To Grandmother’s House We Go
Star-Ledger Guest Columnist
“Over the river and through the woods” is as synonymous with Thanksgiving as turkey and pumpkin pie. But where exactly are the woods these days? And how much of our rivers are hidden as we zoom over cement bridges, thinking only about the traffic between here and the cranberry sauce?
New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the nation, with more urban terrain than forests, according to a 2015 study by Rowan and Rutgers universities.
This fact is especially embarrassing, given that I am chair of the environmental commission in Madison and live spitting distance from a rare, intact 53-acre forest on the Drew University campus.
I am sorry to admit that it took me 23 years and the threat of a land sale to realize that the Drew Forest was ecologically different from my yard — and the rest of the trees on Drew’s notably leafy campus.
This is not to say that I didn’t know it was important.