Blue Highways: Egg Harbor City, New Jersey

Unfolding the Map

Our stop at the edge of the Pine Barrens, in Egg Harbor City, lets us peruse about things that get lost in the Pines.  William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) identifies one thing as progress.  But other things might be lost in the Pines as well, including the Jersey Devil.  To see where this cryptid may haunt the dreams of folks, delve into the darkest corners of the map.

Book Quote

"I came to the southern limits of the woods at Egg Harbor City, a landlocked town fifteen miles from Great Egg Harbor.  The plan years ago to dig a canal from town to the Great Egg Harbor River and thereby link with the sea did not work out.  It wasn't the first time so-called progress had got lost in the Pines."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 8

Look at that! Egg Harbor City has an old five and dime, a Ben Franklin building, that is still being used! Photo by Jenneli Mueller and hosted at City-Data. Click on photo to go to host page.

Egg Harbor City, New Jersey

Cryptozoology.  I hadn't heard of this term until a few years ago but chances are everyone who reads this has come across cryptozoology before.  Cryptozoology is the search for animals whose existence has not been verified or proved.  If you've ever wondered about the existence of the Loch Ness Monster, or Bigfoot, or the chupacabra, you've been delving slightly into cryptozoology.  I remember when I was young, camping in the woods of Northern California, and being frightened to death by the possibility that Bigfoot might have been out there, watching me, tracking me, perhaps even intending me harm.  Shadows in the day often became an apelike creature observing me from the edge of the forest.  The cracking of twigs in the forest at night, in my imagination, presaged the rush of a hairy, smelly beast upon me.  Yet, as I have written elsewhere, even in my fear I wanted Bigfoot to exist.  I wanted this relic of the genetic evolution of humans to be real.

Why does this come up in the context of a post about Egg Harbor City?  Because Egg Harbor City is located at the edge of the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, and the Pine Barrens is supposed to be the habitat of a cryptozoological specimen - the Jersey Devil.  Thus, and I'm writing somewhat facetiously here, LHM might have possibly run across this creature in his trip across the Pine Barrens.

What is the Jersey Devil?  Well, according to numerous sources I've read, it has wings, a large head that resembles a horse, stands on two legs, sports wings, and hisses and screeches in a blood-curdling manner.  The earliest legends were started by Native Americans, who believed that a dragon-like creature lived in the Pine Barrens.  Later, according to Wikipedia (take it for what it's worth) Swedish explorers thought enough of the legend to name the channel in the area the Drake Kill, "drake" meaning dragon.  Apparently, the Devil has been spotted a number of times in the past 100 or so years, including in 1909 when a Trenton councilman claimed to have heard wings flapping outside his window and found tracks of cloven hooves in the snow outside his house, and in 1978 when two boys ice-skating on a frozen lake smelled an odor of rotten fish and saw a pair of red eyes staring at them.  Even the brother of Napoleon saw the Devil while hunting on his New Jersey estate in 1820.

Cryptozoologists believe that the Jersey Devil could be a new kind of creature, or an animal previously thought extinct.  Some cryptozoologists believe it could be a dinosaur such as a pterosaur or a dimorphodon.

I used to be all over this kind of stuff.  I thrilled reading about creatures that might be out there that we haven't discovered.  The fact is that we are still discovering new species all the time, and rediscovering ones that we thought were long gone.  The coelacanth is a famous species that was thought to have gone extinct approximately 65 million years ago, but was found in 1938 to be happily living off the coast of South Africa.  In Oregon, a new species of spider was recently found living caves, and a new species of lemur, the GERP mouse lemur, was discovered in Madasgascar.  Cryptozoologists simply argue that there are new species (and old ones) out there that have eluded us.  Bigfoot/Yeti, Nessie, the Jersey Devil are all waiting to be discovered.  I remain hopeful that more interesting and exciting species are just waiting to pop out at us. 

However, I remain a healthy skeptic.  One major reason that I am not sure that we'll find the Jersey Devil or creatures as wild and fantastic as that is that human encroachment on what used to untrammeled territory grows.  Huge swaths of the Amazon are being cut down daily, possibly driving species, most of which we'll never know, into extinction.  In the Pacific Northwest, the possible home of Bigfoot, huge areas of forest have been clear cut.  The Pine Barrens are being encroached upon by the mega-urban areas around it, giving a Jersey Devil less room to roam.  Polluted waters, climate change, and other environmental factors caused by humans have consequences foreseen and unforeseen.  If you're a believer in the wild and fantastic creatures, you have to ask if they can survive the massive changes being perpetrated on their ecosystems.  If you're skeptic, well, they were all figments of overactive human imaginations anyway.

Regardless of what happens, I think that we'll always find mysterious phenomena, and we'll find ways to explain them.  We might actually discover what makes them or, if not, we'll use our imaginations.  It's the human way.  Being from Northern California, I've decided that I much prefer Bigfoot to the Jersey Devil, but I'm glad they are still around even if it is only in our imaginations.  And who knows.  A small part of me hopes, against hope, that they just might really be out there.

Musical Interlude

What better song to accompany this post and its topic than the Theme to the X-Files?  That show was a favorite of mine - I watched it starting with the first episode of the first season, and because I watched it I was cool before others knew about it.  Of course, the subject matter dealt with aliens, but also with unexplained phenomena like the Jersey Devil and Bigfoot.  It was a great show!

If you want to know more about Egg Harbor City

Egg Harbor City
Egg Harbor City Historical Society
Egg Harbor City: New Germany in New Jersey
New Jersey Tourism: Egg Harbor City
Wikipedia: Egg Harbor City

Next up:  Millville and Bridgeton, New Jersey

Blue Highways: Danbury, Wisconsin

Unfolding the Map

Driving with the windows open, trying to get the mosquitoes out, we try to find a place to sleep with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM).  Just more irritants in his trip through Wisconsin.  The post is a little all over the place, because I don't want to do too much backtracking.  But we'll all survive.  Buzz on over to the map to locate Danbury, Wisconsin and our resting spot.

Book Quote

"Lying atop the sleeping bag in the hot night, I heard the first mosquito.  I put the screens in place but it was too late.  Under the pinching bites I lay sweating and cursing.  Unable to stay awake driving, now I couldn't sleep lying down.  I was living someone's nightmare.  "These are the days that must happen to you," Whitman says.

"....Finally I gave up and pulled off the screens, and, with windows wide open, drove flat out down the highway to blast away the insects.  At Danbury I parked by the town hall, put the screens in place, and again went to bed.  I slapped a mosquito and fell asleep."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 11

The Old Hole in the Wall casino in Danbury, Wisconsin. Photo by Holter and found at Panoramio. Click on photo to go to host page.

Danbury, Wisconsin

I've already written about mosquitoes, so I don't plan to spend much time on them.  But there is one sound that just drives me complete nuts when I hear it.  Here's the scenario.  You are sleeping, or at least dozing, in the early morning.  All of a sudden, you hear it.  A sound at the very edge of your hearing.  A high-pitched whine that sounds far away.  It barely registers on your sleepy awareness.  But it gets louder, gradually, coming closer and closer to one of your ears sticking out invitingly from underneath the covers or, more likely, the sleeping bag.

There are other sounds which cause momentary discomfort, such as fingernails raking down a chalk board or someone's annoying voice.  But a mosquito buzzing your ear, clearly looking to land and make a meal out of your blood, is possibly the most annoying sound ever.  When you slap at your ear, the sound disappears for a moment, only to make a reappearance and slowly draw closer, closer and closer.  If you are going to make it stop, you might have to let the mosquito land on you and try to crush it with a swat.  Otherwise, you'll play a game with the mosquito all morning until you get out of bed.  When you get locked into that repetitive scenario with a mosquito, it can ruin a perfectly fine morning under the covers.

I applaud LHM for his tactic of driving fast with all the windows down to blast the mosquitoes out of Ghost Dancing so that by the time he gets to Danbury, he's rid his van of probably 90 percent of the mosquitoes.  In all my years alive I have never used that tactic to get a flying bug out of the car.  When you get a bug in the car, it can be something that you never see, such as a tiny spider that has set up shop inside your glove box or in the back by the window.  Unless it bites me, I don't really care if such an insect is there.  Sometimes it can be a minor annoyance, like a mosquito, though one curious thing about mosquitoes is once they get into the car they seem to only want to get out, and don't appear to be interested in the occupants at all.  At least that's what seems to happen when I see them in the vehicle in the daytime.  Perhaps the heat of the day warms up the car and plays havoc with the mosquito's infra-red heat detection system.  At night, I can't say because I don't usually notice them.

Sometimes, the bug in the car can be downright frightening.  Have you been in a car and suddenly notice a bee trying to get out?  Usually, when I see a bee frantically trying to get out, I pull over and try to get help it somehow using paper or anything that I can wave at it.  The problem with bees is that they get so single-minded in trying to get out the back window, they usually get stuck.  I have found dead bees in the back window when I've been detailing my car, sometimes with nothing left but some legs and wings.

Perhaps driving with all the windows down would cause enough airflow to get a bee out of the car, but I'd be afraid that the bee would blow back on me and sting me.  I don't want to get stung because I have a fear that I'm allergic to bees.  I'm allergic to a lot of stuff, so it wouldn't surprise me that I would be allergic to bees too.  I don't want to go into anaphylactic shock - my wife found out that she's allergic to fire ants in that way and it scared the living hell out of me.  So, when it comes to bees, I'll just pull over and try to get it out the old fashioned way, with paper or some other device I can wave at it.

But mosquitoes?  If they are in my car, I'll make the interior such a wind tunnel that they won't know what hit them!

*************

There's precious little information on Danbury and it's sister Town of Swiss, but apparently it was the scene of a Bigfoot sighting!  If you know me, you know I love unexplained mysteries and strange stuff.  I don't necessarily believe in Bigfoot or Sasquatch, but I love that other people believe and I always keep an open mind.  Apparently, the Ojibwe Indians nearby are familiar with the Danbury creature.  Now that's a reason to visit Danbury!

Musical Interlude

You'd think that there would be a bunch of songs that talk about driving with the windows down, but I could only find Driving With the Windows Down by a band on Myspace called the Crunchy Western Boys, a bluegrass band who appear to hail from New Hampshire.  It's a pretty decent song, in my opinion.  I'd go to see this band!  Hit the "play" button below to hear the song.

Driving With The Windows Down

If you want to know more about Danbury

Forts Folle Avoine
Wikipedia: Danbury
Wikipedia: Town of Swiss

Next up:  West of Minong, Wisconsin