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My 18-year-old son dropped me off. Readily. I’m the scab he picks at lately. Maybe because I left the house with only 50 cents, forgetting we’d take the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Or that my debit card was declined at the Wawa for a $16 dollar purchase which included his late-in-the-day lunch. Or my “Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out, honey,” answer when he asked if I knew where I was staying for the night. I did get a hug and a genuine, “Have fun, Mom,” before I was the size of a gnat in his rearview mirror.

Above the sea of porta-potties, and clanging of oversized pots in the parking lot of Saints Peter & Paul Church in Great Meadows, New Jersey, I heard the screech of music coming through a loudspeaker three guys were tweaking near a hippie-looking van with a sign atop — CAUTION WALKING PILGRIMS.

I walked up the hill to meet Brother Simon, who sports a bushy auburn-red beard, shaved head and big, mischievous smile. He was our guide on this trek. I was here to report on the event, as a participant. No Alcohol. No talking after a certain time at night. No doubt that at some point along the way, the most common question might become, “Where does it hurt?”

The Walking Pilgrimage from Great Meadows to Doylestown began 28 years ago with a handful of Polish Immigrants. This year over 3,000 pilgrims made the trek, which is the largest number of people to participate.

You can discover a lot walking 57.5 miles in four days with a crowd that swells to over 3,000 people.

I met a young woman from India, 28, who is three years into her arranged marriage and trying to grow into love without one day looking in the mirror and seeing someone she doesn’t recognize. A woman in her 50s who married her high school sweetheart, had 8 kids, launched a career when her two oldest went off to college and is now trying to figure out a better work-life balance. A nurse who wouldn’t tell me her age, but did tell me she was once engaged to be married, took a second job helping some neighborhood nuns so she could save up enough money to buy a car. She ditched the boy and joined the convent. A 22-year-old man who is taking a break from college because life in our country tends to move at such a rapid-fire pace, it’s sometimes tough to carve out enough time to think about what you really want to do with your life.

The Walking Pilgrimage from Great Meadows to Doylestown is a spiritual and a social event that brings together family, friends and people who reconnect every year just for the walk, which takes places in August — rain, shine, sweltering heat, whatever the weather.

People come mostly from communities connected to Saints Peter & Paul Church and from within distances you can reach on one tank of gas, although some pilgrims ventured from as far away as California, Colorado and Canada. This is the 28th year pilgrims marched to Doylestown, Pennsylvania where the American Czestochowa, or National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa is located. Our Lady of Czestochowa is considered the most sacred icon in Poland and the tradition of making pilgrimages to the small church where she is kept dates back by some accounts to the 14th century.

Many of the pilgrims on this walk have a strong emotional connection to the event. A lot of them emigrated from Poland fairly recently — either before the martial law of the 1980s or they came over in the early 90s, after communism fell, but while expectations of the country’s future were uncertain. The pilgrimage is a way to preserve this tradition of their homeland. Pulling it off logistically each year is a challenge and work behind the scenes is impressive.

How To Pull Off a Pilgrimage

For many of the people I met, the walk was a time for reflection — a “soul cleansing,” Angelica Terepka, 26, told me. She and twin sister Patricia have walked for the last 12 years.

Robert Pluta, 40, runs a restaurant in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Over the year, he keeps a mental list of the top things in life he wants to talk about with Father Mariusz, who he considers a good friend and also spiritual adviser. The walk for him is a metaphor for life.

Not everyone makes it. Ron Rinehart walks because he’s grateful for a truly life-changing experience he had 27 years ago when he was living under a bridge in Cleveland, Ohio. This year he may have been a bit too ambitious. Ron, 67, was nursing a stress fracture in one of his heels and the loss of a toenail after finishing The Camino about a month ago. It’s a pilgrimage the stretches nearly 500 miles from France across Spain. I didn’t see Ron after Day 1.

Over the four days, which began Thursday, Aug. 6, we walked our way through woods, parks, and neighborhoods in Warren and Hunterdon Counties, N.J. and then crossed into Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The first two days are the toughest because you’re covering the most distance — 17.5 and 19.5 miles. Stops along the way are built in for eating, bathroom and water breaks. You can also pop over to the Blister Sisters who will dress your wounds and try to treat whatever hurts.

Along the way each day, pilgrims sang, led by Christian musician Luke Spehar who walked with his wife Elizabeth. She's 6 months pregnant with their first child. We listened to recorded talks by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen who from the 1930s through the 50s had a popular Christian radio show and then television hour. We sang what’s called The Chaplet of Divine Mercy rosary each day at 3 p.m., which is a sacred time one of the walkers told me, because it’s when Jesus was crucified.

With a new burst of energy found during longer stops for lunch or extended breaks after walking the most physically challenging parts of the route, there were fun moments of impromptu dancing and singing. Each night included a church service — Mass and on the last night, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, which was followed by a little late-night dancing. The upbeat Christian music ended, replaced by a chorus of night insect noises and a few snoring hikers.

I did encounter a few surprises covering 57.5 miles in four days — I met only one person in our group who plans to see Pope Francis when he comes to the U.S. Most of the walkers I talked to about the pope seemed to feel with all the restrictions, street closings, ticketing, etc., it wasn’t’ worth the trouble.

“I’d rather pay to go to the Vatican,” one walker told me. “At least there I can get close enough to see him.” Conversations I heard and overheard on the hike about Pope Francis and other topics, left me thinking even though most of the people in our English-speaking group were walking primarily because religion is a big part of their lives, we were all connected by common themes tied to building better relationships, growing religiously or spiritually, and a desire to help others.

The highlight for me, personally, was getting to know some of the men in gray tunics. My fascination with The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal grew to a feeling of awe by the time the walk ended. They are good, good, benevolent, happy people. From what I could tell, the Friars organized the walking part of the event, led by Brother Simon, who I think would agree they’re so good at living in the moment, if you’re a control freak or have a need to know in great detail what’s next on the agenda or around the corner you may think they’re a little haphazard or loose on the planning. They are, but it all works out. The Friars thread through the line of pilgrims, sharing jokes and stories in lighter moments and hearing confession at all times of the day and late into the night. I heard story after story after story about how the Friars had helped either the person I was talking with or someone very close to them. They are a force, but not in a forceful way. I don’t know how else to explain it, but for me it was worth every mile just to have that experience.

On Day 4, I awoke to the sound of a mother hushingly scolding her child, in Polish. It took me a moment to remember where I was, but once again sleep had eased the stiffness in my legs, the aches in my lower back and shoulder. The chatter of the morning at the Haring Brothers Farm in Doylestown got louder as pilgrims emerged to brush their teeth and freshen up. Sunday morning’s routine was less hectic. Breaking camp for the last time, walkers — even those blistered and bruised — seem to embrace the day with a sense of accomplishment and also anticipation of the final Mass. Some pilgrims packed up their hiking gear and put on their church clothes for the last 5 miles.

The pilgrimage ended with a challenging walk uphill leading right into the grounds of Our Lady of Czestochowa shrine in Doylestown, a welcome splash of Holy Water and celebratory Mass.

When Mass was over, I watched old friends and new friends say their goodbyes as I collected my backpack, work gear and camping gear. I heard the shuffle of sandals as I started to head down the stairs to catch my ride home at the front entrance of the shrine. I turned around to see Brother Simon coming toward me, arms outstretched with that big, mischievous smile. “Did you get everything you needed?”

Yes, Brother Simon, I did. Thank you.

Robert Sciarrino/The Star-Ledger

WARREN COUNTY — A postcard-like vista off Hope Road in Warren County shows an expansive valley lake surrounded by mountains. The long humpback of Allamuchy is off to the north and east, the three peaks of Jenny Jump hover just west. The valley is mostly known as Great Meadows, but is also called the Pequest River valley. The soil there is known as black muck; always moist, high in nutrients and good for growing.

It’s best farmland in New Jersey," says Dennis Pryslak, who owns or farms almost 2,000 acres in the valley.

The lake has no name, because there is no lake. It is flood water, six to eight feet high in some places, that has covered all that black soil and wiped out the harvest crop for Pryslak and his neighbors at Empire Farms and Liberty Sod Farms. The water came cascading down from Jenny Jump and rising from the Pequest flood plain and at one point covered about 1,800 acres of the valley.

This most recent flood began last week, when storms over this part of West Jersey added another six inches of rain on land that has tried to absorb almost three feet of rain since August 1. New Jersey’s gentle trout streams, like the Musconetcong, the Pequest and the South Branch swept away a half dozen cars in Flanders. Roads were closed from Hackettstown to Califon.

Houses with water up to windows, trees toppled from roots up, and people paddling down Main Street, are the public images of floods. In the hinterlands, an equally deep but quieter misery takes places. The land is ravaged. Soil is eroded, falling branches smash smaller trees, loose rock pummels ground plants and pools of water drown them, and farm fields are reduced to mud, or submerged. The food on those fields can’t be saved.

"We’re seeing corn flattened, and apple drop," said Lindsay Caragher, the West Jersey counties director for the United States Department of Agriculture.

"We get a variety of molds and blights and rot," she said. "Every crop has a specific problem or disease."

There is no FEMA for farmers, or small business loans that in-town businesses get. The USDA handles everything from crop insurance to emergency loans, with interest rates at 3.75 percent. But few handouts. While people in Manville, Bound Brook, Wayne and Little Falls may be getting checks already for damaged households, the process of evaluating farm damage takes longer.

"They (the USDA) say they’re still getting their program in place," said Pryslak.

The flooding couldn’t have come at a worse time for farmers. Harvest time.

Tony DeMarcky, who operates a local dragstrip called Island Raceway in Great Meadows, lost all 18 acres of sod product, and a months of weekends at the track, which is under two feet of water.

Robert Sciarrino/The Star-Ledger

Pryslak a 44 year-old second generation farmer, grows 40 varieties of vegetables and herbs. He got his cilantro out before September, but most everything else was ruined.

"I’d say we saved 5 percent of our crop," he said in the trucking depot of his operation. The loading docks were empty and the stainless steel trailers with the word PRYSLAK emblazoned in bright yellow were parked.

"Right now, we’d been shipping stuff like crazy. I’d have 10 trucks out, delivering to customers as far away as Florida," he said. "Instead, I got one on the road."

At this time of year, he’d have 40 workers in the fields and in warehouse, picking and processing tons of cabbage, corn, lettuce and other leafy vegetables, peppers and squash.

"Now, I have 14," he said. "That’s a lot of people without work."

His tractors are idle, some stranded on islands of high ground, except for two that powered flood pumps, that suck the water from one flooded plain and gush it out to another.

"We’re really just pushing it around because it’s still coming in," he said. He was trying to save a sod pasture on slightly higher ground, by drying out the adjoining pasture. "You do what you can, but pretty much, you’re helpless. That’s how you feel in the whole thing. Helpless. You’re out here alone."

The loss isn’t just in product. It’s in whole investment. The seed and fertilizer to grow produce, and the water and labor costs to nurture it have all been washed away.

"There’s no return on what you laid out," he said. "It’s pretty much a wasted year."

Related coverage:

• Rain causes flooding, traffic problems in northwestern N.J.

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Students may be shuffled around next year in two Warren County school districts that are each now deciding the fates of their elementary schools.

Boards of education in Belvidere and Great Meadows were both scheduled to decide last week if they would close schools, but both delayed votes.

"Nobody wants to lose a school," Great Meadows Superintendent David Mango said Wednesday. "But the reality is ... how do you maintain what you have?"

Belvidere: Third Street Elementary

A school board vote to close the Third Street Elementary School had been scheduled for Wednesday evening but was postponed because school board members wanted more information, Superintendent Chris Carrubba said.

The school had 104 students enrolled in the 2017-18 school year, taught by eight certified teachers, according to data from the New Jersey Department of Education.

The district’s other elementary school had 149 students, and there were 458 attending Belvidere High School that year.

Carrubba said a fact sheet on the proposal would soon be posted to the district’s website.

Great Meadows: Liberty Elementary

Of the three schools in the Great Meadows Regional School District, Liberty Elementary School is the odd one out.

The school is in Liberty Township, separate from Central Elementary and the Great Meadows Middle School that share a campus three mile away in Independence Township.

The district has contemplated streamlining its facilities since at least 2017, when declining enrollment and tax revenue led to studies of its operations, according to Mango, the superintendent the district shares with neighboring Hackettstown. It became more urgent when the state recently proposed aid cuts, Mango said in a December newsletter.

The choice became between the two elementary schools, and officials focused on the isolated one.

The school board had planned a vote this week, but postponed it until March 19 to see if Gov. Phil Murphy announces any changes to New Jersey's school funding plan.

Liberty had 207 students and 24 certified teachers in the 2017-18 school year.

If the district goes through with closing the school, Central Elementary will become a pre-K-to-3 school and the middle school will host grades 4 to 8. Great Meadows students attend Hackettstown Regional High School.

Mango said it was too soon to say what will happen with staff and administration but that the district wants “to limit the impact.”

Reflecting much of the North Jersey territory it crosses, the Passaic River flows out of the pristine, preserved wilderness of the Great Swamp in suburban Chatham Township, then winds north, south, east and west on its way over the Great Falls in Paterson before spilling into a Superfund site in Newark Bay.

Navigating all 80 miles is not for amateurs. Mary Bruno kayaked the river end to end over four days in 2008 in her late 50s. She wrote about her experience in a book.

Ten years later, the former North Arlington resident did it again at the invitation of Chatham filmmaker Scott Morris.

The result, three years in the making, is a new full-length documentary, "American River," scheduled to premiere before two sellout audiences next week at the Montclair Film Festival.

"By the end of the film, you get this great story arc from what starts with a peaceful Great Swamp," Morris said, and "ends with the worst polluted river in America, an EPA site."

Born in 1952, Bruno grew up in North Arlington along the polluted Lower Valley region of the river, just north of its end in the Newark Bay. She returned to the river in 2008 as an experienced kayaker, navigating the entire span with her river guide and friend, Carl Alderson.

Bruno captured the experience in her 2012 book, "An American River: From Paradise to Superfund, Afloat on New Jersey's Passaic."

"Looking back as an adult, there was this river that was a scary presence in my life, but nobody really talked about it, or questioned why that was the case," Bruno said. "Nobody seemed to be interested in doing anything about it."

Significant cleanup efforts have been made since her first trip and the book that caught Morris' attention while conducting research for another documentary, "Saving the Great Swamp: Battle to Defeat The Jetport," currently distributed by American Public Television.

Morris was captivated by Bruno's book, which contained "personal stories as well as an adventure, so I thought it had all the elements of a really engaging documentary," he said.

After meeting to discuss film rights to her book, Bruno said she came to trust Morris with her "baby," but was surprised when he asked her to paddle the river again, this time with him and a 15-member film crew following her every step of the way,

"I assumed I would be a consultant, do some introductions here and there," Bruno said. "It never occurred to me I would be in the film."

She agreed when her "paddling buddy" Alderson agreed to do it with her.

"I called Carl and he was like 'Yeah! Let's do it!' " she recalled. "Then it became a whole different project and I was all-in."

Mounting GoPro cameras on the kayaks and wiring them for sound, Morris was delighted with the personalities, humor and chemistry he picked up from the Bruno-Alderson team.

The second trip was also completed in four days over a two-week span.

"There are no outfitters on the Passaic River, but Carl knows every inch of it," Morris said. "Where to put in, take out and be careful. But it wasn't until we actually got out on the river that they blossomed. Their personalities were so much fun. There was a lot of humor. They became the centerpiece of the story in more ways than one."

A Chatham resident, Morris said that even on his more-idyllic end of the river, area residents took it for granted.

"I lived just a few blocks from the river and hardly gave it a second thought," Morris said. "Nobody talked about it. Nobody cared about it."

Bruno said the goal of the book and the film is to "reintroduce the river to people and make people care about it," she said.

The river's knot-twist route is complicated by fallen trees, waterfalls and other impediments that often require kayakers to walk, climb or move a tree branch. And this time, Bruno and Alderson had to coordinate their action with the documentary team.

"We had 10 cameras, GoPros on the boats, more cameras traveling alongside in a camera boat," Morris said. "We had drones. We had land-based cameras that leap-frogged ahead. It was an incredibly ambitious undertaking and quite an enjoyable change for me."

"It's amazing how all the pieces came together," Bruno said.

Beyond the action and adventure on the river, the cast and crew stopped to interview people along the way. A necessary interruption of the journey at the Great Falls in Paterson included a visit to the landmark hot dog institution Libby's Lunch, where they chatted with the manager and local patrons. It closed in 2020.

All of the dozens of riverside residents, government officials and river advocates appearing in the film were required to sign appearance releases, which were collected along the way. Bruno and Alderson were later interviewed to provide a narrator framework for the 86-minute documentary.

"I think the meta-message for me was my experience of the Passaic, which was of the much-degraded lower 17 portion of the river, it was not the only perspective on the river," Bruno said. "The river has many phases, and depending on where you lie on it, your experience with it and relationship to it can be very different, on that spectrum from very positive to very negative."

Morris also was able to add a last-minute update to include news of a recent expansion of a $1.74 billion EPA project to clean up the nation's most expensive Superfund and remove cancer-causing pollution from the Passaic River.

That program will now include 9 more miles in Bergen, Passaic and Essex counties. But the project to clean all 17 miles of the lower Passaic is still several years away from launching, officials said.

"One of the things I hope the film engenders is the sense of this river as a crucial part of the environment, of the ecosystem, social and natural, that we live in," Bruno said. "We should care about it, and take care of it."

William Westhoven is a local reporter for DailyRecord.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Photos by Natalia Jimenez/The Star-Ledger

QUEENS, N.Y. -- All 16 members of a church-sponsored mercy mission who were just miles outside Port-au-Prince when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake rocked the Haitian capital, leveling buildings and leaving thousands dead, landed safely at John F. Kennedy International Airport early this morning.

The Warren County church members, who left Saturday to bring medical supplies to a children's hospital in the capital city, were greeted by a throng of ecstatic friends and relatives, who drove 75 miles from northwestern New Jersey to JFK for the tearful reunion.

"I’m just excited because we hadn’t heard from them at all for about 24 hours," said Jori Procaccini, who was crying as she greeted her father, Frank, a 55-year-old member of the congregation.

This morning's dramatic return home marked the end of a long week for the fearful relatives of some New Jersey residents who were overseas when the violent earthquake struck Tuesday, but the nerve-wracking wait will continue for several N.J. families whose loved ones are unaccounted for.

Shortly after midnight at JFK Airport, "Welcome Home" balloons danced in the air near the Terminal 8 ceilings as family and friends of the Trinity United Methodist Church group waited for the plane to arrive. Dozens of people huddled together and held a 10-foot-long banner reading "Welcome Back Haiti Team, We Love You."

Dorothy Sommer was thrilled to see her daughter, Kate Stiner, 52, who was part of the church mission.

"I feel so excited and happy and delighted," Sommer said. "There were moments where we really did not know anything. This was an anxiety-producing time."

Stiner’s whole family was in attendance — husband Bob, 57, daughter Amy, 16, and another daughter, Becca, 8. Becca was holding a poster of her mother with the words "Welcome Home Kate" and "We Love You!" written around a picture of her mother.

After the earthquake struck in Haiti, the Rev. Frank Fowler, senior pastor of the Hackettstown church, was able to call the worried loved ones to report the group was safe. Later that day, the group was airlifted to the Bahamas by an Icelandic plane that had delivered supplies to Port-au-Prince.