THE BUNGALOW

My late father Wayne Heinze (1949-2022), known to many by his football jersey #33, is my hero and greatest literary inspiration. A lifelong angler, decorated athlete, multi-sport coach, founder of the Kearny Athletic Club, volunteer, conservationist, and activist, he was also a prolific writer. For over 50 years, he kept meticulously detailed naturalist's logs of camping, hiking, and fishing adventures across the United States, and culled from these weathered and muddy notebooks the source materials for hundreds of short stories. In his later years, sometimes while stuck in a Philadelphia hospital bed with a pillow propped on his knee, watching flurries fall over the ivycovered brick of the Penn Quadrangle, his dogeared copy of The Journals of Lewis and Clark open facedown over one medical device or another, he began to organize and edit these multitudes as part of a cohesive collection of memoirs.

I am in the process of completing the edits to his stories, which read in the style of nature writers like Jack London, Zane Gray, Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, and Annie Dillard. Records of legend and lore from family history, countless hours seeking out hidden ponds and streams, wanders through little known, unnamed woods hidden in the heart of suburbia, emanate a special, hard-won wisdom. Below are a handful of selections of this soon to be published work, The Bungalow.

Learn more about Wayne Heinze

Force of Nature (as published in 'Bewildering Stories')

19th May 2023

An Angler and a Force of Nature

I am a force of nature, or so I consider myself. And an optimistic one, too. I have in fact, never met or heard of anyone as optimistic as I.

I think it is partially a function of being a force of nature, partially a separate gift, and DNA with an overabundance of the stuff. And there you have me. The glass is not only half full, but the stuff it contains tastes pretty good.

An optimistic force of nature. No one who has ever come to know me would question the o

The tides of our life wait for no one

"Now young faces grow sad and old and hearts of fire grow cold
We swore blood brothers against the wind
I'm ready to grow young again"

-Bruce Springsteen, No Retreat, No Surrender

We begin life at low tide, born out of nothingness into the murky waters that are our early years. Born at the ebb, we grow as the tide rises, lifting our lives to unknown levels, and slowly washing us in the sea water that is the medium of our construction. Sometimes the tide carries us fully to the flood, other times we are drowned along the way or dashed upon hostile shores. But attaining the full tide cannot be a goal in itself, for following each incoming flow, there is an outgoing flow. Sometimes a gentle ebbing over time, sometimes a breakneck tidal rush. In either case, the best scenario is often merely that we end up where we started: at the bottom of the tide. And once reached, we sink back into the mud and ooze, because we are not meant to ride the tide back up again. Not this tide, anyway.

We are all dying, that is understood. We start dying the moment we are born, and some just finish sooner than others due to the nature of life. We all have an expiration date, unknown to us but inevitable. We are sort of like a jar of pickles on the grocery shelf. A jar whose label has been removed. You don't know the expiration date, but you know there is one. The jar may look fine enough from the outside, but may be rotting, cancerous, and about to give out on the inside. We are often in a similar jar. We proceed on faith and hope alone.

There is always an enemy at the gate. It pursues us relentlessly through our allotted time, and is always waiting just around the bend. Our fellow creatures can have strong survival instincts, but have no real concept of their own mortality. We do, which makes it at once desirable to live for the day, but impossible as well. We know, as does the antelope, to avoid and fear the lion. But the lion must be fed, both the lion of the savanna and the lion of our mortality. So both lions steadfastly pursue their prey, and eventually both lions prevail. And the antelope who avoids the lion its entire life merely dies in another manner, just as we may find a way to fend off one individual lion of death, only to be devoured by another.

A big difference in those two scenarios, however, is that unlike the antelope, we know the lion, in some form, is coming. We see it as a symbol, while the antelope sees it as a predator that might be avoided. Its brain need not concoct philosophies to rationalize its role as prey. It doesn't know it is prey. We on the other hand have developed sufficient cranial capacity and filled it with sufficient brain matter to know the hunt never ends, and sooner or later we die. All of us, eventually, even Methuselah. So we construct lives, concepts of right or wrong, and myriad philosophies to explore and attempt to explain who, what, and where we are. Religion or introspection, perceptions of gaining or losing sight. No matter what, in the long haul, we find a way to cope with the Enemy at the Gate and live our lives as close to that of the antelope as possible. And perhaps the greatest joy in life is simply that there is joy enough in life. Joy enough to allow us to bear all the trials and tribulations and the inevitable end that is the turn of the tide. We come to dwell in it, but not on it.

As the tide begins to recede, perhaps we have grown and become washed in the waves of our hours, days and years. For better or worse, here we are, more of those waves behind us than in front of us. How to keep the smell of the mud flats at low tide from filling our nostrils and permeating our aging selves before the moment to settle in the sands of time?

Perhaps it is simply what we brought along with us on our journey down tide. Specifically, what we grasped at and clung onto to keep us afloat when we entered the estuary of life. How much of this, how much of the child still remains, as the waters we ride hiss by the reeds and sod banks of our later years. You may not run with the legs, or grasp with the arms of your youth, but you can still see through the eyes of that person. Maybe the sweet water is harder to find, but it is thus the more satisfying.

It is not merely a matter of not acting your age, because often there is dignity in our aging, and it's associated behaviors. It is more a matter of realization of the fact that although you have "seen it all," you haven't. If you look through your child eye, you can still behold the marvels of the river of life with those pre-pubescent lenses. And though the enemy is likely to breach the next flood gate, you can smile at the knowledge that your existence has been both a life and a levee, holding back, holding off the enemy, navigating the troubled waters and avoiding the maelstrom.

And when the final tidal wave of death rushes towards our battered shore, if we are fortunate enough, perhaps it appears less like the spectre of Davy Jones, rising from the murky depths of despair to sink us into the icy darkness of the ocean of eternity. Perhaps the Grim Reaper is really more like Santiago from The Old Man and the Sea, waiting to row us to the other shore and regale us with tales of marlins, sharks, and the Great DiMaggio. And the truth of the matter is, we all come to know this in time, because like time, the tides of our life wait for no one. But the final tide awaits us all.

Wissahickon whimsy

Where do the leaves go? This one thought always occurs to me as I hike down into the gorge along the trail from Kitchens Lane. No exception this morning, as I crunched through the skim ice from the weekend's melting and re-freezing of a few inches of snow. Where do the leaves go? Oh, I know that organisms in the soil on the forest floor, from worms to microbes do their thing after a time, but nobody is standing around watching that happen. In fact, nobody is standing around watching leaves on the ground anywhere, except maybe the front lawn, just before you get the blower out and sometime after the notice to do so from the town was received. So, I think there are likely other forces at work here.

I am almost to the bridge over the creek by the time I conclude that A) there must be a more whimsical explanation to the legend of the leaves, and B) my decision to don hip boots in the 20 degree January chill could be described by several words other than whimsical. But I slide my way over the bridge, using a large Red Maple to halt my forward progress on the side of the creek I had come to fish. As I braced against the ancient trunk, I looked down at the leaves radiating out from the base around the tree. They haven't taken these ones yet. What? Who hasn't taken them? Whimsy welled up mightily, but I was after all here to fish, so down along the trail to the stone beach at Devil's pool I slid.

Now from ten feet away from the bank, I could cast across the creek, bouncing my jig off the massive outcroppings of Wissahickon schist. But hip boots on, I entered the stream, stirring up puffs of silt that would fleck my boots with silvery slivers of local geology. In fact, the rock is so prevalent, and sheds its flakes like my tabby sheds hair, that bits of it are similarly found downstream in the Schuylkill River as far as the Art Museum. Within the few minutes that it takes for my feet to begin to turn too stone as well in the frigid creek, two things happen. First, and most welcome, a fifteen inch rainbow trout grabs my Trout Magnet, aptly named in this case, and cartwheels a few times before I draw it into the shallows at my frozen feet. He rests on my downstream side, quietly finning over the cobbles of schist in the streambed. Since I am standing knee deep in the water, I simply reach down and twist the barbless jig out of the corner of his mouth, and he heads back to the other side of the pool. I sheepishly admit to myself what a good idea it was to be wearing my hip boots, so as to facilitate the smooth release of my trout.

Ah yes, the second thing. While the above scenario played out, an idea began to form concerning the leaves. They were taken, for purposes unknown, by some thing. It seemed most certain. As the afternoon walk in the woods/water continued (fishless from this point on), the thing started to take shape, and acquire a population. The graphic display of denuded trees, their leafy vestments long since fall foliage and fallen, provided little hiding space for any gigantic mega leaf gobbler, so rule that out. But, along with scattered evergreen shrubs, the woody, schisty landscape could conceal a legion of smaller Lords of the Leaves. Pixieish, Hobbit-like sprites that take advantage of eyes that eschew only the verdant greens of spring and the brilliant blaze of fall, appreciating only the arboreal leaves. Once fallen out of the branches and out of our sight, the Gnomes of the Gorge do their thing.

A tap on my lure as it begins its cross-current swing elicits a reaction from me, too slow, too ice impeded, to be awarded with a hook-up. More than satisfied with the days single trout and the stark beauty of the winter woods, I reel in and wade across the creek to the trail rather than slide across the bridge again. A leaf, boxelder I think, floats past me downstream. By the time I am half way out of the gorge, my feet have begun to thaw, and I notice that I am tired, but tired in that good way an afternoon outdoors in winter makes you. And I begin to think about the leaves again. Not the mystery of where they go, I've solved that one to my satisfaction. Now I'm beginning to wonder what use the Lords of the Leaves might make of their bounty from the forest floor. Well, that will have to wait until another day afield, my whimsy has been superseded by hunger, and a cheesesteak from Larry's sounds about right. This is after all, Philadelphia.

January 2013

Through the eye of the sea

The towering neon lit monoliths materialized out of the fog and mist before first light as I drove along the causeways through the marshland connecting the mainland with the barrier beaches. Later this day, other sojourners would see egrets, herons and killdeers wading, and watermen crabbing in the tidal creeks along the bridges here. But in the dim light of false dawn, obscured now by the swirling mist on this portion of the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, those iconic Jersey shore sights were but spectres. Glowing spheres of lightning still materialized sporadically in the eastern sky, untold miles out over the Atlantic. Lacking access to oracles or seers along the Atlantic City Expressway at five in the morning, I had turned to the meteorologists and an old salt’s fishing report on the radio. Neither NOAA nor Captain Clam’s barometer on the side of his cedarshingled tackle shack offered a definitive enough forecast for my purposes. So I proceeded, as we all must do at some point in our lives, on faith and hope alone. In this instance, faith in my ability to eventually scramble out of the littoral zone across the beach and over the dunes before the storm was upon me. And of course, the sincere hope that it wouldn’t come to that.

Barrier islands are best understood as permanent dry sand bars, running parallel to the coast, offering a buffer to the mainland from the hydrodynamics of the sea. They change in length and width at the whim of the sea over time, and cuts and inlets appear and disappear, as well as a few of the smaller islands themselves. Most famous along my stretch of the Jersey shore is (was) Tucker’s Island in Little Egg Harbor Inlet. Here a small community of homes, subsistence gardens, and even a lighthouse once flourished. Time and tides eventually eroded the isle until by my first encounters with it in the early 1950’s it was merely a large sand bar, submerged at high tide. We would drift for fluke through what once were kitchens and bedrooms, and dig clams in the path of the long gone lighthouse’s beacon. Neither the Corp of Engineers or the oceanographers can long halt the natural migrations of sand, land and life along the eastern seaboard, especially exacerbated today as it is by global warming.

Arriving where I did in on the barrier island, which contains the communities of Atlantic City, Ventnor, Margate and Longport, there were nearly fifteen miles of beachfront and an ocean inlet to the north and south. It is always tempting to stop right there in Atlantic City to fish, and I often succumb to the lure of fishing here. Partly because I love fishing the rocks along the Absecon Inlet, an area I call the “Monopoly Board”. Many of the streets you drive along to the inlet, are the streets named on the board of a Monopoly Game. If you’ve ever taken a ride on the “Reading Railroad”, or passed “Go” and collected $200.00 dollars, or cashed in your houses for a hotel, you might appreciate the pleasant weirdness of fishing here. But also partly because one night nearly forty years ago in a churning ‘nor’easter, Al McReynolds caught the world’s record striped bass. It was caught just a few blocks from his home, from the ocean jetty at the end of Vermont Avenue, another one of the Monopoly roads. Lore and history enough to cause an angler to dally, but not on this morning.

I had decided to head north, weaving between the seemingly Blade Runner inspired architecture of yet more casinos, traveling on a maze of concrete ribbons along the overpasses and underpasses to a different island. Crossing over the Absecon Inlet Bridge onto Brigantine Island, with it’s additional six miles of sandy ocean beach, it is quite a different world. Brigantine is positively quaint in comparison to the “Las Vegas of the East”, that is Atlantic City (Although AC and it’s glitz far predates Vegas). Additionally about a third of the island is comprised of a completely undeveloped portion of the aforementioned Forsythe National Wildlife Management Area. I drove along the deserted beach road to the point I had chosen to fish, about three quarter ways up beach. A few zombie-like gulls drank from the puddled rainwater, occasionally wheeling aloft and heading back over the dunes as I slowly motored by.

I was ahead of the tide stage that I wanted to fish, affording me the pleasure of unhurried observation as the beach began to reveal itself this day. There is always life on the beach, and in the ocean twenty four hours a day, but often it is much easier to see in the light of day. And in the muted glow on a misty morning such as this, life is never more beautiful, from the dune grasses to the foamy wrack ln the littoral zone, to the flash of silver scales of predator and prey in the breaking waves.

After assembling my tackle and pulling on my chest waders, I ambled along the narrow sandy path over the dunes, the sound of the crashing surf grew stronger now, less than two hours before full flood. By the time I arrived in the wash to survey the cuts and sloughs that the breaking waves revealed, the boom of the waves crashing could be felt like the pounding of a bass drum at a Fourth of July parade. A few seabirds were still bobbing on the water, but many more hovered above occasionally diving, searching for breakfast, as were the pod of bottlenose dolphin that passed perhaps a quarter of a mile off the beach, heading south. I remembered the pictures of the humpback whale that had been feeding on bunker (menhaden) two days previous, along the same vector as the dolphins this morning. The sea was returning to me as surely as I was to it. All it took this particular morning to be part of this collision of world’s was to be there, rod in hand. I fumbled a bit with excitement as I tipped my jig with an artificial crab, “sweetening it” as the saying goes. I waded thigh deep into the first trough and cast seaward beyond the first line of breakers.

On that initial cast, the swell nearly rose up to the tops of my waders, and I stayed dry by the grace of the surf belt tightly cinched around my waterproof over jacket. The first cast also provided my first fish, as after a turn or two of the reel handle a foot long northern kingfish (Menticirrhus saxatilis) took hold of my offering, and I quickly countered it’s spirited resistance and led it through the suds to be gently released. Another dozen of similar size and several Norfolk spot (Leiostomus xanthurus) and a small but beautifully hued weakfish (Cynoscion regalis) came to hand before the tide crested. The fishing slowed and the surf grew, both beating me gently into submission. I reeled in one last time, exited the water and settled down into the sand, roughly two hours from when I entered it, a good morning by any measure.

Drying off my goggles with my omnipresent bandana, I took a swig of water and reflected on my morning. The possible storms that had concerned me earlier had stayed offshore and moved further to sea. Good luck for me and my kind along the surfline, less so for mariners on commercial boats or sport fishermen out on the offshore grounds. They would make good use of their slickers, oilskins and neoprene today. The beach was sparsely populated by other anglers, most probably choosing to concede the early tide to the weather, and fish later. There was only one rod in sight before the beach hooked to the north, and a half dozen or so strung along the beach to the south against the backdrop of the cityscape behind the world’s most famous boardwalk. The seabirds had also made themselves scarce, replaced by a few flocks of scurrying sanderlings and pipers, and their human counterparts, the beachcombers. I don’t know how long I sat, undisturbed watching the waves crash. Each set of breakers looking and sounding that special way they do when this tidal stage and hour coincide. And most particularly after a successful foray amidst them, like the one I’d just enjoyed. Any more right now would somehow be less. A lone brown pelican slowly, prehistorically, appeared, passing over the breakers heading elsewhere. I rose from the sand, gathered my gear, and followed suit, in no particular hurry.