommissioned, they turn it on every night.

We took a nature boat tour through the wetlands around Cape May at the south end of the Jersey shore. We saw osprey, terns, whimbrel, and so many American oystercatchers. The wetlands are home to many nesting colonies of laughing gulls, and we saw adults and juveniles, fishing along the reedy edges of the marsh grass.

We’ve enjoyed fried shrimp, real New York pizza slices, soft-serve that tasted like a creamsicle, and lots of goodies from the various Italian bakeries. We sampled several flavors at the local peanut butter store, and feasted on another lobster dinner at the Smithville Inn. And last night, Marika grilled peaches for the first time. Boy, are they good with vanilla ice cream and a few local blueberries to cut the sweetness.

This week I’m back to my regular Thursday, Friday, Saturday volunteering shifts. And after Labor Day, the tourists will be gone, and it should start cooling off so I can finally go to the beach. 

September will also be my very last month as a Mac trainer, as I am officially closing my mac2School training business after 32 amazing years. It seems a perfect time, as Fall and the Jewish New Year approach, to take inventory of all that I’ve done and been, and what has brought me to where I am, who I am now. I’ve purchased a new domain, ruth-davis.com and I am taking my time to see what that will be. And I am courting several possible volunteer camp hosting gigs for next summer.

We’ll be traveling in October and November, following the changing leaves in New England with stops in Jack Kerouac’s hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, the famous Cornell Ornithology Lab in Ithaca, New York, and Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania for the fall hawk migration, then heading south for the winter.

Being with our friend this week has been more than just good fun and even a card game. When you know someone for thirty five years, you really know them, you see how each other has grown and changed and transformed. My friend is a very adventurous traveler. She always has been. I was sharing how I used to be more adventurous and how sometimes I feel like I’m not anymore, and she reminded me that I’m having different adventures, that I’m being brave and adventurous in other ways.

And isn’t that what true transformation is? Doing it differently? Because it CAN’T stay the same AND be a transformation.

I invite you to notice the transformations happening in your own world. Pay attention to the colors around you, when the leaves start to fall off of their trees. And notice what is different about you, in your own skin, in your own life. I’d love to hear about it.