What I Am Reading: "The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures at the Edge of a City" by Robert Sullivan

I am still reading my way to The Proud Tower, I swear. However, recent circumstances, including but not limited to my latest (and likely last) writing project, have kept me from aggressive reading lately; and those same circumstances have compelled me to squeeze in a few books focused on my current residence of New Jersey.

I've tried a couple of times to read some Jerseyana. I did that book about Milicent Fenwick my first year here, though none of the other books on new Jersey political history have quite grabbed my imagination yet (to the point where I realized just today that I've been getting Enoch Johnson and Frank Hague, '20s political bosses form the opposite ends of the Jersey Shore, confused with each other). Other than that, I've only really gotten into the Hindenburg a little bit, an adopted New Jersey topic because of its Lakehurst resting place.

My recent read of Ocean, though, the brief meditation on sea-focused humanities topics, had a chapter on the Port of New York and its eclipse by modular container operations in New Jersey. One work that was mentioned in that chapter was this book, The Meadowlands, a travel/memoir-type book about the stretch of northern New Jersey north of Jersey City and west of Manhattan that is a well-known desolate landscape of swamp, industrial and post-industrial activity, and waste dump of long standing.

This book, written in the late '90s, doesn't necessarily dispute that characterization, but nevertheless portrays the Meadowlands as an underappreciated area, as a wild space unclaimed by humans within just a few miles of the world's largest metropolis. The city's relationship to the Meadowlands is interesting: there have been various schemes to develop the space "usefully;" most unsuccessful or (at the time of the book's writing) only chipping away at the edges, but each leaving their mark on the area. Other efforts to shape the Meadowlands have focused on battling the Meadowlands' effect on humans (mosquito control) or battling humans' effect on the Meadowlands (environmental restoration).

Mostly, however, the space that could be put to no other "productive" purpose by the city has been used as a dumping ground for vast quantities of trash, toxic chemicals, and famous items such as the rubble of the original Penn Station or the body of Jimmy Hoffa. Both of the latter items are subjects of the writer's narrated searches, as he explores the industrial landscapes, small, blighted towns, and massive, centuries-old landfills of the area, on foot or by canoe.

Along the way, the book has plenty of digressions into local history, such as the military career of Gen. Phil Kearney (after whom a town is named) or, more proximately, various get-rich-quick schemes or capitalist enterprises that were, usually, foiled by the Meadowlands. It also chronicles the author's time interviewing or doing ride-alongs with people like dump owners, local environmentalists, and state mosquito control officials, as well as the various odd characters he is introduced to who hunt for treasure or just go swimming in the (most-assuredly) polluted lakes and marshes.

The book isn't a comprehensive history of an urban oddity or a thorough geographic survey of an an area that is in some liminal space between wilderness and human-shaped, but it has elements of both, alongside the human-interest storytelling and oddball interviews. It's a breezy tour of the area, with some much-needed boosterism for towns that do not necessarily have a vibrant reputation amongst their more upscale urban neighbors. I am not located in (or particularly close to) the Meadowlands, but it was interesting to hear another perspective on a region that I, along with many others, have at least driven through, and that tends to impart some of New Jersey's gritty reputation.