The Bridgewater Reservoir

After our failed attempts to find interesting things in Long Hill, Sharon and I ended up at a reservoir in Bridgewater. I got confused trying to get there, since my sense of direction is subpar and I pulled into the parking lot of a Quick Stop/Check/Mart, frantically flipping through my map of New Jersey trying to find Chimney Rock Road.

The windows in my beat up Taurus were open, since my air conditioner only works when it feels like it, and an older man in the car next to mine heard me cursing loudly at the map, wondering where the fuck Chimney Rock Road was.

"Do you need help?" He yelled over from his car. When I asked him where Chimney Rock Road was, he smiled a little and said, "You're on it."

And with that, I felt embarrassed, thanked him, and got back onto the road. The parking on Chimney Rock Road is basically non existent, and I squeezed my car in between two larger vehicles and Sharon and I crossed the street to enter the reservoir.

We walked through the open fence door next to a sign that said, "No Swimming or Diving- Subsurface Rocks" in big letters. I read the sign out loud absent mindedly as we passed.

"There's swimming here?" Sharon asked.

"No... that means there's no swimming here," I said matter-of-factly.

She looked at me with a 'where's your sense of adventure?' look and repeated, "That means there's swimming here."

We continued up the path for a little, and ended up on a bizarre overlook that I wish I could label with a name. There was a caged portion, and a walkway, and we only had access to the walkway. On the bank below us was a man fishing and a couple with kids. The family all sat down on the rocks and grass that made up the beach watching us with confused looks, unspeaking. I stayed towards the middle of the overlook, my fear of heights taking over. I know it's irrational, but I couldn't help but imagine myself falling over the bars on the side and tumbling into the water where I would surely hit those subsurface rocks.

I took a few pictures of the view and the overlook, and then we walked back onto the path. We continued up it for a few minutes when we came across a bunch of old cars in the woods. I've seen this a couple of times before, old cars in the middle of the woods. I can't help but wonder--why would you leave your car in the woods? Is it really that hard to take it to a junk yard? And in this case, why would you leave three cars in the woods?

Two were painted--one with actual paint, and one with grafitti. The other one was extremely rusty and didn't really have all that much coating left on it. From head on, the old designs and paint made them look like the ruins of the cars in that animated movie, Cars. They looked like what happened to the characters' faces once they got old. When cars get older, their faces change just like people's.

"I wonder if I can take one of these steering wheels," Sharon asked, and pulled at one, but without any luck of being able to get it loose.

We got back up on the path, wondering if we had stepped in a bunch of a poison ivy on our detour to the cars. Eventually, we came to some rocks, and another fence that enclosed a huge quarry. I knew this quarry was either the Bridgewater or Warren quarry, or perhaps the two towns shared it, since it's located in both places.

The quarry juts up from the ground with its huge red stones, like a mediocre, miniscule version of the Grand Canyon--the Jersey version. Sharon said it looked like Jurassic Park. I took a bunch of pictures, and then when Sharon decided to hop onto one of the closest rocks, I followed.

I looked down at the stone and suddenly realized that I had once kissed an ex-boyfriend on that rock. It was a weird thought, and when I told Sharon, I felt a little uneasy.

We got back on the trail and I said, "I wish I didn't remember things from past relationships. It always feels weird. I guess I always feel like the other person wouldn't remember, and then I do." That thought hits me a lot, and it makes me feel embarrassed, and I can't quite put my finger on why.

Sharon nodded, "I was talking about this yesterday--I feel like I have a really great long term memory, and you might be like that too. I remember a lot of little, insignificant things from the past. I was reading this blog and the girl writing it was talking about how she remembers every little, nice thing people do for her, and that they usually forget doing it, and so she always ends up loving them more than they love her."

We were silent for a moment, going over that concept in our minds. Then the conversation that I'm sure happens between many other college sophomores began, the one about relationships and dating and hooking up. We told our stories, even though we both knew each other's stories already, and then we told our friends' stories, and our families' stories.

The rest of the trail was pretty uneventful, and we walked back down and to my car. We got ice cream at Gabriel's Fountain, a cute little place in Bridgewater that has delicious food, ran into some friends from high school, and then drove around for a while, listening to bands from New Jersey.

"Do you think people from other states just drive around like this?" Sharon asked.

"I'm not sure. I feel like they must. But I think there's just something about Jersey. Everyone always ends up 'going for a drive' in Jersey. 'Cause it's just a state of endless suburbs."

And with that we continued into the night, driving past the same sights we had driven past a hundred times, with the windows down and the music blasting.