A Diverse Stomping Ground

I love to travel.  Logistics and budget get in the way of "real" travel, though, so in the last 10 years I haven't ventured beyond the east coast of the United States.  Hawaii, Prague, China, Kenya, Chile, Budapest, Canadian Rockies... I'd love to see you some day.

But that doesn't inhibit my spirit of exploration.  Thoreau noted that to travel he didn't need venture any further than his local Concord, Massachusetts.  (I think he said something like that.  I've been searching the 'net for a quote, but can't find one.)

Long ago I realized that my love of running and love of exploration were made for each other.   When I lived in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s, I made a point of running every which way from my apartment on the Upper East Side, observing Gotham's people (every type of person that exists lives in NYC), buildings (ratty tenements to luxury sky rises), parks, bridges, causeways...  If it had a fairly firm surface, I ran on it and took in the sights.

When I moved to New Jersey, the diversity got even greater.  Almost all of my running is within a 5-mile radius of my house in Maplewood.  That radius touches two counties -- Essex and Union -- and many towns, boroughs and cities: Maplewood, the Oranges (Orange, West Orange, East Orange, South Orange), Newark, Hillside, Elizabeth, Roselle & Roselle Park, Union, Kenilworth, Cranford, Springfield, Summit, Millburn and Livingston.  Within those towns are also non-municiple mailing addresses, such as Short Hills and Vauxhall.

How diverse is this area?  Let's take a look:

• Socio-economic: A few miles east in Newark, entire blocks remain in rubble, having never been rebuilt after the devastating riots in the 1960s.  (That is no reason to fear or avoid Newark, and in fact Newark is on the rebound.  But in parts of the city, its struggles are painfully apparent in the landscapes as well as the expressions of its people.)  To the west, the wealth of the one-percent-of-the-one-percent is conspicuous in the legacy estates and modern McMansions.  (Until I first visited the Short Hills Mall, I didn't know anyone actually went shopping in a Maserati or Ferrari.)  Most world nationalities are represented in our population.  My daughter's elementary school, which takes great pride in its global richness, has dozens among its students and faculty.
• Geology: Elevations within a mile or two of my home vary by almost 600 feet, making most runs hilly.  (There's little need for conscious "hill training" around here -- most local running is hill training.)  Eastward, toward the Hudson River, is the dank (and polluted) repository of the Passaic River and its tributaries; to the west is South Mountain, most of which is a wooded reservation.  Rock formations include "turtlebacks" -- a tortoise-like design that occurs naturally, and after which our local zoo is named.
• Parks: Of many parks, the South Mountain Reservation is the largest, with over 2,000 acres of woods, trails, picnic grounds, lakes, a natural waterfall that is particularly dramatic after a heavy rain, and, at its northern edge, recreational facilities such as a zoo, skating rink, boat dock and miniature golf course.  This land had been stripped bare by local paper companies in the 1800s, but some highly forward-looking folks around the turn of the century had it designated as a public space, with artful landscaping and strategic re-planting, creating a local treasure.
• History: There are few historic districts per se where I live.  Nonetheless, there's tons of history, and it's often sprinkled in with little fanfare among everything else.  You have to look for it: A modern bridge may well have a plaque designating the site of an important Revolutionary War flank.  A pedestrian and bicycle path in the reservation loops by where George Washington observed, from the southern tip of South Mountain, the Battle of Springfield.  A barely-noticeable milestone (a replacement; the original is inside the adjacent library) designates the 5-mile mark of the Newark-Springfiled Turnpike, completed in the early 1800s (now Springfield Avenue).  Famous residents, past and present, are too numerous to mention, but I'll drop a few names in future posts.  As for buildings --
• Architecture: You name it -- in my radius is everything from modern hi-rises (residential and office) to modest borough homes to mansions to historic farm houses.  Most residential buildings are on the old side, because most of the region was developed to capacity by the 1920s (we may have the most concentrated population of Tudor-style homes in the U.S.), with the remaining land filled in soon after the World War II.  Some buildings are really old; that small, nondescript abode next to your mansard-roofed Victorian may well be, beneath its vinyl siding, a colonial-era saltbox.
• Commerce: The aforementioned Short Hills Mall offers valet parking, parking garages that are eerily devoid of oil drippings (cleaned daily?), and shops like Saks Fifth Avenue and Tiffany & Co.   A little more humble is Maplewood village, a miracle of throwback independent shops; in the span of three blocks we have a bakery, an art gallery, a bookseller, a furniture store, a movie theatre, a fresh fish market, an acting studio, a crafts studio, a toy store, a coffee bistro, plus the usual fare of groceries, nail salons, restaurants and health services.  Go further east and find the vibrant, often funky stores of Irvington and Newark.  And -- full disclosure -- there's the sad and unsanctioned part of the economy, too: street corner entrepreneurs and hucksters deal in illegal products and services, and not just in the more impoverished areas.  Yes, I've heard gunshots in some areas.  Yes, I still run there.  (More on this difficult topic later, although I have nothing to add but the runner's perspective.)
• Wildlife: When European settlers first drifted into the region in the mid-1600s, the natural ecosystem included the likes of bears and mountain lions.  While they are no longer here (and I doubt too many people miss them), critters ranging from the pleasant to pesky still abound: deer, turkey, pheasants, turtles, raccoons, woodchucks, ground hogs, possums, rabbits, squirrels... While they are scarce in the most concrete-laden parts, they thrive any place that has as much as a postage stamp of a lawn.  Add to that list an aviary population that consumes, from my deck feeder alone, a 10-pound bag of birdseed every few days.

That's my world.  That's where I run.

The Radius