Almost two months.

I sat down a few times to write a post and never finished.

In the last two months:

I celebrated my 50th birthday.My personal cat of five years died suddenly.My daughter turned 21 years old.I spit out part of a tooth, one that I originally damaged during my big fall 15 years ago.

Even though we have other animals, and even other cats, in the house, the loss of Fog has troubled me. That’s been hard. It creates a special loneliness to have other pets around but none of them are truly mine. Now the bird would beg to differ, she would say that she is the ultimate companion and that I should have no other beasts before her. And perhaps that makes me her pet. For larger birds are even worse than cats for acting like they are the most superior of species.

Yesterday, my dear friend (and Parisian Phoenix art director) Gayle and I went to Boonton, N.J., to see if we could find the remnants of their portion of the Morris Canal.

We failed. And while I was there (specifically somewhere around point 10 on the map), I spent a few minutes studying the map to make our visit more successful, but the summer sun perhaps made it more difficult to interpret the map. I may have to return and try again.

So, Why Boonton?

I wanted to visit Boonton for several reasons. I had been discussing and researching the Morris Canal as part of my work with Maryann Ignatz, the fourth-generation proprietor of Steve’s Café/ Historic Morris House on South Main Street in Phillipsburg, N.J. Her family’s business abutted the Morris Canal and canal workers would stop for food and drink along the way.

Reason 1. I have a fascination with canals and the Industrial Revolution in the United States. The coal regions in Pennsylvania were so instrumental in feeding the cities from Philadelphia to New York. Think of all the petroleum reliance we have today– and in this era as electricity was just coming onto the scene the indsutrial sector used coal to produce steam to provide energy for travel and manufacturing.

Reason 2. I was born in Boonton and some of my family used to live there.

How the visit went

Parking is super easy and plentiful with a $1 fee to park all day. If you use ParkMobile, the fee is $1.30 and gets you exactly 24 hours.

I fell before we got fully out of the parking lot.

(But it was my first fall since April! And it didn’t register on my watch which means it wasn’t a hard fall. The impact was relatively gentle.)

Loved the Van Gogh paint job

The downtown had at least four coffee shops, some art galleries, several gyms/pilates/yooga studios, a record store, an alternative clothing shop, a bookstore (which is only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday), pizza places, convenience stores, a crystal store, a Mexican restaurant in what appears to be a classic diner, and other businesses and restaurants.

We meandered along the Rockaway River and found a couple of the spots listed on the map, but somehow completely missed that we should have explored Plane Street.

After exploring parks and looking for historical markers for about 1.5 miles, we visited Catfight Coffee– chosen for its name of course. It offered Goth-inspired decor and music from the dark end of the 1990s. ‘

The final thing we noticed was The Dog Days of Summer project. Various dog sculptures lined the downtown.