Ghost 47 |
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| Past Echo Park Campgrounds, past Drug-Free School Zones and the El Dorado Motel, past Science Plastics: Injection and Blow Mouldings--- Jake's Landing Road, off US 47, is not promising at first. Just widened shoulders bulldozed through scrub left to rot to the side, plus a crabseller working out of a rusting Airstream trailer and Martha in her Dried Herbs and Victoriana stand. "Indian Artifacts, Old Bottles, and Collectibles," a sign says. Martha waves and seeing someone walking points to another sign: "Welcome Birders." Her place is spanking new and ready for summer, with cedar shingles, rose trellises, and a door wreath made of colored twigs and a bow. The road-widening gives out 100 yards farther, where the piney woods begin--- what sort of instructions were those dozers following, anyway?---leaving authentic potholes and, suddenly, silence. among the needles; the sweet smell of warm sap slaps you broadside as summer. Now you can hear distant chuggings and trills---can't tell whether they're boats or birds, probably both--- plus the drone of trucks on 47 at your back. More signs: "This is a State Forest New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Public Use of This Forest is Subject to the Following Regulations," including 13:1-26(2): "Boisterousness or Other Objectionable Conduct Will Not Be Permitted. Games are Restricted to Those Areas So Designated by the Forest Superintendant." Look: these pines are planted in rows and sprinkled about are the sawed-off ghosts of a harvested forest, now white as chalk. begins; its great open spaces flicker through the forest shade. But first a surprise: a tiny graveyard just off the road, its borders marked by logs. Two gravestones tall and emaciated in the old style, topped by a skull-smooth curve at the center and, on either side, what looks like two bony shoulders raised in shrugging. "In Memory Zenobia Ludlam, Wife of Thomas Ludlam, Departed this Life February 16 1824 Aged 62 years 4 months and 6 days." The letters are swollen and blurry, easier to read if traced like braille. At the parents' feet, three headstones for children, so small there's room only for initials. Catkins cluster among new buds in a bush to one side, puffing clouds of pollen when poked---golddust poured into pores of the fingertips. And now comes the smell of the sea, equal parts salt, rot, and light. into the open, the road laid down on sand fill straight as a rule, salt-marsh at low tide opening out and away---the wind's picked up, and cirrus fills the sky. A step off the road toward the marsh makes the mudbanks quick with movement, watery skitterings of whatever-they-are’s. And here's a Witness Post: Do Not Disturb Survey Marker USGS. The pines are in retreat, the marsh advancing; skeletal spindles, now branchless, stand at attention, rustling saltgrass at their feet. Ahead the road widens to a parking lot and Jake's boat slip. It's quiet today, just a county Mosquito Commission truck and its empty boat trailer (is he working, or fishing on duty?). At the slip's edge a small river winds through the marsh, current quick enough to make you hold your breath, carrying nothing but light, the end of the road, the sun's diamantines dancing on the riptide. Where does Jersey end and ocean begin? This slip slips a boundary, slip-sliding away. Four Air Force transport planes pass high to the west, heading out on a night mission over the Atlantic. Down at your feet wood shavings are scattered in the sand--- someone was whittling while waiting for a boat. An ant marches with one of them locked in his mandible, the shaving curling above his thorax like a plume or a banner. What will he do with such a thing? Head on home again, home again, and carry what you can. |
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this page is part of the Gnarl 2 clusterin the Very Large Array |
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