Sand Dunes and a Lighthouse

(This is a Twelve Minute read)

Well, here we are again!

No, we haven’t done anything really noteworthy.

 In other words, worthy enough to be included in the Blog.

Back in the Beginning, I made a promise to you that I would not include the mundane, everyday happenings in this missive. And while that may be a tad subjective in its application, I can assure you that on this end, I believe that I’ve done just that.

I hope and pray that you have never been bored(!) reading any of these posts!

So ….. here we are back at the Jersey Shore for the gazillionth time in our lives!

But…… only the third time since we started Traveling.

And….. this is the first time here since we went on the Cruise and we have many more folks from around the country following the Blog who have never been to the New Jersey Shore and to them I say, Welcome!

While New Jersey is rather small compared to the rest of the States and can have a questionable reputation with regards to some subjects. Superfund Sites, the Mob (Tony Soprano lives here!), the New Jersey Turnpike, and whether it’s Taylor Ham or Pork Roll, all are included in a list that goes on…. and on…..

But! …… there is one thing that the entire nation agrees on and that is the quality of our beaches! New Jersey consistently ranks high when anyone’s ranking of “The Best Beaches in the …..” comes out.

We are blessed with incredibly fine, white sand, and for the most part, expansive beaches. I say “for the most part” because as of late, the width of these attractive delineators between the ocean and the land has been waxing and waning, especially along the northern part of the coast.

The causes are many and varied and most of them have to do with natural reasons. These causes and effects are mostly natural geological and hydrological sequences….. but, then of course, there’s us.

          “Us” as in civilization.

          “Us” as in ‘progress’.

          “Us” as in ‘Waterfront Property for Sale!’

Ever since Mr. Columbus sailed over here and discovered a land that was already inhabited, (thank you) we have coveted that narrow strip of terra firma that lies between the magnificence of the seas and the mundaneness of the terrestrial.

(I know that this is all subjective and there are many out there that prefer the Interior, but run with me on this one for a bit, will you?)

Ol’ Chris zooms back to Spain, throws the lines of the Nina to the dock workers, hails a cab to the Palace, runs up the steps and bursts breathlessly into the Throne room, “Queeny baby! Wait ‘til you see what I’ve discovered! Islands! Beaches! Girls! I can see It now! Rows and rows of condos and casinos all up and down the shoreline! Right next to the water! You’ll be able to step right out of your front door and dive right in! It’ll be great! Lets get the investors lined up before someone else does!”

          Or something like that.

Anyway, I get it. Who doesn’t like waterfront property? Especially when it comes to Ocean Front!

          Expansive views out over the waves , constrained only by the weather and the curvature of the earth!

          Ok Don, why in the name of all that’s sandy are you bringing this up?

          I’m glad you asked that Mr. Beach Umbrella!

Up on the northern tip of Long Beach Island (or LBI as it’s known here in Jersey) sits a wonderful example of a lighthouse and while everyone has their favorite one, you’ll be hard pressed not to be impressed with Barnegat Light. A fine example of mid-19^th century lighthouse engineering she is!

          So, around this lighthouse is Barnegat Light State Park, and in this Park, between the Lighthouse and the shoreline, lies an original, non-messed up, smallish (relatively) patch of wonderful Dune Ecology.

This is the type of stuff that used to keep the shorelines relatively safe from erosion and storms before….

Before the CCC (Christopher Columbus Condo’s) and their accoutrements came along.

Now we have the Army Corps of Engineers trying to un-do what hundreds of years of “doing” has done! Their efforts are valiant, but there’s some validity to that old adage about ‘shoveling sand against the tide’. There is a reason that these old sayings are so good. They eventually circle back to their original genesis and make all of us look foolish!

          For those of you who do not live in New Jersey and therefore are not acquainted with the latest Garden State dilemma, that of the Vanishing Beaches, I will attempt to explain. Sands move up and down the coast all the time. This is a very natural occurrence.

          For example, the Barnegat Inlet, at which the Barnegat Lighthouse sits on its southern side (which is on the very northernmost point of LBI) used to be around a mile or so further north than it is today. This ‘Southern Migration” which saw the sand being eroded from the northern side and deposited on its southern side came to a screeching halt in the early 1940’s with the construction of the North Jetty. This was all well and good and it did stop that southern migration of Barnegat Inlet, but we all know what happens when we try and thwart the efforts of Mom! She just makes our lives miserable and wreaks havoc in other ways! If you thought for a minute that all of that sand that naturally worked its way down the coast was just going to miraculously stop, well then, you (and the Army Corps of Engineers) have another thought coming! Those sands got sucked into the Inlet and created a myriad of ever-shifting shoals that made navigation through that area quite a challenge!

          I can attest to that challenge as I frequently went into the Inlet just to see what was going on. Life vests on, was the order of the day as the amount of boat traffic, with their ensuing wakes, coupled with the ebb and flow of the competing tidal forces, mixed with those constantly changing positions of the shoals and sand bars, made for a Voyage of Excitement! Throw in the fishermen who delighted in fishing the Inlet and clogging the channels, on the changing of the tides and you’ve got the makings of a Maritime Demolition Derby!

          So, as you can see, this was entirely unacceptable, and the Corps started to constantly dredge our Subject Inlet in an effort to keep it somewhat viable.

          Not so fast there Mr. Giant Sandcastle!

          The Corps never hangs around anything on a permanent basis, it gets in, fixes (?) it, and gets out! So, a viable, more permanent, solution was needed to be found. But our valiant Corps moves slower than the sand it was fighting, and it wasn’t until the 1990’s that another project was commenced in an effort to “fix” everything.

          The Inlet was the key element here and trying to keep it open and relatively free from that shoaling issue was the goal. This was accomplished by the construction of a new South Jetty that ran the better part of a mile from the tip of the Inlet (the base of the Lighthouse) due east, out into the ocean. Speaking of the base of the lighthouse, there were many other projects needed over the years to keep it from toppling into the Inlet. Remember that the Inlet was once a mile north of its present position! Say, like back in the 1700’s. Well when the Lighthouse was constructed (1850’s) the base of the lighthouse was only a half-mile plus away from the Inlet!

                   But, as usual, memories are short and so the location of a big house to hold the Lightkeepers and their families was decided on and then constructed.

          “There! That ought ta do it! We’re plenty safe here! Lets build ourselves a really nice Victorian style Keepers Cottage, big enough for three Lighthouse Keepers and their families to live in!” we’ll be safe enough here!” Yay!!!!!

                   Oops!

          In just the relatively short span of thirty years, and Several Storms later, found the encroaching shoreline less than three hundred feet away.

                   Yikes!

          Now we’re in trouble! And, to borrow an apropos phrase here, “Like the Sands through an Hourglass, so are the Days of our Keeper’s Cottage”. You can tell by now, these days are certainly numbered and in the early 1920’s after having been abandoned and sold for scrap, the gorgeous Lighthouse Keeper’s Cottage was no more, its location was now the new, closer-than-ever inlet!  

Hence the myriad of projects over the years spanning the time between its construction and the latest “Fix” of the 1990’s, the New South Jetty.

          This was a massive project requiring bodacious boulders to be placed in a line running straight out from the base of the Lighthouse. These boulders were deftly placed as if it were a giant game of ‘Tetris’, fine flat tops suitable for both walking on and the pouring of a nice concrete walkway that runs about a quarter of the way out from the Lighthouse.

          One of the effects of this new Southern Jetty was that all of the area behind it filled with sand until the old shoreline was almost a mile from the new shoreline.

                   Oops again!

                   The folks living in the town of Barnegat Light, who once had “Ocean Front Property”, well, technically they still did, but the water was a mile away! I can hear it now,

                   “You advertised this home as ‘Beachfront’! I can’t even see the ocean from here!”

                   “Well…ahh, yea,…. at least you’re safe from the Storms!”

          Which brings us full-circle and back to the Sand Dune Dilemma. Over the years the dunes have been cut down, moved, bulldozed, built upon, and every other thing that could be done to these marvelous natural Protectors, in the name of “The View.”

          And since Storms of Monstrous Proportions sometimes took place with a multitude of decades between them, well you all know about how our memories work when it come to things that we need, want, and gotta have…. They go Poof!

                    “What storms?”

                    “We don’t see no stinkin’ Storms!”

          And just like that, the building boom extended its way out, and up and over our friends the Dunes, until they are but anthills that are just considered a nuisance to be crossed when navigating one’s way to the Beach!

                   Until….. Ash Wednesday of 1962.

                   This was the ‘Storm of the Century’!

          It was not a hurricane. It was a Nor’easter. For those of you who are not from this part of the country, Nor’easter’s are the storms that are bred as low pressure systems in the Southeast, make their way across the land, hit the Ocean/Gulf Stream, and set their beady little eyes on the Northeast of the USA. And while they may not pack the seventy-five plus miles per hour winds that make it officially a hurricane, they can offer up a wallop of incredible proportions and deliver that thumping to the very built-up seaside towns of this area.

And linger.

Sometimes for over a day, which means several tide cycles, which means walls of water after walls of water being pushed towards the shore with nothing to stop them.

Because…… the stinkin’ dunes were obliterated as we all wanted an Ocean View and easy access to the Beach!

          Oops again! How many times do we need one of these before we have the message sink into our now waterlogged brains?

          The answer seems to have come in what legitimately now can be called “The Storm of the Century.”

“Superstorm Sandy” was her name, and her effects can still be seen and felt up and down the Jersey Shore. I know this because of our annual stay in Beach Haven courtesy of my sister and her husband. We have been their guests from before that time, up to, and including the present.

          The date was October 29, 2012, which luckily (tongue in cheek) for the environs coincided with not only a high tide, but a full moon as well! She made her way up the coast and when she arrived offshore here, she made a complete 90 degree turn to the west and slammed into our coastline with her “eye” centered around Atlantic City. Which meant that the brunt of the storm was delivered everywhere to the north. Storm surges ranged from nine feet to a little over fourteen feet. The average elevation above sea level of the barrier islands that line most of our coast is about five feet. So, now with really no effective dune system to help deflect the storm-driven onslaught, the towns up and down the state were inundated.

          After that beating, and the remembrances of storms not too long ago, plus the threat of rising sea levels, etc. folks started getting serious about the dunes. Bulldozers pushed mountains of sand up in an effort to kick-start Mother Nature’s process. The convenient valleys dug into the dunes at the end of every street so that it was easy to walk over said dunes and get to the ocean, were replaced with angled pathways that angled up and over the dunes without making a convenient “cut” that just allowed water to flow through negating the value of any dune around it. Rows and rows of dune grasses were planted to get that all-important part going (and growing) again. The dune grasses are what capture the wind-blown sand particles and keep them on the dunes, perpetuating their existence. They also become anchors for other seeds, seeds of larger plants that anchor even better and really keep the dunes static.

Now the downside.

“Hey! I can’t see the ocean from my house anymore!”

Well, at least your house is a lot safer than before.

“But I still can’t see the Ocean!”

Yes, but your house hopefully won’t need to be entirely rebuilt every time there’s a Big One.

“Yea, but I wanna see the waves!”

Ok, knucklehead, the rest of the state is tired of bailing you out so that you have a pretty view! Suck it up and realize that this is the way the Mother Nature intended for it to be and unless you have a direct line to her and ask her to “Pretty please, don’t ever come again”, you’re gonna have to get used to it!

“Ok.”

I think that it’s safe to say that this reality has finally sunk in, and the aforementioned conversational sequence is a thing of the past.

We are still struggling with the width of the useable beaches because the sand keeps shifting and to the average person, it just “goes away.” The united efforts of the officials try their best to remedy this situation by pumping sand from offshore, up and onto, the beaches, but again, this is mostly a temporary fix because as we all know, Nature “abhors a vacuum” and those holes and valleys of sucked up sand want and need to be filled back in. And where do you think that all of this sand comes from?

I ‘da know….. maybe some from exactly where we just pumped it to?

This kind of brings us back to the beginning. The next time that you find yourself down the shore and at Barnegat Light, take a few minutes and walk the trail that showcases the uniqueness and beauty of the sand dune ecology of a barrier island. It’s all of .2 miles in length, but halfway in you feel as if you’ve been transported back in time to when this was the way that it was, Mother Nature protecting herself and anyone else that cares to pay attention.

 As you can see, any time that you try and thwart Mom and bend her to the Will of the People, you’re just asking for trouble. Maybe not right now, but sometime in the future She comes around and wants to be paid back.

And the interest rate is usually exorbitant.