While on a recent trip back to my hometown in northern New Jersey I came across a beautiful, but sad sight. New Jersey is a very small, but beautiful state. When I was young there was so much open space. My high school was surrounded by farmland and forest, in fact when you looked out the window while in a class all you saw were open fields and cows.
New Jersey was the best place to bring up a family. Just a couple of hours from home were absolutely gorgeous beaches, truly world-class and when I was a child, the average Joe could afford to take their family there in the summer.
NOT ANYMORE...The price of a week's rental there is 2-5k a week. A slice of pizza is $7. It's crazy expensive.
But back in the day, it was paradise for our family.
Once every summer my dad would rent a beachfront home for a week, and my sisters and brothers, and I would dream of the day when we would shove off for the Jersey shore. It was the highlight of our summer.
HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED
Now in New Jersey, some 50 years later, it seems every inch of open land is gone. Apartment buildings are popping up everywhere. Strip malls and big box companies have put every mom-and-pop shop out of business, I hate it.
Nature has suffered the most.
I see more bears in the suburbs of Jersey than I do living in the mountains of Upstate New York.
These poor animals have nowhere to go anymore, their habitats have been taken away from them to accommodate the humans who have flooded their space.
I feel so bad for these beautiful animals, they deserve a place to live, instead, at least in New Jersey, many of them are captured and relocated. They just want a home, a place to find natural food instead of the neighbors garbage.
Our world has changed and not so much for the better.
Nature is amazing, and we need to take care of what has been bestowed upon us. It is a blessing.