Most weekday mornings and evenings, I am on a commuter train through northern NJ into NYC and back. I’ve done this for an astonishing 20 years, and have mostly enjoyed it (except when the trains don’t run well), as there is lots of interest to see along the way, not just suburban backyards of sandboxes and swingsets. Today I made a partial list.
Stretches of incredible graffiti on the walls of the track cuts — I have some censorious elderly misgivings about graffiti, but sometimes it’s so ingenious in its design and eye-popping in its color that I love it anyway. I especially appreciate the humor of scrawled remarks such as ‘my mom thinks I’m at a sleepover.’
A parking lot where dozens of day laborers gather every morning to seek work. Movers, landscapers and contractors who’ve hired them report that they are excellent workers. I find this touching, sad and wholly admirable: working like this, far from home in the US, is the best way to support their families (I bet nearly all the money is selflessly sent home to Guatamala, El Salvador, etc.), whom they can now never see.
I’m also touched by the little scenes which reveal homely human habitation of the most industrial areas along the route. There’s an old-school picnic table outside a foundry, where I often see arriving workers sitting chatting with their morning cups of coffee, a companionable scene.
The Meadowlands, after decades of industrialization and pollution, have been cleaned up in recent years, so that they now support lots of wildlife, including several nesting pairs of osprey. I’ve seen the occasional majestic white-headed osprey perched on a power pole, also countless egrets, cormorants, blue herons and red-wing blackbirds. Bald eagles are also said to nest in the area. Isn’t that nifty, just a few miles from New York City?
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Linnetontheleaf 
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