I’ve been in New Jersey this last week, visiting my parents and once again exploring the area I grew up in, with my urbanist eyes. (I never get tired of this.) They’re in Hunterdon County, in central Jersey, just about in the middle between Manhattan and Philly. Hunterdon County is pretty rural, but full of classic small towns, which as I say here often, are in some ways two sides of the same coin. More on that another day! It reminds me of the Agricultural Reserve in Montgomery County, Maryland, although that is far closer to major population centers than Hunterdon County is. More on that another day too!

Here are some of the views I saw, driving back to Flemington from the old canal and railroad town of Milford.

I took these pictures only about 15 minutes from the house I grew up in, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen these views before, or maybe even been on these roads. I wasn’t walking out here, but I was driving slowly on little country roads—empty enough that I could stop the car and get out for pictures without pulling over. Not that there was anywhere to pull over.

Last year, in a photo essay where I walked down a big, unpleasant suburban commercial strip in Fairfax, I wrote, “Observing landscapes on foot can feel like putting on high-resolution glasses.” I get that same feeling of heightened perception driving on these backroads, where some of the attention you’d normally have to pay to traffic signals and other cars can go to observing the sparsely populated surroundings.

We were talking about my work, and how neat it is that my workday might consist of just getting in the car and driving somewhere. The journey is often the destination. My mother said that both of my grandfathers, neither of whom I ever met, were explorers. One of them worked for an airline, and he would explore whatever city he happened to be in. The other didn’t leave the New York often, but he would just meander around the city, hopping on a bus, taking a stroll. I had never heard this before, but it’s kind of uncanny that I seem to have inherited that exploring tendency.

And yet, it’s funny. My best friend said to me during my last New Jersey visits, you must really like to travel, right? And I said, eh, I guess, not really. He thought that was a contradiction, but it’s not. I don’t feel any wanderlust for foreign places, like the people who write at Lonely Planet or any number of travel websites. I don’t think much of the Airbnb line that people can now flit around and work from anywhere.

Rather, I find that I enjoy exploring places I’m already familiar with: treating them as if they’re new, seeing a little more detail, learning a little more history. Some maybe, call that “enchantment”; some call it rootedness. I don’t have a name for it, and I don’t argue that it’s an objective virtue. But there’s something really rewarding about seeing something new in a place you know well.

This week’s “What Do You Think You’re Looking At?” entry will be from Flemington, New Jersey, and I’ll be working my trip into a few pieces in the coming days.

Related Reading:

Election Nights and Ice Cream Cones

The Chester Houses

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