Contrasting Worlds

A beautiful, windy day was forecast for Southern New Jersey on this mid October morning.  We scrapped our plans to rent a boat and cruise through the marshlands of the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, a haven for migrating shorebirds and waterfowl.   The choppy waters would make travel difficult.  The flood level high tide meant that most birds would seek other places until low tide.   The alternative was to drive the eight-mile loop through the refuge, an artificially created wetland in the midst of extensive salt marshes separating the mainland from the ocean.  Forsythe is one of many National Wildlife Refuges placed in critical areas to provide shelter for migrating birds in the midst of encroaching development that destroys natural habitat.

 We stopped at the beginning of the loop to walk the half-mile trail.   In the distance three osprey soared.   Suddenly, one dropped from the sky and a huge splash indicated contact.   He rose again to continue his quest for breakfast.  

 Toward the East a hawk soared above.  A red-tail, I first thought.  No, the tail is too long and the wings too tapered.  One of the resident peregrines?  No.  Maybe a red shoulder?  As the bird soared away we continued to wonder about its identity.

Next, a quick stop at the observation tower.   Three harriers playfully glide back and forth across the distant horizon.   “Look at the fence,” I say to the others.  A peregrine sits waiting for its next meal.    On the pool below several mallards and four pintails traverse the water.

We continue around the loop, amazed at the height of the tide which covers all but the top foot of the marsh grasses. “It’s the highest I’ve ever seen here.”   On the bay fifty cormorants float in a large black mass.  Over the distant skyline of Atlantic City a fluid V in the sky indicates another group of several hundred cormorants.     

Overhead a large group of brant flies toward the large freshwater basin to our left to join another group of brant.  The almost bare, black ground on the nearest island looks like a fire had swept over it.  No, it’s only what remains after the voracious feeding of the thousands of snow geese that make this their winter home.

Sea water gushing through a culvert into the Eastern pool is rapidly raising the water level.  At the next culvert, a large group of snowy egrets waits on the shore, good fishing ground as the water rushes from the marsh into the enclosed pool.

Where are the shorebirds, I wonder, since we had seen none in the first five miles of the loop.   “There they are,” I shout, noting a sizable group of dunlin on a muddy stretch of shore.    “Isn’t that the peregrine, sitting on top of the reeds,” another visitor notes.  I turn my scope in that direction. “Yes.” “I’m getting better  at sighting them,” she proudly proclaims.

As we approach the end of the loop, Owen asks whether there are eagles around.  I scan the distant horizon. “Two adults over there in the top of a tree.”   Above them a harrier soars.   Then Owen notices a peregrine to the right of the eagles.  One of the eagles lifts off and disappears behind the trees.  Then he soars above the other and the peregrine dives toward him.    The second eagle takes flight. From the left a sharp-shin flies toward him, quickly moving away after contact.   Both eagles disappear behind the trees.

We stop at the pond near the exit.   I look up to see three wood ducks flying toward the far end.    Training my scope in that direction, I see a female hooded merganser swimming behind the grass.   A great egret stands in the water alertly watching for its next fish.  “Over  here,” Owen calls,  “A golden crowned kinglet.”

It’s been a wonderful day and we are ready for a good meal.  We decide to go Harrah’s Casino and enjoy their seafood buffet.   Driving around the end of the bay through Absecon, we enter the parking garage of Harrah’s. Here, a few miles distant, lies a different world, hundreds of cars in a four story garage outside the huge hotel and entertainment complex, one of six Atlantic City casinos and the heart of the local tourist trade.

We enter the complex, taking an escalator from the garage into the casino.  Welcome to Harrah’s, a sign proclaims.  The buffet is on the other side of the casino room, its only access through the casino.  We walk past row after row of slot machines and newer variations with the same purpose.  Women and men, mostly 65 or older, several in wheel chairs, sit in front of the machines with their plastic buckets of quarters, cigarettes hanging from many mouths.  “Did you see anybody smiling, ”I ask.  “Are they enjoying themselves?”   There is little conversation.  Everyone sits and plunks quarter after quarter into the machines.  An occasional patter of a small jackpot breaks the sound of electronic tunes competing with one another as the machines continue their deadly pace.

We wait in line until the buffet opens at four.   Then we enter through a hallway of aquariums into an artificial sea.   Plastic fish hang from the blue glass ceiling.    The walls are formed to look like an undersea cave, complete with plastic seaweed. The buffet is like none I’ve seen before.   Soups and bread. Salads of all varieties.   Roast turkey and roast beef.   A pasta bar.  Hot seafood. Cold seafood.  Steak and grilled chicken.   A dessert bar.   Over half the people I see are overweight, not surprising in this place of excess.    A single elderly man sitting beside us has a plate stacked eight inches high with crab legs.  “I love these,” he exclaims.

Money, money everywhere, and hardly a smile.    Do these people have lives or does their quest for riches dominate everything else?  Probably few have ventured across the bay to the wildlife refuge.  Their manufactured, measured world is played out inside the monuments of mammon.

Andy Smith

October 19, 2000