Autumn Dawn Majestic Tree, Brenda Jones

D&R Canal Approaching Storm, Martha Weintraub

Sourlands Mossy Monarch, Brenda Jones

As I type the title of my Christmas musings on our lost trees, three hefty deer in their no-nonsense winter coats, process like wise men out of these woods.  Well, what’s left of woods…

My NJ WILD readers know I am a literal tree-hugger.  I talk to them, too.  I work for them constantly, at D&R Greenway Land Trust, preserving scarce open land in almost-built-out New Jersey.

It is a particular grief to leave the house each day, no matter where I’m headed.  My journey of bereavement begins with stumps and (inexcusably still tumbled) segments of five monarchical trees on this property.  Going to Morven to decorate D&R Greenway’s Holiday tree, my car was dwarfed by towering roots of a toppled conifer, which blessedly fell away from the home of the signer of the Declaration.   In my seven miles to work, I daily drive alongside vistas of wisted and shattered and snapped and flattened formerly healthy trees.  Trees tossed in piles like pick-up sticks.  Trees without tops.  Roots higher than McMansions.  Slaughtered trees.

People keep using the phrase “war zone” to describe the effects of Sandy and the Snowstorm.  But the fallen soldiers are trees.  In Massachusetts, from whence I could not return during Sandy, I read of “trees as weapons.”

What is oddest about the downed giants everywhere is that they seem venerable healthy specimens. They are not spindly saplings.  It’s as though the heart has gone out of the old trees on all sides, that they have ‘given up the ghost.’

Up til now, trees were beauty to me.  I go to to trees to be uplifted, inspired and consoled.

The Solace of Trees, Titusville   Brenda Jones

Trees have spirits, some so palpable that I can tell male from female energy, and have named some.  For example, the beech at D&R Greenway I’ve christened Sylvia.  After all, Sylvia Beach (pun intended) went to Paris and Shakespeare and Company from Princeton.

I cannot do justice to the trees I so mourn.  To the corpses I see all over everywhere, on hill and especially The Ridge and in dales and along streams, and even fifty-five treasures on the ground at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve.  Trees have closed some trails there, perhaps forever.  Trees have altered waterways there, so that Gentian may not open again.

Of course, we are spewing the CO2.  We are altering climate, winds, glaciers, water temperatures, currents, seasons, migrations, coastlines.  We are felling these trees.

Felled trees, by the way, no longer act as ‘carbon sinks’ - what ghastly engineer dreamed up that term?

Let others speak for me:

Robert Louis Stevenson, my first favorite poet:  “It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”

Carnegie Lake Winter Trees, Brenda Jones

Susan Fenimore Cooper: “Of the infinite variety of fruits which spring from the bosom of the earth, the trees of the wood are the greatest in dignity.”

Minnie Aumonier: “There is always Music among the trees, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it.”

Marcel Proust (that city person!): “We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from trees — that vigorous and pacific tribe which, without stint, produces strengthening essences for us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent and intimate hours.”

Marcel was right for a long time, until the increasing occurrence and severity of major storms due to catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.

Yes, we had nothing to fear from trees– yet in our very own town, one of its most special citizens, Bill Sword, Jr., lost his life in the storm to a tree.  A man of generosity, integrity, honor and great spirituality is no longer among us.

Is fate’s timing of Bill’s death meant to warn us that something far beyond trees is imperiled?

Could the trees, themselves, be sacrificing themselves to send us this urgent message?

I often think this about whales and dolphins, stranding along our coasts.

Where Sandy swirled is the signature not only of the earth changes we are engendering pell-mell.

It is also the signature of Inevitable sea-level rise.  Where Sandy clawed, the sea will claim.

Forget normal.

There isn’t going to be normal any more.

Tree carcasses are not normal.

How interesting that this ghastly landscape has been created the cusp of the season in which we decorate and even sing to trees…..                          O Tannenbaum….

Cormorants Swim Where Brenda Jones and I Birded By Car…

NJ WILD readers know, if they know anything about me, how precious is the birding refuge, ‘The Brig’, A.K.A. Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge to me, as a birder, and far more profoundly, as a spiritual being.

It’s where I restore myself when “the world is too much with me”, more and more frequently these days.  Far more important than I, however, ‘The Brig’ is a key stopover on the Atlantic Flyway, rich in rarities at all times.  Perhaps never more precious than in winter, when winged creatures elsewhere can be scarce.

Duck Flight Before Storm, Brenda Jones

Everyone also knows that un-hurricaned Sandy destroyed great swathes of our beloved New Jersey’s three coastlines, especially The Shore, especially at and in and near Atlantic City.

One of the eeriest factors of being at ‘The Brig’ is that you see all those gambling towers through the migrant flocks.  My happiest times at ‘The Brig’ are when I can’t see Atlantic City, because of fog or whatever.

I have been down at the Brig in fire, fog and ice. I can never believe that anyone would rather be in those towering prisons of glass, those cacophonous, frenzied places, rather than in the seamless peace of the marshy reaches of The Brigantine.

Great Egret, Great Peace of Brigantine Wildlife Refuge, Brenda Jones

I can’t drive it’s dike road any more, because it has been severed by uncategorized-storm-Sandy.

Cormorants swim where I used to bird by car.

All those carefully managed impoundments with their specific salinities, to nourish certain aquatic plants and shelter and feed certain waterfowl, are fouled.  The Bay, –Absecon Bay, whatever its salinity in the storm and ever since–, has surged in.  The Brig, as we know it, is no more.

Grebe Swallowing Frog, Brigantine Wildlife Refuge December Drama — Anne Zeman

I’m going down there for Christmas, ‘come hell or high water’.  Certain walking trails are open, and birds don’t watch the Weather Channel.  I’ll check out Leed’s Point, where the Jersey Devil was purportedly born and which thrives as a tiny old-world fishing village, at least until Sandy.  Herons frequently soar in and land on Leed’s Point pilings.  I’ll drive the bumpy sand road to and from Scott’s Landing, always remembering encountering hunters with their ‘bag’ of bloodied snow geese there, late one autumn.  Odd, I’ve never read a recipe for snow goose.  How neatly they were lined up along the sand…  below the targets, silhouettes that teach hunters the differences among birds on the wing at various distances.

Snow Geese In Flight, Brenda Jones

How Snow Geese Look when they hear shots….  cfe

In the meantime, this is some of ‘The Brig’s’ reality.  God KNOWS what’s happened at my other major havens - Island Beach, south of ruined Bay Head, Mantoloking, Seaside and so forth, and Sandy Hook, up by the Highlands and too many rivers….

Serenity and Tumult, Bay Head, Carolyn Foote Edelmann

NJ WILD BEAUTY, ISLAND BEACH    Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Pristine Barnegat Bay, which rose to meet the Atlantic…   Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Winter Realities, Normal Sandy Hook, Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Sandy Hook, Bay Side, After a Hard Winter    Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Brigantine Serenity from Leed’s Eco-Trail    Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Cloudscape, Summer, Brigantine   Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Glossy Ibis and Marsh Mallow’s First Bloom, Brigantine    Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Update as of Friday, December 7 at 10 a.m.: The Wildlife Drive in Galloway remains closed due to damage from Hurricane Sandy. The Songbird Trail, including the portion that uses the Wildlife Drive, will be closed December 10 through 14 due to a refuge hunt. Other hiking trails in Galloway are open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. daily, including the Akers Woodland Trail, Leed’s Eco-trail, and foot access to Gull Pond Tower.

The Visitor Information Center is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.weekends. All fees have been temporarily waived.

Scott’s Landing Boat Launch is open. Barnegat Observation Platform is open. The deCamp Wildlife Trail in Brick Township is open for the first 2000 feet. Holgate remains closed.

Introduction

The Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, where more than 47,000 acres of southern New Jersey coastal habitats are actively protected and managed for migratory birds. Forsythe is one of more than 500 refuges in the National Wildlife Refuge System administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The National Wildlife Refuge System is a network of lands and waters managed specifically for the protection of wildlife and wildlife habitat and represents the most comprehensive wildlife resource management program in the world. Units of the system stretch across the United States from northern Alaska to the Florida Keys, and include small islands in the Caribbean and South Pacific. The character of the Refuges is as diverse as the nation itself.

Wish me well on my Christmas pilgrimage.  Far More Important, wish the birds well no matter man’s depredations.

Do whatever you can, wherever you are, even in those 90 countries who, for some reason, read NJ WILD about our dear state, to preserve refuges in your region.

And pay attention to catastrophic climate change.  It’s no myth.  It’s not a subject for believe.  We have seen, to borrow the Pogo line, catastrophic climate change, and it is us.

What Sandy did was dress rehearsal.  Sandy scrawled the signature of inevitable sea level rise for all the world to see.  Sandy was not a one-time event.  Sea level rise will not undo itself, as do hurricanes in time.  Although not in damage.

Our world is changed forever.

Sandy didn’t change it.

We did.

What are you doing about it?

Spotters on the Cape May Bird Observatory Hawk Watch Platform    cfe

Actually, it’s more like “Cape May For Two Days”!  And yes, it was MORE than worth it.

Those two days centered upon the Cape May Bird Observatory [CMBO] Hawk Watch Platform.

After stopping at CMBO to renew my membership, and pick up a super-comfortable strap for my binoculars, I headed for the lighthouse and the Platform, even before checking into my motel room.

Helpful Cape May Bird Observatory Personnel on Hawk Watch Platform, cfe

CMBO maintains “counters”, “spotters” — professionals of highest caliber, who spot and count birds zooming past in autumn migration.  The Platform fronts upon a pond. always graced by swans and frequently dive-bombed by peregrines.

Sunset Swan, Brenda Jones

I immediately recognized the silhouette and mellifluous voice of Pete Dunne, head of CMBO, author of wit, wisdom and experience, and yes, bon vivant.  Also, natural teacher.  So many facets of my birding knowledge have been inserted or polished by this man, over the years, at sunrise and sunset, and sometimes at 20 degrees with 20-mph-winds.  I was overjoyed to reconnect, after my year plus of hurt-hip-induced absence.  Pete, watching me walk, exulted, “We live in remarkable times.”

He went on to prove it by mentioning, “I was informed by phone about the nighthawks.”

Here and there, spotting scopes were trained on the skies.

But these pros of the Platform don’t need optics.  A black spot miles away can be differentiated, as in Cooper’s or Sharp-Shinned Hawk, and they’ll even tell you how they can tell.  Something to do with frequency of flapping.  Pete:  “It it were a Sharp-shinned, it would’ve flapped by now.”

Sharp-Shinned Hawk, Brenda Jones

But I say, these spotters, these CMBO mentors, are attached to birds by senses which have not even been defined, let alone located.  Senses which go beyond eyes and even beyond Swarovskis.

Brilliance is a big part of being on the Platform.  And fellowship.  I hadn’t realized that (this concentration of) birders are family; that I had missed them to such a high degree.

There’s always humor, and even humility.  At one point, Pete said, with a shrug in his voice, “Haven’t a clue….”  There was a pregnant pause, followed by, “… bird.”

At the same time, in my two visits that day, early and latest, I was part of a bald-eagle count approaching 30.  Even more importantly, –as I learned at early light the next day–, a 268- kestrel day.

There was a bare tree set among cedars, as studded with kestrels as a Christmas tree with ornaments.  Every one vivid.  Every one fluttering.  These raptors swooped out, over and over, –not unlike flycatchers–, in quest of insects, one after another.  And kestrels can hover — I never knew that.  So vivid that they seemed iridescent, even spangled.  What a privilege to be surrounded by them.

American kestrels have been ‘fewing and fewing’ in recent years.  Their sacred edge habitat has been increasingly devoured by what others deem progress.  I forgot to ask Pete, why there were/are so many right now.  But this is one time when why doesn’t matter.  Only beauty, power, rarity and presence.

Among the other numbers on Monday (departure day) morning were 109 osprey.  Osprey were everywhere Sunday evening, often ‘packing a lunch’ - fish in talons, aerodynamically situated so as not to interfere with flight.  17 sharp-shins.  10 Coopers.  30 Merlin.  5 Peregrine Falcons.  and so forth…

I even spotted a tern I didn’t recognize, which Erin-of-CMBO eagerly identified as a Forster’s.  She trained the Swarovski scope on this single bird at the end of a wooden dock-like structure to our right.  “Only Forster’s terns have that black eye patch now.  They’re really fun to identify in autumn.”  As David Allen Sibley puts it, “Black eye patch of non-breeding plumage distinctive.”  This Platform is where Sibley ‘earned his wings’, with Pete and Clay Sutton, his co-authors of Hawks In Flight, about to be re-issued.  All three will be at the Cape May Birding Weekend, to talk and sign this re-issue of Sibley’s first book, before his NYT best-sellers, The Sibley Guide to Birds, and The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior.

Usually, white shrubs and vines surrounding the Swarovski-sponsored Platform are filled with monarch butterflies this time of year.  There were fewer than I’ve ever encountered of these orange-and-black long-distance fliers.  Even so, I was welcomed to the Platform by one which nearly landed on the bridge of my nose.

Icy yellow, with a tinge of chartreuse, or key-lime pie, the cloudless sulphur butterflies seemed more in evidence here and among the bayberried dunes of Higbee Beach.

One of the butterfly magnet shrubs has the lovely name of High Tide Plant.  Elder is another name for it.  I’m sipping St. Germain liqueur, late this night, as I bring Cape May back to memory and to life.  Pretending I’m a butterfly, nectaring on the elder plant from whose flowers this French specialty is crafted.

I hear Pete observe, “That eagle looks like he’s about to leave for Delaware.”

American Bald Eagle, Brenda Jones

Delaware is very near, here where our River meets the ocean, and the Cape May Lewes ferry carries cars, birders, bicyclists, hikers and just plain tourists from one state to another.  The ferry is a grand place for seeking out seabirds who “come to land only when nesting.”  (Sibley)

I reluctantly leave the Platform because it’s time to walk The Point.  Newly crafted ‘boardwalks’ (they’re not real board) lift birders off the marsh-scape, into the realm of warblers and other treasures.  Somehow, they’ve conquered phragmites to an enormous degree, those towering invasive rushes that drive out all the native plants the birds need, not only in migration.  In the place of reeds is a meadow or a prairie of New Jersey wildflowers.  The air is fragrant with (the invasive) autumn clematis, tiny white starflowers spun along tangles of vines.  It’s more interesting than honeysuckle, with mimosa ‘notes’.

Colors on all sides of me include a pinkish bronze (wool grass, which is really a sedge); purple asters; white asters; seaside goldenrod, white ‘rose’ mallows, white boneset, pink marsh mallow, white dotted smartweed, mistflower, wild ageratum, purple gerardia, etc. etc. etc.

I don’t know all these plants - a fine naturalist, the plant equivalent of Pete Dunne, was sitting on a bench and eager to teach me every single species, in English and in Latin.  Carl Anderson.  He explained that the bayberry-like plants were wax myrtle and hybrids of wax myrtle and bayberry — the leaves on the latter are broader and darker, and bayberries were definitely in the minority.  Bayberries are essential fat/fuel to migrant birds.  I felt like Alice In Wonderland, having drunk whatever and shrunk to be smaller than most of these flowers.

Birds were few, because it was mid-day.  Fish crows ringed the beige lighthouse like a crown of thorns.  A single egret minced about the edge of a pond.  A sound I never knew, or maybe ever heard, turned out to be a single kestrel in a naked tree just above my head.  The closest I’ve ever been to a kestrel.

Kestrel at the Pole Farm, Brenda Jones

Morning dawned with a beach walk among black skimmers beyond counting, followed by another couple of hours on the Hawk Watch Platform.

Black Skimmers in Flight, Brenda Jones

Sky Full of Skimmers, the Jetty, Cape May   cfe

From ten to twelve thirty, Monday, I floated on the boat, The Skimmer, among Cape May marshes.  We were in quest of rare birds there, too.  What I best remember is a series of large turtle heads in Turtle Creek, and a very rare Tri-colored Heron before we turned back to the dock.

Leaving for home was almost unbearable.

All the way north on the Parkway, I would hear those Platform phrases, “Over the cedars.”  “Really soaring.”  “Got ‘im!”

The line I’ll remember most is Pete Dunne’s description of yesterday, to a fellow ’spotter’ who also writes a blog:  “Here’s the first line for your blog, Mike.  If you weren’t here yesterday, slay yourself now.”

Black Skimmer Aloft, Cape May, by Brenda Jones

What do you do when your favorite Motel, even weeks ahead, only has one night in which to welcome you?  It’ll be nearly three hours down, ditto back.

But the birds are migrating.

And the ocean beckons.

Shimmering Beachwalk, Cape May   cfe

And I haven’t been on the Hawk Watch Platform since a year ago Easter, since this has been ‘The Year of the Hip.’

But my legs work now.  I can carry my suitcase upstairs to my sea-facing room.  I can walk on sand again.

My camera is not exactly rusting from disuse, but close.

Cape May Hawk Watch Platform after 2009 Blizzard    cfe

The Hawk Watch Platform of Cape May Bird Observatory is officially open.  Raptors are soaring.  Shore birds staging.  Monarchs might be nestled throughout the ivory blossoms of the high tide plant.

I have two good books, in a field new to me, food philosophy.

Seaside Seafood Supper, Inside Jetty Motel    cfe

There won’t be enough time for all my favorite restaurants.  But I’ll literally make a stab at it.

Osprey of May in Cape May, over CMBO Hawk Watch Platform   cfe

And Monday morning, before turning north, I’ll be on the Skimmer again.  This is a flat-bottomed craft that noses in and out of Back-Bay Cape May.  Its knowledgeable Captain and Mate know where all the rare birds wait.  Whether or not the ospreys have left, they’ll know how many young each nest produced.  They’ll use delicate dip nets to introduce us to marshwater creatures, tenderly returning them as soon as we’ve memorized the names.

Everything will be shimmering.

And I’ll have new reasons to be glad of having endured this mightily successful hip replacement.

In a way, I’ll be migrating, for a too-brief interval.

Cape May vistas new and old will fill my treasury for the months ahead.

How Cape May Light Looks in Winter - CMBO image from Hawk Watch Platform

And probably, I’ll return, as is my wont, for Christmas.

The Jetty Motel is my favorite — go there.  You’ll be made to feel like family.  And, offshore, this time of year, hordes of black white and orange skimmers wait somehow, coming in for landings at sunrise, like the breakfast flock in Jonathan Livingston Seagull.  Only vivid.

Make Cape May YOUR own…

Whale Watchers, Cape May, Brenda Jones

SALEM COUNTY’S BUCOLIC HISTORY - ALLOWAY CREEK    cfe

NJ WILD readers know my favorite places to travel are the wild ones of New Jersey, –especially central and southern–, particularly near water, salt and fresh.

Often in quest of birds, rare yet plentiful.

You also know that the places I choose are havens on many levels.

However, I may not have emphasized enough that one can visit NJ WILD sites, even on major ‘Holidays’, without crowds.

Hancock House Historic Outbuilding - Revolutionary Site — cfe

If you pull up NJ WILD, it has a search feature.  Write in ‘Brigantine’ or ‘Pine Barrens’; ‘Sourlands’ or Sandy Hook; Bull’s Island, the Delaware River, Island Beach, etc.  You’ll be given a string of posts on their wild beauty, and directions are often part of the saga.  For deepest solitude, plan birders’ hours — first light and last light.

In general, Take The Pretty Way, the back roads.

Salem Preserves — cfe

Tomorrow, a friend and I will launch her new Prius into Salem and Cumberland Counties. We’ll be treated to golden stretches of marshland; to shimmering rivers with splendid Indian names, such as the Manumuskin.  We’ll ride on and laugh at the sound of Buckshutem Road.  We’ll wonder, as you always must down there, where on earth will we eat?  Of course, there’ll be the freshest of Jersey Fresh produce on weathered stands in front of farmhouses of other centuries.  Of course, we’ll slide coins into Trust Boxes, as we settle agricultural jewels into our sustainability bags to take home.

We’ll see rare birds, especially eagles. Salem County held our only productive eagle nest during the grim DDT years, which my county (Somerset) is about to reinstitute, as it ‘adulticizes’ mosquitoes in the week ahead.  Now, I am not kidding, in Salem and Cumberland Counties, we could see more eagles than we can count.

American Bald Eagle Floating - Brenda Jones

Ditto osprey.

Osprey Claiming Nest, Brenda Jones

Butterflies, too.

Cabbage Whites Nectaring — Brenda Jones

Especially ditto purple martins, but they had all left the Brigantine the last time I was there, weeks ahead of schedule.  Theory is that our drought hinders the insect population to such a degree that martin migration is over. I’ll know tomorrow.  If not, there could be hundreds of thousands of them, bending the marsh grasses, then darkening skies, along the Maurice River.

Alloway Creek, site of British Massacre of Colonial Soldiers, Salem County — cfe

Look up these sites, and find them for yourselves.  There won’t be anyone else on most of the roads to the unknown, actually usually forgotten, Delaware Bay.

Salem County, Tranquillity Base   cfe

Short-Eared Owl, Winter, Pole Farm by Brenda Jones

Locals know that U.S. 1 [Business] Newspaper miraculously turns itself over to creativity for two weeks of every summer.  Rich Rein calls it “The Fiction Issue,” but it is richly studded with poetry.

To their publication party, everyone is invited (www.princetoninfo.com); all who submitted are encouraged to attend; all writers present are introduced, but only the poets read.

Each year, I reach out to D&R Greenway’s Poets of Preservation, urging them to submit.  One never EVER knows if one’s work will appear.  But, to my delight, standing in Lucy’s Ravioli Kitchen waiting to pay for scrumptious homemade pasta on Friday, I discovered that the U.S. 1 Fiction Issue editors had indeed selected my poem, “Owl Pellets”, for inclusion in this summer’s issue.

Pick up a (free) copy of this lively publication, over the next few weeks.  I find mine, usually, at Main Street Cafe in Kingston, or the little coffee shop next to the Post Office of Rocky Hill.  I keep a copy to savor over the weeks ahead, and bring some home to send to family and friends in other states.

It’s pretty rare that a business publication honors pure creativity.  i’ve been grateful to Rich Rein, since he founded this newspaper about which “they said it couldn’t be done”, decades ago.  For many years, I wrote for them on nature, history, travel and poetry, especially in and of New Jersey.

Here is “Owl Pellets,” written about the Hamilton/Trenton/Bordentown Marsh, which I so cherish, down where all those pylons otherwise support superhighways such as Route 1, 295, and tracks for the spiffy River Line Train.

What intrigues me about this work is that it was written either the day of my hip operation or the day after, at what used to be Princeton Medical Center.  A lonnnnngggg way from a marsh, let alone Indians…

OWL PELLETS

all along the downed log

in Trenton’s old marsh

I mean really old

as in ten thousand years of

Lenni Lenape presence

a coalescence of tribes

after the long months

begun by hunger’s moon

the rising of

new pickerel weed

arrayed along greening banks

signals departure

from inland hunting lives

to sea gathering

but first, this time together

in the Marsh

I descend to the log

studying, not touching

pierced silvery ovals

of bone / feather / fur

they seem arranged

for rituals

by men with lithe

cinnamon bodies

kneeling in loin cloths

of old deerskin

and new beads

CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN

(written in hospital – November, 2011)

U.S. 1 Newspaper Summer Fiction Issue, 2012

Eagle and Sculler, Lake Carnegie, by Brenda Jones

My NJ WILD readers know that my key reason for hip replacement was to get into (and OUT of) a kayak, as often as i like, to paddle as long as I like.  Thanks to Dr. Thomas Gutowski, this impossible dream has been realized.

The first return took place at dusk on Lake Carnegie, thanks to the generosity of a new friend who carried the kayaks on his head high over the arched footbridge to the still lake.  Now I have kayaked, alone and with others, five or six times on the D&R Canal south of Alexander. (www.canoe.nj.com)

A major blessing of all these sojourns, –beyond no longer being crippled–, is solitude.  Each morning south of Alexander, whether alone or with friends, ours are the first prows on the water.  For the Lake Carnegie idyll, although Saturday evening, there wasn’t another human in sight until we returned to the put-in.  Our sole companion was a majestic great blue heron, mincing along in shadowed undergrowth to our right for the entire journey.  Kayaks render one nearly invisible to wildlife.  Even basking turtles don’t unbask as we pass.

Basking Turtles, D&R Canal, Brenda Jones

The D&R Canal and Towpath are right here in the middle of Princeton.  For seven years, I worked with people at a College Road East firm, who would ask over and over, “Now where IS that canal, anyway?”  Stunned, I’d reply, “Well you can’t really get into town without crossing it.”  Sad to say, corporate types don’t have nature and history antennae out as they go about their daily rounds.  They’d usually follow my answer with, “You go there ALONE?!”

Those who do possess and use antennae, know that this haven for walkers, paddlers and rowers exists, thanks to preservationists, –an eastern hem to the fabric of our town.  Rich in natural beauty and significant human and industrial history, that canal was the reason for the founding and thriving of many New Jersey municipalities.  It also provides drinking water for those not blessed with wells in our region.

Long ago, in a poem, I described the Canal and Towpath as “nurse, haven and muse.”  She’s far more than that now, once I’ve learned to know her by water.  It’s a treat to be dwarfed by her flowers, to skiddle along beside her turtles or pause so as not to disturb the swimming water snake.  It’s birders’ heaven in spring, when warblers and other rarities territorialize along through the Institute Woods.  And sometimes, near the Aqueduct, one sees ‘our’ American bald eagles, dashing osprey and gilded orioles doubled in still water.

Osprey Over Millstone Aqueduct, Brenda Jones

Last week’s kayaking began by renting a ‘loon’ at Princeton Canoe and Kayak at Alexander Road by the Turning Basin. After a work week assailed by interruptions, there was nothing more refreshing and essential than the absolute silence, which descended like incense, or an invisible cloak, as soon as I moved beyond the swallows of the Alexander Bridge.  As their wings literally part my hair, I am alerted to the reality that I was in a new dimension.

Each time I emerge from bridge shadow, escaping tire whirr and creosote pungency, I bless the magic of my new (yes!) kayaker’s hip:  “You may find you like it better than the original,” mused my miraculous surgeon.

Beauty and nature are my major lures on the canal.  Timelessness is tied with these two factors/  I am entirely under my own power.  No one cares when I return.  I can sally or dally or bend at the waist and plunge forward or coast beneath tree dapple or sit still under an oriole.

Baltimore Oriole, Cloudless Sky, near D&R Canal, Brenda Jones

On first trips, I made sure to dip my right hand into that canal water and baptize that scar, as I had done at the Delaware River on Bull’s Island.  I was letting that leg know, at hip’s entry, “You, who carried me to beauty, nature and history times beyond counting, are restored to full function and new adventures.”

My professional life can tip me over too much into the quantitative, the numeric and the scheduled.  I suspect I am not alone in this.

Kayak time counters those tendencies, restores me to my primal most vital self.

Last week’s kayak experience, for example, at first disappointed by its constellation of absences.  Yes, my hair was parted by swallows under the bridge.  But, after that traditional beginning, there was no bird song, and no sightings until the ubiquitous territoriality of the common yellowthroat, claiming the middle of my route.

Not a spurt of cardinal flower, –crimson as the bird or the prelates for which it is named, awaited me in any of its usual shadowed nooks.  I suspect the scouring removals of Irene and Lee.

Veery in Spring Greenery, Brenda Jones

No wood thrush at entry or turnaround.  Even the red-winged blackbirds were silent.  And those usual scolds, the jays.

It’s too soon for white and pink fluted blooms of marsh mallow, and all that remains of blue and yellow flags are pointy tall green spires of their sheltering leaves.  Everything was green, green, green.

The emptiness was so all-permeating that I was forced to acknowledge that absence was the gift of that day’s canal drift.

Just then, a shrub to my right began moving in an uncharacteristic way.  As though birds were fighting in it — but we’re beyond breeding season for most save goldfinches.  Suddenly, I realized I was seeing graceful legs, rounded buttocks, and that diagnostic white flag tail of deer.  Right down by the water, she was blissfully and purposefully breakfasting.  I was near enough to see the shine on her planted hooves.

Doe, a deer…  Brenda Jones

That day brought no herons, neither green nor blue.  Nor the oven bird’s ‘teacher teacher teacher’ — most treasured gift of the Institute Woods, if I’m early or lalte enough.

Not even Constable clouds filled the canal — to be cleaved by the slender prow.

I turned around, (partly because of griddle heat), deciding to see how many strokes I could paddle without stopping.  All these months, I realized, I’d been taking it easy out there, because of the so-called ’surgical leg’.  I was way up into the 100s, when I had to speak to careless canoeists — in order to discover on which side of them I might safely progress.  So I forget my tally, but it was impressive, and it didn’t hurt me, not then, not ever.

We are so blessed to live in a canaled town.  Just cross the Delaware and look at that rooty, clunky, uneven towpath,  alongside Pennsylvania’s empty canal, strewn with rocks and weeds.

I don’t know why New Jersey knew enough to preserve and sustain its canal, although D&R Greenway where I work, was a major part of that (before my time).  I only know I’m deeply grateful.

Canal time fills memory’s treasure chest, for sustenance throughout the weeks ahead.

Wordsworth said it best, about daffodils:

“For oft, when on my couch I lie / in vague or pensive mood / and gaze upon that inward eye / which is the bliss of solitude / and then my heart with rapture fills / and dances…”

Your heart, too, can dance upon canal waters.  Just show up at Princeton Canoe and Kayak and set OUT.

North from the turning basin goes under the Dinky tracks and all the way to and through the aqueduct at Mapleton and beyond.  It’s the busy way, with walkers, bikers, other water craft, and sometimes ‘our’ eagles.  South is the quiet way, most likely, but not guaranteed, to provide nature’s rarities.

Full or empty, creature-wise, canal-time fills the soul.

When a Manhattan friend takes the bus to Kingston, what is the greatest contrast you can provide?  One, for sure, is kayaking - which we did the next morning, along the D&R Canal.

Kayak Central, Princeton, Brenda Jones

Her welcome-to-NJ contrast, however, was to head straight west into Hopewell, up Greenwood Avenue, turn left at the red barn, head into and beyond Ringoes and Sergeantsville to Rosemont and over to the Delaware River.  Such a brief ride, for such a major transition — and all in golden afternoon light.

Bull’s Island Fern Grove, Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Walking Bull’s Island is always a treat, moored like a verdant ship in the middle of my beloved Delaware.  Its trails and woods are frequently inundated, needless to say.  This can make for very soft trails, cushioned by charcoal-y basalt from the bottom of the river.  Floods, of course, bring nourishment and new species — some blessed, some not so blessed.

Bull’s Island Footbridge, Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Friday evening, after a quick trek over the silvery footbridge to the Black Bass and back, –interstate hiking–, we entered the woods to a chorus of cedar waxwings.  Masked and certain feathers gilded, there is no more handsome bird in my lexicon.  Leaving sunshine for dapple, we were suddenly surrounded by the wood thrush’s liquid ascending, then descending notes.  My friend is accustomed, from Catskill stays, to veeries near woodthrush, and soon we were awash in veery magic.

Cedar Waxwing, Brenda Jones

On either side, ferns rose, — not fragile and furtive as those I usually encounter.  But feisty, even aggressive.  Some were taller than we are!  The Alice in Wonderland sensation was appealing.  My friend then decided we were “in Jurassic Park without the critters.”

Veery, Brenda Jones

One creature we did find, a handsome toad who seemed the monarch of the glen.  He was not atall ‘afeard’ of humans — sitting there, permitting our presence in his territory.

Lowering light gilded every leaf, especially super-sized jack-in-the-pulpit plants and fading Mayapple.

Mayapple Profusion, Bull’s Island, Carolyn Foote Edelmann

All the while, the river coursed alongside, deceptively quiet, a welcome change from her Manhattan life and even the bus ride out here.

A superb dinner at the Carversville Inn was not only gastronomically superior, but also time travel.  In that case, the mid-1800’s surrounded us, as palpably as if we had stepped through ‘the veil.’

Home brought us through fields where some corn is already hip-high, well before the Fourth of July, and silos gleam and preside like church steeples.  Sacred farm structures from other centuries were the norm most of the way back to Princeton.

Yesteryear’s Barn, Carolyn Foote Edelmann

All of this in our beautiful New Jersey.  Help preserve it — especially her farmland and o, save that river, in every sense.

Your local land trusts do this for you, but we (as in D&R Greenway) require your support.  It’s taken us 23 years to preserve 23 New Jersey landscape miles and many waterways.  Help move preservation forward, every way you can.

Fog Along the Delaware, Brenda Jones

And get out there and enjoy the unique unpeopled beauty that is still ours, in the beleaguering 21st Century.

Canal Scene at Millstone Aqueduct, Brenda Jones

near first post-op kayaking on Lake Carnegie, near new eagle nest and feeding tree…

NJ Wild readers know that I have been on a healing journey. since total hip replacement on November 9.   Most of the time, I write of its miracles.  But I must admit, the voyage is long and sometimes gruelling.   It involves a great deal of spiritual work, as well as lengthy nightly exercise, not only of ‘the surgical leg.’

It won’t surprise NJ WILD that, for me, key spiritual healing happen OUTDOORS, in nature, in New Jersey, especially on or near Princeton’s D&R Canal and Towpath.  Of course, that region was particularly effective that day I was taken kayaking for the first time, post-op, this April, on Carnegie Lake.

This week, for example, I felt far less alone as I unexpectedly encountered ‘our’ American bald eagle in the top of a deciduous tree right across the Lake Carnegie dam.  This bird, as Brenda’s below, was most staunch, ’stiffening my spine’ to continue the sometimes invisible progress.

Eagle Perched, by Brenda Jones

as in deciduous tree across Lake Carnegie Dam from Towpath

Last night, a red fox, right out of The Little Prince, was sitting next to my white begonias, shining in starlight.  Picture this alert creature clouded by darkness, surrounded by white petals.  He gazed and gazed deep into my eyes, and I had to leave before he did.  “…and you will sit a little closer to me, every day…”

Fox Close-Up, Brenda Jones

A significant portion of my spiritual healing takes place meditatively.  Right now, it is, when I am most blessed, in the company of wolves.  The wolf phalanx headed by Jasmine, a timber wolf I met in real life at New Jersey’s stunning Lakota Wolf Preserve, up near the Water Gap.  Jasmine has since passed to the spiritual realms, but shewas very real, welcoming Tasha O’Neill and me to that wild place, although Jasmine emerged from pale roses.

Jasmine, of Lakota Wolf Preserve

Here is a new poem about the wolves, the comfort, sustenance and protection they provide me.  Being ‘torn from sanctuary’ refers particularly to having to perform healing contortions in public in a cacophonous place otherwise known as ‘physical therapy.’  I would rather be home with the wolves…

Here is one of the new poems, gift of the Muse who returned at the hospital on the day of my hip surgery:

Lakota Wolf by Tasha O’Neill, with whom I met Jasmine…

JASMINE AND THE PHALANX

finally, it is time

to lie down with the wolves

this phalanx sent daily

to expand my healing

*

– the silver, the noir –

only one is named

but all are ready

– hushed, puissant

*

I first met sweet calm

in wolf eyes

when exquisite Jasmine

emerged from her rose bower

in the place named Lakota

*

my wolves lope

wherever I must go

especially as I am torn and torn

from sanctuary

*

pelts, stiff yet soft

ripple

over perfect bones

I do not share

*

they ring

then pour recovery

into this strafed body

*

horizontal and free

I sink into the hush

of wolf breathing

*

light in wolf fur

becomes aureole

*

supple power radiating

like the moon’s corona

at full eclipse

***

CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN

April 2012

Black-Crowned Night Heron by Brenda Jones

NJ WILD readers know I have been to ‘the Brig’ (Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge at Smithville above Atlantic City) in virtually all conditions.  Literally, fire and ice.  Snow, of course.  Fog.

The fire was a controlled burn to remove phragmites (tall blinding invasive grasses that alter food supplies for birds ‘the Brig’ was created to attract and protect.)  The ice was Mother Nature at winter normal, making the dike roads too slippery for entry.  Fog is heaven, though birds scarce — because you can’t see Atlantic City looming.

Yesterday, Tasha O’Neill, a fine-art photographer and dear friend and I deliberately traveled to ‘the Brig’ in rain.  Both of us had been incarcerated at our desks for a ‘rosary’ of crisp sunny days.  When freedom arrived, rain came with it.  ‘The Brig’ holds miracles anyway.  (It used to be called Brigantine Wildlife Refuge, and is in NO WAY connected, save visually across water, to cheek-by-jowl developed Brigantine Island).

Waterlilies welcomed us, half-open upon arrival because of the dearth of sun.  But waterlilies are rewards in any weather.

Waterlily in Rain by Tasha O’Neill

Among the “miracles anyway” was a red knot — our most tragically scarce bird.  They used to feed by the hundreds of thousands on 100s of 1000s of horseshoe crab eggs.  But developers, along with exploiters of horseshoe crab for bait and fertilizer, have had their way with this lustrous bird of far-flung migratory habits, all centered on our Delaware Bay this time of year.   To see any red knot is to see the NJ equivalent of the passenger pigeon, the ivory-billed woodpecker.  Any year now may be their last.

Accompanying the knot, and then sprinkled throughout our day, was a profligacy of ruddy turnstones.  I’ve been in love with their yes ruddy patchwork backs, their dapper jet ascots and cummberbunds, since I met turnstones at our Chatham, Mass., shore house.  They, too, feed at nearby Reed’s Beach, Fortescue and others in Salem and Cumberland County, on whatever horseshoe crab eggs there may be.

My co-birder that day was fine art photographer, Tasha O’ Neill.  Weather made seeing out of the windows chancy, let alone photographing, but she did her best.  She found the black-crowned night heron off to our left - standing bolt upright as I have virtually never seen them.  Hunkered in shrubs over water, breeding plume reaching the water below; settling into taller trees for the night; posing like a football on rocks by a channel — these are usual BCNH positions in my experience.  Not sentinel-straight.  Not marching like a soldier at the changing of the guard.

Rain-Drenched Black-Crowned Night Heron at Brigantine, by Tasha O’Neill

I never found a harrier, my signifying bird at Brig.  But Tasha found two definite red-tails in a dead tree before we were even off 206, and I saw one quartering a field like a harrier somewhere near Tabernacle.  It’s always good when your birding starts off before the sanctuary.

Willets were quieter than usual at the Brig — otherwise they generously call out, “I’m the Willet!  I’m the Willet!”, as they prance, pounce, then lift off.  These birds the color of light toast turn snappily black and white as they lift off over the impoundments.

We were there at low tide - best for shorebirds.  A couple of black-bellied plover did not impress my co-birder, wanting them to match their full breeding plumage in my Sibley Guide.  It’s not quite time yet for turnstones, or for black-bellies, to be completely in the full black splendor of what always looks like formal evening attire, lacking the patent dress shoes.  Stars of low tide for both of us, however, were black skimmers - only two in total, and not performing their Balanchine skimming act in such low water.  But handsome and dapper and inescapable with those formidable red-orange beaks.

Skimmer in the Air, by Brenda Jones

We had one golden plover, stately as Tutankhamun, amongst a host of busy ‘little grey jobs’, busy as pyramid builders stoking up before the carry.  I have friends who have mastered sandpipers; ditto sparrows.  I’m slowly learning sparrows at their hands (we had a nearby chipping sparrow, down on the ground where he belongs, rusty little head pouf very visible, early on); but I remain hopeless with sandpipers.  Dunlins?

We found longbilled dowitchers and a lovely curved-bill whimbrel, looking classic against dark peat and green marsh grasses.

Great Egret Fishing in Rain, Brigantine, by Tasha O’Neill

Egrets were stately, immaculate, and the rain-wind generously blew their full breeding plumage, so that they resembled ladies in Dress Circle, sporting plumes for a new diva’s Traviata — back in the days when egrets were killed for these immensely long, pristine feathers.  The snowy egrets’ breeding plumage turned them into bleached female mergansers — who always look to me as though they’ve their toes stuck in an electric socket for the effect on head feathers.

Fish crows mourned overhead.  There was a scarcity of osprey, though some on nests.  Most nests stood empty.  One was adorned with all sorts of human detritus — from a float for a lobster trap to orange construction netting.  One or two nests showed sitting females, the male on the nearby feeding platform.  We did not hear that plaintive delicate osprey call we’ve come to cherish.

Osprey Returning to Nest, by Brenda Jones

Tasha was delighted with a levittown of horseshoe crabs, each defending his domicile with an ivory-hued larger claw, all the rest of the crab invisible in subeterranean safety.

No swans that day.

One SNOW GOOSE! — yes, indeed, white with black feathers and that characteristic rosy beak.  Have you EVER seen a solitary snow goose?

Tree swallows, then barn swallows — virtually the only bird call we could hear.

One scowling snapping turtle, resembling an armored tank on a forested road.

Early stars and late, the angular glossy ibis.  Even in the half light, their forest green and buffed copper highlights gleamed.

However, I have to admit, the highlight of this journey was coming home through the Pine Barrens, studded with just opening rosy-to-pale-pink mountain laurel, deep into the pinewoods.

Laurel in the Mist, Sooy Place, Pine Barrens, by Tasha O’Neill

And, as I’d hoped, jewels encrusting the north side only of Sooy Place off 563, goat’s rue.  Tasha had never seen it.  I’ve probably been lucky enough to be their for its brief rare bloom five times total.  Its foliage is icy green and lacy, its little face like a snapdragon sticking out its saucy fuchsia tongue.

Goat’s Rue in the Mist, Sooy Place, Pine Barrens, by Tasha O’Neill

It’s not often that the birds of Brigantine are eclipsed (pun intended).  But May 21, on the day after the solar eclipse (only seen in Albuquerque, I gather), birds took second place.

Every trip to the Brig is different.  Get DOWN there.

Remember, we have that sanctuary because of people with high and deep commitment to preservation!