NJ WILD readers know that it is my practice, –even my life–, to drive to natural havens, especially in New Jersey and nearby Pennsylvania.  There I restore  soul and muse at nature’s fonts.

You may have wondered at my long visual silence here.  I haven’t known how to write about the depredations of Sandy, about this anthropocentric chaos we humans are increasingly calling forth, with such heedlessness.

Today, a series of Sandy Damage Images literally flooded me, as I tried to eat lunch, in a place where business was happening all around me.  Sandy, –as was his/her recent way with us–, intruded, dominated.

This could be termed a prose poem.  Whatever it is, I am haunted, yes INUNDATED, by Sandy Souvenirs.  And I’m not even addressing what it did to birds and bird habitat.  This is Sandy’s impact upon a birder, this birder.

WHAT is its impact upon YOU?

“ENDURING ABSENCES” - SANDY SOUVENIRS

nests of yellow disaster tape, tangled at crossroads

tree roots dwarfing buildings

macadam bike trails cracked, sea-braided

heavy-duty doors ripped from industrial-strength hinges, –wildly flung

sand swirls like blizzard aftermaths

boardwalks to nowhere

nowhere

red fire hydrant top only emerging from tall swathes of deep sand

cars where boats belong

boats where cars belong

refuge pick-up trucks upside-down in new water

red Xs on former birding sites on Audubon hot line lists — enduring absences

trees throughout Pleasant Valley more horizontal than vertical, — snow-exaggerated

ghost of a clam shack at old Leed’s Point

sea-grass from the wrack line high in Scott’s Landing woods

Brigantine’s dike road severed

salinities in freshwater-, in Brigantine’s brackish, impoundments equaling bay

birdlessness

palisades of orange cones

‘NO VEHICLES BEYOND THIS POINT”

chained sawhorses

trail sign flat across a Bowman’s path, — posts upended, concrete dislodged

trail itself a rushing stream that may never yet be staunched

echoes of ironic names:

seaside

sea bright

bay head

sandy hook

island beach

beach haven

Atlantic anything

where are the havens?

One of the proofs of fine writing is that reading it  triggers writing in others.  My friend, food writer, Pat Tanner, is somewhat surprised at all the buzz generated by her recent article on last meals.  Interviewing local chefs, the results were far-ranging, wise, funny, challenging, with intervals of blessed simplicity in this complex world.  I couldn’t put Pat’s story down.

Then I literally picked up my pen (remember pens?) and began a list of jewel-like food memories.  if I could command the best foods of my life now, time and money and distance being of no matter, here is what I’d call forth.  But forget this last meal fad — don’t wait! — to experience any or all of these, if you can.

What neither of us expected was that I could bring the little list along to our Petite Christmas supper this week, read it to Pat and trigger memories of her own, with her family, in the presence of sublime food.

To begin, the Malossol caviar, served aboard the S.S. France, scooped with a ladle, in  quantity equal to freshly home-made ice cream, from a massive silver, crystal-lined bowl.  This was April, 1964 - my husband and I sailed on the anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking and my Michigan friends were sure we would do likewise.  Caviar was our first food on the France, and this was my first time to speak French with a Frenchman.

The next course of gem-like food is a tie:

Either Truffe sous les cendres, with Diane and Catherine and Werner, at Fernand Point’s La Pyramide in Vienne — truffle perfume permeating the puff pastry that had somehow survived having been cooked, as the French say, ‘in the chimney’, under the cinders:

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?

Pine Barrens Peat Water, Mullica River    cfe

Between drought and development, it is hard for others, even for New Jersey natives, to credit our slogan, “The Garden State.”

NJ WILD readers know, I celebrate New Jersey’s wild beauty wherever and whenever I can find it, even right in my own (near Rocky Hill) rocky hilly foresty yard.

But sometimes, I must go far afield, gulp great ‘draughts’ of New Jersey Beauty.

As. recently, to and from my cherished ‘Brigantine’ - Wildlife Refuge, otherwise known as Edwin B. Forsythe.

The blessings of visiting ‘the Brig’ are beyond measure, starting with the long silent even winding drive through the Pine Barrens to Smithville and Oceanville.  Due east of those tiny pre-Revolutionary towns stretches the 8-mile dike drive among bays and impoundments, rare birds at all times and in all seasons.

Come along with me on last week’s spur-of-the-moment, if not even desperate, flight to beauty.

Queen Anne’s Lace, Mullica River, Pine Barrens      cfe

Beyond the dock, fortunate kayakers make their way up the Mullica, without whose Revolutionary waters and watermen, we wouldn’t have a nation:

Mullica Kayakers,    cfe

Cloud-Studded Salinity-Managed Waters of Brigantine    cfe

FIDDLER CRABS, OUT FOR LOW-TIDE LUNCH, Brig     cfe

NEW JERSEY BEAUTY - CLOUD MAJESTY   Brig     cfe

There were great egrets everywhere, like archangels at the Nativity, as well as black-bellied and American golden plovers, ibis beyond counting, a few skimmers not skimming, and osprey families everywhere we looked — some feeding young, one ‘mantling ‘ - waving mature wings to cool the immature!

Successful Osprey Family, The Brig    cfe

Duck and First Marsh Mallows of the Season     cfe

Glossy Ibis and Marsh Mallow, Brig    cfe

Wild Flowers (water lilies and Sagittaria) and Cranberry Bogs Near Chatsworth, #563,

The Empty, Beauty-Bracketed Route Home     cfe

As you can see, beauty and wildness are with you every step of the way to and from ‘The Brig.’

(”The Pretty Way” will have no cars to speak of, even on major holidays.  Route 1 South to 295 South to Columbus Exit to 206 South to Carranza Road/Tabernacle to 532 (stop at Russo’s for fresh-made cider doughnuts and very local produce).  532 east to 563 South to (I forget the number -[579?]) left to New Gretna below Chatsworth  Route 9 South, moments on GSP, Exit 48 Smithville, back onto Route 9 South below Smithville to left turn to Forsythe Wildlife Refuge after fire station, Lily Lake Road. See Noyes Museum of Art while down there.  Eat breakfast at The Bakery in Smithville; any time at Smithville Inn, and Oyster Creek Inn at Leeds Point, if it’s open when you’re there…)

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!

Summer’s Great Egret at ‘The Brig’  - viewed in February 2012    cfe

Your NJ WILD ‘reporter’ proved her passion for the wild yesterday.  A birding friend and I rode to the Brigantine Wildlife Refuge in the face of winds in the 40-50-mph range.  We knew birds wouldn’t be ‘up’ in such gusts and gales.  However, we could find snow geese, no matter what - and we’d both read the hotlines reporting ten tundra swans a-swimming…

There was only supposed to be 10% chance of precipitation.  En route, we drove through snow enough to require wipers.  Inky skies to the west could have presaged tornadoes or hurricane.  If you know birders, you know that we continued.

There may be nothing more thrilling then Pine Roads in snowfall.  The great privilege is being the only car on those stunning routes — #532 out of Tabernacle, #563 down through Chatsworth…

As though the pines themselves were holding up branches to say “Enough,” we were suddenly treated to dazzle-light through generosities of crisp green needles.  Light made its way even through oak leaves the hue of caramel.  Sacred sugar sand sifted and drifted along the sides of every roadway, (except that brief interruption of the GSP), so that our journey truly became destination.

Brig Vistas in Summer       cfe

Until, that is, we crossed the first bridge into the Brig.  Then the refuge and its creatures took center stage.

(This haven is the Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge - named for a Republican who saved major swathes of forest and water in the southern and eastern reaches of our beleaguered state.)

In waters at entry four ring-necked ducks floated, then flew — more vivid than we had realized.  For the first time, we reconsidered our duck hierarchy of beauty.  For a few hours, yesterday, wood ducks took second place.

Wood Duck Splendor, Brenda Jones

Barely three car-lengths onto the Gull Pond Road, we were stopped in our tracks.  In a pine that holds summer’s black-crowned night herons, a pale form rearranged itself into a great blue heron.  It did not look happy in those winds that caused even the Prius to shudder.  My friend’s Swarovskis soon found another great blue form, tucked deep into a pine to our left.  When my far lesser binoculars could find it, shadow rendered this heron even more blue.  Something whizzed over our windshield - paper-clip legs out behind revealing a third great blue.  I don’t remember now how the fourth one materialized, but we were in a near superfluity of herons.

Miserable Heron in  Snow, Millstone River, Brenda Jones

I haven’t seen many around here in Princeton this winter– but Anne Zeman and I had been ‘given’ four herons here January 2.  That day, the fab four had been chased from piney haven by a feisty young fox.  No fox yesterday.  However, of all things, a great egret stood proudly among all the blues, whiter than the snow that had surrounded us an hour earlier.  February is not egret time!

Summer’s Great Egret,  Brenda Jones

Buffeted Heron, Spring 2011,   Brenda Jones

We pulled ourselves away from these wonders, down to the gull tower.  There was no climbing in gusts, which my Chicago sister reports soared to 61 mph not far north of us.  My friend and I could barely open the car doors against this form of wildness. But it was thrilling to be out in it.  Earlier, at the Visitor Center, this new hip and I had to jog against wind so strong it felt as though I could lean on it like a mattress.

But Mary had to get her scope on those tundra swans.  On another body of water, for comparison’s sake, we were given a pair of mute swans, orange beaks blinding in windswept light.  These two are paired, as are the ones in our Marsh of Hamilton/Trenton/Bordentown.  But the tundras floated as though on a bathtub, as one, all in a row.  Their beaks were purest black and spade-like.  Individually and collectively, the tunderas remained elegant and serene upon wind-pleated waters, although not so commanding as nearby mute swans.  In the foreground, a flotilla of coots enhanced the elegance quotient, in velvety formal attire, white beaks gleaming.

Coot in Millstone, Brenda Jones

I popped back into the car to escape the winds, as Mary focused her scope on the twenty tundras.

Suddenly, a large flat-winged bird was coming straight at me.   Its image filled the entire car window.  It was so close and so large, I was only aware of shape, and its harrier-like motion over water (not a typical place for the harrier).  Mary confirmed that this was no harrier.  Rather the American bald eagle. Virtually eye-to-eye, he and I.

Eagle Diving For Thanksgiving Dinner, Lake Carnegie - Brenda Jones

Only he seemed unfazed by those winds.  For long moments, he stayed virtually motionless, in the hover position we know so well in kingfisher and hummingbird.  But this hovering, especially when he lowered his landing gear, seemed of far greater duration.

Our Nation’s Symbol, Brenda Jones

Then the eagle landed (sorry about that) in a short bright green shrub.  Like a film star of my parents’ day, he studiously gave us his best profile.  There is no carat measurement sufficient to measure, let alone honor, such gold.  Over and over he posed as the Great Seal of the United States.

Then the eagle leapt into air, as if to say “WHAT wind?”.  He returned to harrier-mode over grasses, and abruptly ’stooped’.  Meaning, he’d found prey.  Whatever it was (likely rabbit), must have been hugely satisfying, for we were never to see ‘our’ eagle rise from its pink-gold wildly rippling dining room.

As Mary reluctantly drove on, we each marveled: “This whole trip was worth it for the eagle scenes alone!”

Red-Tailed Hawk along D&R Canal, Brenda Jones

Our next gift was a red-tail in a tree, head turned attentively toward where there had been an eagle.  I suddenly realized that a cluster of American crows had flown abruptly past, right before I’d come eye-to-eye with an eagle.  Crows are known to mob this raptor.  These crows were in pure flight mode in every sense of that phrase.

The stars of the day, however, glory-wise, were Northern pintails.  That chic sharp angle at the neck is really thin.  But in dazzle-light, we found their cravats nearly blinding.  The pintails were even beautiful upside-down.  They were everywhere along the impoundments.  Counting was out of the question.

Isolate images stand out even now - the great black-backed gull, nicknamed, ‘The Minister’, feasting on a live crab, morsel by morsel.  The crab writhing.

Sudden wind-driven incoming tide wrinkling the saltwater until it seemed furiously crumpled foil.

Brooding brackish impoundments to our left resembling lava, even to blue-black hues beneath the sunglinted waves.

In all that turbulent expanse, shovelers stood out as still points.  Vibrant rust-to-orange, blinding white and darkest forest green, there is no more handsome fellow than drake shovelers, — handsome as opposed to elegant, like the pintails, who looked dressed for an embassy ball.  Shovelers, with their almost comical spade beaks, usually are nervously working the bottoms of runnels at low tide, scooping up nourishment for all they are worth.

We noticed that Canada geese are still in flocks, not romantically paired (as were the mute swans).

Mute Swan in the Stony Brook, Brenda Jones

Miracles continued to appear.  More buffleheads than we could count, in open water between the Brig and Tuckerton.  Over and over, the little black and white bobbers were rendered nearly invisible by tumultuous waves.

Dapper Bufflehead, Princeton, Brenda Jones

There’s no such thing as enough buffleheads, so Mary and I continued, despite the gale, to the ineptly titled “Experimental Pond.”  If ever you’re going to find irresistible diving ducks, it’s there.  I went into jogging mode anew, after having struggled to open the car door against Nature herself.  All that I found were four Canada geese, so I jogged back again - exultant that this new femur knows how to do that.

Mary was outside the car, in the face of all that wind, calling out, ‘Eagle, eagle!”  Her wondrous optics had found our original monarch of a raptor high overhead, no more than a dot above.  We stood there until our faces were well sun-and-wind-burned, watching him play the wind.  Talk about mastery.

American Bald Eagle, Over Carnegie Lake, Brenda Jones

On the way home, we both wondered why everyone isn’t a birder.  To think that anyone could experience such a treasure hunt, a mere 80-or-so miles south and east of Princeton, anytime he or she wants.  All you have to do is take the Pineroads south, and live in a state that knows about preservation.

Support your local land trust, wherever you are.  Mine, of course, is D&R Greenway.  I and my new hip return there in the morning, for the first time since November 9 surgery, to take up my mission newly.  It’s never BEEN more URGENT!

Lake Oswego Peace — South of  Chatsworth,     Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Desperately seeking the wild, I’ve returned to my Edward Abbey collection, making my way through his work and others writing about this literary rebel, this self-proclaimed ‘desert rat’.  It is essential right now that I live for awhile with ‘Cactus Ed’.

I need his crusty refusals of ‘growth and development’.  I require his ecstasy in the face of cactus and rattlesnake.  My healing leg ‘walks’ with Ed in these books — in his red rocks and among his cherished junipers, occasionally coming upon desert primrose, respecting the ever-present spider and viper.

But enough of this prickly Paradise.  I have my own.  And it’s in our state - in the spirit of Abbey, I defy myself to define Paradise, because mine is in New Jersey:

Lake Oswego Summer, South of Chatsworth, Pine Barrens   (cfe)

timelessness

tranquillity

shared with one attuned person or blessedly alone, sometimes with camera

there is sand, and/or marshland

Afloat, Lake Oswego — (cfe)

long silken grasses are kissed and rearranged by very varied tides

birds are ever present or possible: on the ground, in trees, ruffling the leaves, troubling the shrubs.  Birds are overhead.  They pierce tidal flats.  Wings flat out, they harry and raptor.  Some murmur, some croak.  Everywhere I walk, there are whistlings, whisperings and rustlings.  I am ever on the lookout for rails and bitterns, whether I ever find one or not.  A bird is downing two snakes in the time it takes to type this (as did a great egret at ‘The Brigantine’ some years ago).  A minuscule pied-billed grebe gulps a January frog, as happened a few weeks back.

Thistle Shimmer, Lake Batsto    (cfe)

back roads get me to Paradise — hushed roads, where I am often the only car.  Road edges are dusted with sugar sand.  Forest understory (which must contain evergreen and the luminous black jack oak), switches from laurel to blueberry to fern to pine seedlings and oakthrusts, and back again.

New Jersey Paradise is especially defined by its people - who live by the seasons and the tides.  The Abbey in me asserts, “not by the clock; and, by God, not by the Dow Jones Stock Index!”

the roads that lead to Carolyn’s Paradise must hold a beauty of their own, for at least 2/3 of the way.  Pine Barrens and Salem and Cumberland County provide such aesthetic conduits, away from commerce, to wildest nature

Idyllic Batsto Lake, Pine Barrens   (cfe)

roadways and destinations involve freshwater, saltwater, varying salinities, peatwater, whitewater, the stillness of the bays       darkling streams wind alluringly back under the dark pines, tugging at the kayaker in me

the regions I am exploring involve bogs and fens, spongs, groves and copses

rare plants lurk right around the next bend — curly grass fern, swamp pink, carnivorous flowers who must lure insects for protein due to the strange ph of soils in Carolyn’s New Jersey Paradise — sundew, pitcher plant — those ravenous ones…   when least expecting it, I am to be knocked over by wild fragrance, such as sweet pepperbush, along the peatwaters of Lake Oswego south of Chatsworth    rare lilies bloom in ditches as I drive       goldenclub erupts behind a dam I would otherwise despise with Abbey - but it did create this ideal habitat for a plant I’d only known in the splendid nature books of Howard Boyd

Among the Rare Lilies, Brigantine Wildlife Refuge  (cfe)

often in my wanderings to and through Paradise, I must come on mosses and lichens and occasional fungi.  Although I long to devour each mushroom, this foraging remains virtual, ignorance being quite the barrier where these savories are concerned

Leeds Point - Hard-Shell and Soft-Shell Crabs    cfe

quaint names are essential — alongside the back roads and out in front of farms, beside the waters:

“Troublesome Acres”   “Heaven’s Way Farm”  “Farrier”  Dividing Creek “Bears, Bucks and Ducks”   Shellpile   Bivalve   Caviar   Ong’s Hat — some of these names go back generations and centuries, and only the locals may know how to find them, by a crumbling foundation or some domestic plant run wild in another kind of wilderness   Applejack Hill’s name has been changed, for the tourists, to Apple Pie Hill — Abbey, are you listening?  Applejack, of course, — talk about terroir!– was/is New Jersey Lightnin’ — each Piney tending his own still with attention, experience and a shotgun.

Sneak Boat Ready to Sneak - Leeds Point   (cfe)

History must have happened in my Paradise — especially Native American and Revolutionary

Here a battle must have been fought and lost, such as the fiery Revolutionary fate of Chestnut Neck.

Here locals must have defied and overcome proud dazzlingly uniformed British, taking their ships and their stores inland from the coast, along the storied Mullica River - without which waters and watermen we would not have a nation today!

Clouds in the Water, Chatsworth Bogs  (cfe)

Here salt hay must have been harvested by man and horse in the steamiest of seasons, and great whales tugged ashore and ‘tried’ for their various riches.

Here traitors must’ve conspired, smugglers rowed by night, bootleggers brought contraband ashore to sell and to imbibe.

Leed’s Point - Smugglers’ Haven - Living Fishing Port    cfe

Here clammers still tug their rich provender onto deck and into seafood restaurants tethered to waterways, creaking boards hinting of sagas of old, as at Oyster Creek Inn at Leeds Point.

It helps that Leeds Point is the home of the Jersey Devil, whom I am still requesting to meet.

“Ready to Roll”  cfe

Intriguing restaurants must be nearby.  Farmers’ Markets must be open, and people must be selling the spring’s first asparagus, sliced from that meagre soil, at roadstands with a little box for the money for this treasure beyond price.  Russo’s Market in Tabernacle must have its spicy applesauce apples outside in thick plastic bags, next to the honesty box, at the beginning of winter.

Only people who treasure timelessness and tranquillity need apply for such journeys.

A day in the Pines will require about 200 miles of driving, longer if we detour to Tuckerton, formerly Clamtown.  Why Tuckerton?  Because great and little blue and tri-colored herons may stud the grassy reaches, depending on the tide, as we tool along Seven Bridges Road.  Because there’s a place along there, –out on a somewhat suspect roadway–, where one can stop for the freshest clams, unless one has wriggled them out personally, using one’s own toes.  Because at the end of this road, (and HOW I LOVE Land’s Ends!), there used to be an island village, now sea-claimed.  Here, in season, one can find the vivid oystercatchers in full breeding plumage, turning over the few rocks on the sandy approach to the bay.

Life of the Seasons and the Tides    Leeds Point   cfe

Because closer to town, one can happen to be there when evergreens are studded with black-crowned night herons, squawk-murmuring to one another as sun drops into autumnal waters.

Carolyn’s New Jersey Paradise has to include kayaking possibilities, for her physical therapist is promising ‘back in the craft’ by April.  If so, there is above all the Wading River to paddle and many ‘liveries’ to make these delicate journeys possible.  There is always the exquisite Barnegat Bay in Island Beach’s back reaches - those paddles used to be free, with naturalists leading us among the Sedge Islands.  There a feast of shore birds includes black skimmers not only skimming, but doing their odd sand squiggle on their bellies, when it’s just too hot.

Black Skimmers in Flight, Brenda Jones

I deeply understand Cactus Ed’s passion for the sere landscape of Arches and Canyonlands.  I relish, with him, the silence.  I don’t have rock formations in my Paradise, nor the song of the canyon wren and the slither of sidewinder.  His Paradise is red and pink and magenta and ochre and burnt sienna and irreplaceable.

Mine is mostly forest green, toasty oak, sometimes ruddy blueberry leaves, interspersed with limitless stretches of flooded cranberry bogs, throwing back the sunset.  In the distance, there is salt tang.  Close up, there is the sibilance of peatwater.

If Ed had known the Pine Barrens, –especially her crusty inhabitants–, I think he’d've approved.  Maybe only if he found it before Arches and Canyonlands.  He might’ve kayaked the Sedge Islands, and even boarded the restored oyster schooner down at Bivalve, and helped tug the sails into the sky while singing sea chanteys.

Revolutionary Massacre Site - Alloway Creek, Salem County — (cfe)

He’d probably hang out overnight, black flies and greenheads or no, on the sands of Reed’s Beach when it’s studded with courting, mating horseshoe crabs and whatever red knots and ruddy turnstones remain on our planet.

Bucolic Salem County, where Rebels Countered Redcoats and Prevailed    cfe

Paradise — for Ed and for me — seems to require a dearth of humans.  It need not be awash in critters, but there needs to be that ever-possibility.  Even the new health of New Jersey oysters, “Cape May Salts.”  Even the restoration of sturgeon to the Delaware River and elsewhere along this state of three coasts — once so enormous and plentiful that there is a mystery town still known as Caviar along the Delaware Bay.

An essential quality of Paradise, however, is that it cannot be explained.

So, inexplicably, I assert, New Jersey, especially South Jersey (and also Sandy Hook) holds varying versions of Paradise, all of them yours for the seeing.  And none of them seasonally-dependent.  Go for it!

Salem Preserved     cfe

AND, ABOVE ALL, SEE THAT ALL VERSIONS OF NEW JERSEY PARADISE ARE PRESERVED!

Lest, like Thoreau, we find out we had not lived…

Henry David Thoreau re Walden Year(s):

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

— Henry David Thoreau

January’s Short-Eared Owl, Pole Farm, off Cold Soil Road - Brenda Jones

When one is firmly instructed, regarding a cane, “Don’t leave home without it,” how can one access the wild?

When I was still in post-op mode, ‘extending the surgical leg’ and ‘building core strength’ became the heart of the matter of my odd life.

It occurs to me that others, without even having met the knife, may hesitate to set out on New Jersey Trails.  Even though I’ve been raving about them all these years, in NJ WILD and in print; even though you can go onto NJ TRAILS.org and discover super hiking spots in most counties in our state.

If you’re a beginner, or a somewhat reluctant returner to trails, where might you start?  Where might there be gifts for you, without the daunting?  If weight loss is mandated, and diet isn’t enough, where might you slim and strengthen, while being delighted by New Jersey Nature?

I’ve decided to list nearby trails that have turned me back into a walker, even though trails that climb are still verboten.  I’m setting out with prescribed cane and friend’s arm.  I have now been given official permission to set out alone, with my two trekking poles for balance and trip-protection.  None of these is far from Princeton, as you well know.

Bluebird in Full Cry, Brenda Jones

All hold gifts.  Give them a whirl.  I’ll see you out there!

My first trail adventure was the Hamilton/Trenton/Bordentown Marsh.  (www.marsh-friends.org).  There’s a flat road that circles Spring Lake, formed by a spring even before the land became sacred to Lenni Lenapes.  As those who read NJ WILD know, even though I could barely make 1/4 the lake road on that first forasy, we were greeted by a raft of the tiny white-billed coots on the lake; one stately swan; an unidentifiable flock of migrant birds against the lowering light; then a descent of silent geese into jungley waters to our right.  We barely made it in and out before sundown that time.  I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!

Today, that friend and I are heading back to the Marsh to do the entire lake road.  Those who can cross over the bridge into wooded areas of the Marsh are in for treats beyond counting.  Even with its watery name, the trails are dry and waterproof footwear is not essential.  In the Marsh in all seasons, I have found owls in the daytime, fox dens, and owl pellets.  Directions are on the Friends for the Marsh web-site.

Fox Listening for Vole, Pole Farm, Brenda Jones

My second trail excursion was the road alongside the quarry that is now a lake at Plainsboro Preserve.  It’s a broad flat expanse, with a sacred beechwood on the left and a shimmer of water hiding the former industrial might of this site.  In winter, rare ducks stud the lake surface.  Inside the beechwood, the temperature is ten degrees warmer in winter, cooler in summer — because of the microclimate.  I only ventured into the beechwood this time, because that trail is rough underfoot for ‘the surgical leg’.  In season, probably June, the beechwood hides exquisite secret plants, the frail white Indian pipe, and the ruddy almost invisible beech drops.  On our road, my friend and I were surrounded by bluebirds, like the house-cleaning scene in Snow White in my childhood.  We both yearn to return for bluebird blessings.

http://www.njaudubon.org/SectionCenters/SectionPlainsboro/Introduction.aspx

Numbers never matter to me - so I don’t know which treks were the footbridge over the Delaware River, from Bull’s Island to the Black Bass Inn and back.  That luminous, windswept stretch was the site of final hikes with the leg that very nearly refused to work.  I have now accomplished it twice and merrily, in full sun and exuberant wind, above the river I fought so hard to save in the 1980’s from the dread and all-conquering PUMP.  There is a fellowship of the footbridge that is a joy in any season.  Taking others inside the Black Bass to encounter the real original zinc bar from Maxim’s is a thrill for all my francophile friends.  The food is delightful and the riverside setting cannot be topped.

One could even push someone in a wheelchair along the footbridge.  It’s necessary to enter on the Jersey side, usually — few parking places in PA.  They don’t cherish their towpath and canal as we do…  There’s plentiful parking at Bull’s Island, and many (rockier, rootier, not yet for me) trails which are a joy, especially in spring, when I have encountered trees on the Island with more warblers than leaves.

http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/parks/bull.html

The Sourlands is full of trails, again to be found via NJ TRAILS.org.  I have twice now been privileged to hike the one off Greenwood Avenue, (north from Route 518, Hopewell, at Dana Building.)  Once, that earthen road was used to carry out the boulders now preserved, to turn them into gravel to build New Jersey Roads.  Now the roadway leads ever inward, among boulders that bring Stonehenge to mind.  The overstory reveals beeches and tulip trees, the occasional shagbark hickory.  The understory is brightened and softened by mosses and ferns.  The air is alive with the sound of visible and invisible watercourses.

On Saturday, children’s voices rang ahead and behind us on the trail.  I wanted to find Richard Louv and tell him, In the Sourland Mountain Preserver, there are children in the woods, and they are laughing and even splashing, in January!

Sourlands Trail in January, Brenda Jones

This coming weekend, I’ll try Griggstown Grasslands, newish preserve off Canal Road, where I live, just south of the Griggstown Causeway.  We’ll drive up the steep entry and take that long earthen road, weather permitting.  There are lovely grasslands there, tended for the sake of birds who require especially in nesting season.  At Griggstown Grasslands, as we did on Saturday at the Sourland Mountains Preserve, I can pick up the welcome whiff of morning’s fox, who had obviously been assiduously marking his territory.

Foxy Close-Up, Brenda Jones

http://www.njaudubon.org/SectionConservation/FranklinTownshipSomersetCounty/GriggstownNativeGrasslandPreserve.aspx

I’m not currently essaying the D&R Canal and Towpath, because of too many storms and floods - fearing too much unevenness underfoot(e).

No, I haven’t made it to the Pole Farm, yet.  This has been officially designated an Important Birding Area, and holds wild treasures in all seasons.  There’s a road, there, longer than all I’ve described here.  The short-eared owls should be soaring at dusk, foxes ever-possible.

http://www.njaudubon.org/SectionIBBA/IBBASiteGuide.aspx?sk=2938

The moral of this post is, even tethered to a cane, the Princeton region is full of the wild. It’s easily accessed and will enrich you beyond measure.

And keep an eye on the skies around Carnegie Lake - ‘our’ American bald eagles should be courting and nest-building as we ’speak’.

American Bald Eagle, Millstone Aqueduct, Brenda Jones

How fortunate we are to live in WILD New Jersey…

Pied-Billed Grebe Swallowing Frog, January 3, 2012, by Anne Zeman

NJ WILD readers know that my favorite non-Princeton excursion is to the Brigantine Wildlife Refuge (a.k.a. Forsythe), near Smithville and (arrgghh!) Atlantic City.  ‘The Brig’ has served as my own wild refuge since I discovered it somewhere in the 1990’s.

Bays and impoundments are threaded by firm sand roads (actually dikes), so drivers may bird in all seasons, in all weathers.  Differing salinities allow different plants to grow, providing nourishment and shelter for wild birds.  The refuge is supported by duck stamps.

I’ve literally been at ‘the Brig’ in fire and in ice.  Fire being controlled burns, to keep dread phragmites (towering blinding reeds that destroy foods and shelter required by wild birds); and ice which sometimes even closes ‘the Brig.’  So I go over to Scott’s Landing and up to Tuckerton, off the Garden State Parkway, but there is nothing like ‘the Brig’.

On the first Monday of 2012, I was given my first post-hip-op trip to this haven with dear friend and consummate birder, (co-founder and co-sustainer of Kingston Christmas Bird Count), Anne Zeman.  Her astounding picture opens this post.

No one can ever declare “best local birding day”, but it was definitely a contender.  In terms of quality and quantity of sightings, that day was as though we had taken seven trips ’round, instead of the single one my recent surgery dictated.

Great Blue Heron in Snow, Brenda Jones

Before we even reached the Gull Pond Tower, we had a first.  We became aware of three great blue herons in water, and one perched overhead (that tree in other seasons holds black-crowned night herons).  This primordial scene was right across Gull Pond after our turn.  Suddenly, all birds took off as one, arrowing over our car as though shot by Hiawatha.  Something significant had spooked these birds who are usually the essence of calm.

With her superb optics, Anne found the reason - a fox, in daytime, prancing toward the pond among shrubs and some debris of fallen trees.  Anne has never seen a fox at the Brig - though they sip from her Kingston pond…  When I’d stay overnight down there, to be first car in before dawn, and/or last car out, I could follow foxes down woods-enclosed roadways.  But, even for me, it’s been a long time between foxes.

Fox Close-Up, Brenda Jones

Anne Zeman, and her husband Mark Peel, are the type of birders who travel avidly to other states and other lands in search of new species.  Even so, they remain super-loyal to New Jersey, in particularly their own Kingston, and ‘the Brig’.

Looking back on our day, Mark and Anne remain most amazed by our having found ten species of winter ducks.  But this is a contest we cannot call, what was the most astounding.

Our immediate next bird was a pied-billed grebe.  This tiny member of the duck family, in water beside the car, [and we still weren't even at the tower], was calmly swallowing an enormous frog.  Its prey seemed quite alive - legs kicking and all that.  Anne hopes frog was ’still in winter torpor.’  I remain astonished that any cold-blooded creature was ‘findable’ on the second day of January.  That saucy little elegant grebe was as matter-of-fact about his brunch as though it were a mere canape.  He sailed immediately off, afterwards, in quest of other delicacies.

I’m not going to be able to recreate that day for NJ WILD.  It would take seven posts.  So I’ll just list our species in order.  And you can go see for yourself.

Here’s my secret route, upon which even on major holidays, we are mostly the only car on Pine Barrens roads. US 1 South to 295 South to the Columbus Exit.  Go toward town, take 206 (left jughandle) exit (South) and proceed past Contes Farm Market at 70 Traffic Circle.  Left (south) on Carranza Road.  Left (east) at Russo’s Farm Market onto 532.  Right (south) in Chatsworth onto 563.  Left (east) onto 679 into New Gretna.  South (right) onto 9 which takes you onto Garden State Parkway over Mullica River for moments.  Off at exit 48 for Smithville.  Back onto 9 South, to Lily Lake Road and Forsythe Wildlife Refuge.  Keep these directions for Fourth of July and Labor Day - you won’t believe your solitude, as you meander through the heart of cranberry country to the heart of New Jersey birding in all seasons.

Species list, January 2, 2012     [bolds are duck species]

Buffleheads

Bufflehead, Brenda Jones

Red-winged blackbirds, first-year

Red-Winged Blackbird in Usual Season, Brenda Jones

Great blue herons and Anne says yellow-crowned but I couldn’t see crown

FOX

Mallards

PIED-GILLED GREBE EATING FROG

Shovelers - when tipped, legs bright breeding orange

Coots - not only in water but walking on grasses like guinea hens

Black ducks

Northern pintails

(notes in here re slate-blue water, opened window allows ‘eau de fox’ to bless us)

oh, yes, American Bald Eagle soaring flapless over Absecon Bay, never moving a feather, out of sight

Northern harrier, harrying grasses with Atlantic City in background

(note - window open, duck laughter makes me jump!)

Green-winged teal — green blindingly vivid as they turned toward eastern light

(window open - familiar cherished sound…  could it be… YES!)

Snow geese, like mounds of snow, all over grasses between us and bay and casinos.  Their half murmur, half bark alerted us to a few on high.  Then more, and more, until the sky was FULL of snow geese.  Possibly tens of thousands of them.  Muttering, almost meowing, their communication blessed every moment of the rest of our circuit.  Overhead, they seemed to be asking of their myriad of relatives on the grass, “Request permission to come ashore.”

Hooded Mergansers

Common Mergansers

Hundreds of shorebirds, doing their flying-as-one-creature routine, then settling and settling onto water - probably dowitchers.  Very very far from us, no matter which turn of the road we might be on.

Ring-billed gulls

Great black-backed gulls

oh, yes, and robins beyond counting back in woods and lawns at the gate

As we reluctantly finished our exploration, we recounted our day - starting with fox/heron and grebe before even reaching Gull Pond Tower.

“spit full of snow geese.” quipped Anne.

“The queens of today — female mergansers.”

“All those shorebirds”

I, on doctor’s orders, had to walk every thirty minutes.  So “walking with the coots was a first.”

“A preponderance of coots” - perhaps most we’ve seen in entire lives…

“A day of shoveler legs”

“Benediction of herons”

“The eagle — a thousand thousand times more important than Atlantic City”

At which point, of all things, on the last bridge between two waters, a fox came prancing right along the side of the road, all dappled in shrub shadow, bright-eyed and literally bushy-tailed, and not at all upset by these human visitors.  Anne either saw one fox twice, or two in one day.  I saw this one - he seemed to be there for formal farewell.

We called the fox our finale.

Fox Listening for Winter Prey, Brenda Jones

My dear NJ WILD readers know that I spend my weekdays at D&R Greenway, helping to call attention to the importance and urgency of saving nature in New Jersey.

One of our key programs is, somewhat uniquely, art in the service of preservation.

Our new Curator, Diana Moore, is a legend in her own time.  She has gathered stunning images, particularly oil paintings by Joe Kazimierczyk and photographs by Vladimir Voyevodsky of the Institute for Advance Study, for the show opening Monday, October 24, through December 2.  Walking through the Upmeyer Room, arrayed with Joe’s scenes of lands we’ve preserved, is like a stroll in the forest, even when it’s pouring outside.  The Voyevodsky (iconic Institute mathematician) images of birds and animals of the Institute Woods leave me as weak in the knees as a day in the Brigantine (Wildlife Refuge, near Smithville).

Our Brenda Jones has four splendid photographs in the key position of the Evelyne V. Johnson Room, three of which include natural materials spilling from image over mat.  Al Barker of Bordentown has works which stun, not only for their luminous precision, but for their exceeding low price as a favor to us.  His work normally sells in the four-figure range.

The Art Opening is November 6, Sunday, from 4 - 6.  As you will see, all are welcome and these festive receptions are always free.

The art may be seen business hours of business days at One Preservation Place, off Rosedale Road.

All art is for sale, 35% supporting our preservation and stewardship mission.

Please come see the art, and experience our 1900 barn, which belonged to Robert Wood Johnson.

Now it is a focus of art and preservation!

New art exhibit at D&R Greenway featuring preserved lands Art exhibit events Please call 609.924.4646 or email to RSVP to either event. Art Opening Reception Sunday, November 6, 4-6pm Light refreshments will be served at the reception. Cedar Waxwing by Vladimir Voevodsky A Bird’s Eye View: Presentation by Michael McCann Tuesday, Nov. 15, 7-8:30pm See for yourself New Jersey’s changing landscape from 1930 to the present through historic and current aerial photography. See fields disappear and villages grow together as New Jersey’s population increases from 4 million to 10 million residents. Quick Links RSVP by email About D&R Greenway Directions to the Johnson Education Center “Friends in Field & Forest:” Celebrating Partners in Preservation Open for viewing: October 24 through December 2 during business hours of business days Cornfield Trail by Joe Kazimierczyk An art and photography exhibit highlighting partnership lands protected by D&R Greenway in Princeton: Greenway Meadows, Coventry Farm and the Institute for Advanced Study Woods. With a special exhibit of plein-air paintings created on Green Acres lands, incorporating natural materials, in celebration of the New Jersey Green Acres Program’s 50th Anniversary. The art opening reception and A Bird’s Eye View presentation are both free and open to the public. Please RSVP if you would like to attend either event.