Beauty and ****ness
Rescuing
Controversial Concepts from Woke Totalitarians
Garret Mountain
was formed from a lava flow 190 million years ago. It is now
an isolated plateau, rising to about 500 feet, which doesn't sound like much,
except that the surrounding cities, Paterson, Clifton, and Woodland Park, are
in the Passaic River Valley and are at more or less sea level. From that
vantage point, Garret Mountain's altitude makes a statement.
Today Garret
Mountain is a public park, a green oasis surrounded by the urban sprawl of the
Boston-Washington corridor. The air above Garret is the Atlantic Flyway, a
migration route that billions of birds have been using for at least hundreds of thousands of years. In May,
birdwatchers come from around the state and in some cases other countries. In
gritty and dangerous Paterson, NJ, they witness the miracle of migration.
Eagles, ospreys, and peregrine falcons punctuate skies usually monopolized by
jets approaching Newark airport. The red-carpet stars of this show are the
warblers.
Warblers are
tiny, usually about five inches in length. The smallest weighs less than a
quarter of an ounce. Don't let that tiny size fool you. The blackpoll warbler covers a route that could
awe any Olympian. "Blackpoll warblers undertake an astonishing non-stop
flight over the Atlantic, ranging from 1,400 to 1,700 miles … in just two to
three days."