Earth Day is coming up on April 22 – so why not help save the environment on a personal level?
I’ll come right out and say it – recently, I took an eight-mile walk (rather than drive) from my home in the Greenville section of Jersey City to my workplace at 1400 Washington St. in Hoboken.
On Monday, instead of leaving a carbon footprint upon the earth, I put one foot in front of the other, and just prayed that I’d make it to my office in one piece.
Eight miles in my own shoes
Normally, it takes me 25 to 30 minutes to drive to work, or eight miles on the speedometer. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, my 2002 Dodge Stratus only rates a 2 (meaning bad) on their Air Pollution Score guide.
So it was time to let my sneakers do the walking.
Of course, I picked one of the rainiest days in early spring when I left my house at 10:47 a.m. I travelled one block east to Ocean Avenue.
Then it was northward on Ocean, a 2.5 mile trek across flat, urban concrete sidewalks.
After that, I continued onto Grand Street into downtown Jersey City, where I turned onto Jersey Avenue and took a straight walk all the way to the Jersey City-Hoboken border, another three miles.
The final 2.5 miles would lead to the Hudson Reporter headquarters with a hike up Paterson Plank Road that led into the Jersey City Heights, into Union City, and then down Hoboken’s 14th Street Viaduct.
Stupidly, I forgot to wear my rain boots to protect my feet from torrential downpour and harsh surfaces.
Damn, it was going to hurt – and it did, after I got to work at 3:05 p.m.
Nature, what nature?
Here is a little account of what I saw as I helped save the environment:
11:27 a.m.: I pass by the entrance of the old Bayview Cemetery on Ocean, and that’s when a heavy rain catches me. It comes to my attention that there are no trees on the avenue to shelter me from getting soaked, but there’s a literal forest inside the cemetery confines, which dates back to the Civil War. This is the final resting place of New Jersey governor A. Harry Moore and the late Glenn D. Cunningham, the former mayor of Jersey City. It’s closed at its Ocean Avenue entrance so I decide to walk on.
1:20 p.m.: On Grand Street in downtown Jersey City, across from the Jersey City Medical Center, I pause to look at the trees in Alexander Santora Park, doing my best impersonation of an Audubon Society member by trying to take photos of birds but I couldn’t spot them through the branches.
By 2 p.m., Van Vorst Park on Jersey Avenue and Montgomery Street is in the distance and Hamilton Park between Eighth and 10th streets is on the horizon. In between, the Sixth Street Embankment, the old railroad structure being envisioned as a park, comes into view.
Downtown Jersey City is lucky to have so much nature in the urban landscape. (The city kicked off a Tree Planting project on Jersey Avenue on Wednesday. Note to city: How about a few trees on Ocean?)
Whom you’ll meet along the way
11:14 a.m.: Stopped into the 160 Ocean Ave. office of Marie Day, a candidate running for City Council. Her office assistant Mirelis Gonzalez, who has lived on Ocean Avenue for 14 years, remembers when kids would dance off against each other on this street in a show of mock fighting, but now “there’s actually violence.” She doesn’t recall as many cops as right now. Gonzalez offers me a ride out of sympathy, but I decline her kind gesture.
11:47 a.m.: Between Bayview and Wilkinson avenues, I hear ‘What the hell is that?’ and I see smoke rising out from under a manhole cover followed by flames. I call 911 and the operator says they are “already on it.” Within three minutes, several fire trucks are in the vicinity, and a fireman yells, “You gotta go, buddy.” I have a trip to continue.
12 p.m.: I meet a couple, Scott and Lisa, waiting for the bus. I ask them if they would ever walk to Journal Square if their bus took too long to come. They look at me like I’m crazy, especially after I describe my journey. But they wish me luck.
12:40 p.m.: At the Communipaw Avenue headquarters of another City Council candidate, Lavern Webb Washington, she tells me “That’s beautiful” when I let her know what I was doing.
Oh, the reminders
2:30 p.m.: The hazards of being an on-foot pedestrian and the privilege of having a car hit me when I cross into Hoboken from Jersey City along Jersey Avenue, mile six or seven of my trip. It’s frustrating enough as a driver when I have to make that turn onto Jackson Street off Observer Highway, waiting for oncoming traffic to stop so I can turn. Walking across this intersection is akin to moving one step closer to the hereafter.
By 2:40 p.m., I feel like a marathon runner stumbling to the end. It’s slightly heavier breathing as I cross the NJ Transit light rail tracks while walking the last leg of my Sisyphean voyage.
To further rub salt in the proverbial wound, three charter buses zip past me, with two of them advertising the new “green” shows on the Sundance Channel and one with the apropos billboard for the HBO series, “In Treatment.”
Around 3 p.m., walking down Hoboken’s 14th Street Viaduct into town, I have to ask myself “What the hell were you thinking?”
And then it dawns on me: I’m walking into Hoboken, not driving. No need to look for parking.
Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonrreporter.com.