Richard Louv writes of the Last Child in the Woods. Yesterday, two friends and I became Grownups in the Woods…  May we not be the last!

My Sister, Pathfinder, on Earlier Sourlands Walk     cfe

Sunday’s weather forecast, as usual, had been dire.  But two friends I had known well in the 1980’s, recently reconnected, and I boldly set out nonetheless for my favorite Sourlands hike.  We decided to hike til the storms came down, –despite forbidding ‘heat indices’–, because we were hungry for forest time.

[Turn right off #518 in Hopewell, onto Greenwood Avenue by the Dana Building.  Go steadily uphill, past Featherbed Lane, past metal guard-rail, past Mountain Church Road and turn right at sideways brown sign - Sourland Mountains Preserve.  Space for about six cars.  Head off up the road built to remove majestic boulders, to be ground to gravel for NJ roads...  In case NJ WILD readers forgot why I'm 'in preservation.']

Sourlands’ Dappled Beauty      cfe

Beauty was immediate, on every side.  Trees towered.  Light sprinkled into the far woods.  A tiny stream whisper-trickled to our right.  Suddenly, my first wood thrush song of the season poured out in flute trills that seemed to echo on all sides.  Increasingly imperiled because deer devour our forest understory, and they are ground feeders, the song of the wood thrush stopped me in my hike-intensive tracks.  I told my re-found companions, “This was Thoreau’s favorite bird sound.”  We all understood why.

Carla, who had not been on this trail before, stopped, stunned.  “It’s a green cathedral!,” she gasped in hushed tones.  Karen, who also lives in Hopewell, hadn’t been there in a couple of years.  She turned and turned like a child at the country fair.

In the woods, actually, nothing happened.  That was the whole point.  Carla, who both lives and works in and around sleepy Hopewell, nevertheless kept remarking on the silence, the immediate stillness.  I did warn them, and NJ WILD readers — you, also, that, in hunting season, one only walks this trail on Sundays or bedecked in orange garments, because of hunters.  I am grateful to the hunters.  Their marksmanship in winter, thins the herds.  Therefore, more than I ever remember in the Sourlands, I found the leaves of rare spring flowers.  Meaning they hadn’t been munched into extinction.  Because of the hunters, there are still thrushes.  Not enough.

On either side of the trail spurted thin, bamboo-like tendrils of horsetail/silica.  The wire-thin stems separate easily.  I take this forest herb as a daily capsule to keep fingernails so crisp and tough that they can tighten screws.  The horsetail plant is good for hair, also, in ways I forget.  The Indians used a fistful of horsetail, one of the world’s oldest plants, to scour out their cooking vessels.  The silica plant was their Brillo pad.  One of the aspects of forest walks I most treasure is that there are whole sagas in a mere tuft of green…

Everywhere we found jack-in-the-pulpit’s leaf trinity.  Its pulpit is ‘gone by’ — with the forest canopy fully leafed out.  “Appropriate,” observed Carla, for a Sunday morning, –Fathers’ Day, as we would later recall.  “Appropriate,” she repeated, “in this green cathedral.”

We found cushions of another ancient plant, ‘princess pine’, which is no pine at all but a moss from millennia ago.  It seemed as though evergreen stars had fallen onto the forest floor.  Tiny pink-beige seeds waved upon long thin pale stems, nearly obscuring the faery forest from which they sprang.

I turned us at the first trail to the right, because it circulates alongside a meandering stream.  No signs reveal the name of that waterway.  Even so, it is pure joy, especially on a day when the over-90’s are forecast.  We were cool in dappled shade.  Spills of sun lit the woods as golden mushrooms do after day-long gentle rains.

Ferns of many species leapt on one side, then the other.  We were surrounded by the delicate (but to me misleadingly named) New York fern,  Its fronds widen, then narrow, at both ends of the stem - unusual in fern reality.  Next, we came upon a fatter, tougher fern whose name I do not know, which I rarely encounter, anywhere, not even in the Berkshires.  Then hefty black-green Christmas ferns created an entire grove at our feet.  Off trail, a generous glade of ferns rejoiced in sun so bright the ferns seemed yellow.  One of the gifts of the old forest, though by no means virgin, of the Sourlands, is the profusion of plants of ancient times.

We could feel the solid, centering, strengthening energy of diabase boulders on all sides, some so tall that they dwarfed us.  Some rocks presided, some loomed, some even smiled.

Rock that Smiles, Sourlands     cfe

The fun part about taking the trail’s first fork is that one is, on a hot day, deep in wood-’coolth’.  A bonus was that we were keeping company with a stream.  Sometimes, one is actually in the stream, but for a spillway of convenient stones.  Most are flat enough and stable enough for crossing.  Elsewhere our ‘bridge’ was a low lattice of downed saplings, placed by the vigilant maintainers of these intriguing paths.

Brenda Jones’ Box Turtle from Plainsboro Preserve

We searched intently for turtles.  Although I have found box turtles on Sourlands trails in the past, we had no amphibians this day.  Box turtles are terrestrial, not requiring water as do most of their relatives.  So if you find one, don’t take it to the water.  The waterstrider ballet along the stream’s peaceful surface made up for turtle absence.

Blazes were new and bright and visible, unlike the time Karen Linder and I once headed over there for a winter hike, not realizing they’d had an ice storm in the Sourlands, so near.  Unfortunately, blazes then were grey or silver at best.  So is ice.  Up at the top of the road of yesterday, Karen and I turned east, as had the sleet.  We couldn’t find the blazes.  Luckily, we can both navigate ‘by the seat of our pants’, ultimately finding our way back to the car without having to retrace our steps.  Adventure is a key factor in nature excursions with friends.

Karin-of-yesterday remembered a long-ago picnic atop iconic boulders.  I had to tell her that that trail had been closed for some years.  Partly because of people’s not respecting the rocks — from climbing  (forbidden at the info sign at entry: “NO BOULDERING” — new verb) to desecrating them with words.  To our joy, when our stream trail curved back to the road that had permitted ‘graveling’, we found the path to the boulders open.

For a long while we sat upon them, they lay on them, allowing rock energy to infuse our entire beings, weary from disparate work weeks.  Only at the end did I discover that we were surrounded by white spires of buds about to pop.  Because of the splendid black and white photography of Sourlands resident Rachel Mackow, I figured those scepters had to be black cohosh.  Only one had opened into flat petals, like tiny saucers of rich cream.  Until yesterday, black cohosh blooms had been mystery, even myth to me.  I thought they were given only to Rachel because she is such a sensitive photographer, so attuned to nature.  But there we were, on the eve of the Solstice, three women reunited after far too long, set in a crown of cohosh.

On the way down, we passed the ladder about which I had written a poem in other years, “Hauptman’s Ladder.”  The egregious Lindbergh kidnapping had taken place so near to where we hiked.  That baby had been born the same time as the man to whom I had been married, then next-door to the Morrows in Englewood.  That tragedy had been woven all into Werner’s life, as his father moved into the baby’s room until Hauptman was supposedly identified as the criminal.  Pops slept with his newborn son’s hand curled around his own, a Doberman at their sides, until the trial.  The trial took place in also nearby Flemington.

Of course, this rudimentary ladder of today’s Sourlands Preserve couldn’t be that one, but its echoes remain. Only now, the massive tree against which it had always stood, the top of which the ladder came nowhere near, has been felled by one of our many violent storms.  The rickety handmade weathered ladder lies on top of the downed trunk.  In memory and imagination, that ladder is elsewhere for me.

Ladder and Birdhouse      cfe

All-in-all, we were in the dense Sourlands Woods for 2 1/2 hours.  Most of that time, we were absolutely alone on the trails.  There was no sound but our footfalls and a cascade of flicker calls, the purr of red-bellied woodpecker, one complex veery cascade, and those heavenly wood thrush solos.  Tragic to me was hearing not one ovenbird.  Named for their oven-like nests in undergrowth, these elusive birds are far more often heard than seen:  “Teacher, teacher, teacher!”, the bird books insist they cry out.  No teacher was called yesterday.  Meaning, there are still too many deer.

Doe With Fawn by real photographer - Brenda Jones

We couldn’t have taken this walk, were it not for preservation and stewardship.

Remember this.

Go, be a grownup in the woods!

It’s ‘unseasonably’ hot this morning, and I don’t have to be at work until 2.  D&R Greenway is hosting an archaeology talk at D&R Greenway tonight, on the Lenni Lenapes and the Bonapartes-of-Bordentown, who lived above  the Hamilton-Trenton-Bordentown Marsh.  (Call 609-924-4646 to register for free 6:30 program: The Cultural History of the Marsh.

When I’m the food stylist for evening events, mornings take place at home, –at my speed, my priorities.  Of course, I head straight to the Towpath [near #518 off Canal Road where I now live.]  D&R Greenway began as a non-profit to save land near the D&R Canal and Towpath.  Friends for the Marsh exists ‘under our umbrella’, and we’re featuring their juried photography exhibition this summer, on our circa-1900 barn walls.  I walk this trail and ponder the miracles of hard-won preservation.

What literally strikes me first, as I clamber from the car and move onto the more or less authentic canal bridge, is the force of the sun.  It sears like August sun in Provence.  One of my Provence poems complains, “August strikes its flat sword blade”.  One fled the sun of August in Provence, as though it were a vindictive sword wielded by a heedless barbarian.  I feel this way in this light on this trail, even though I am awash in fragrances headier than those distilled from Provencal petals in Grasse over the hill from my villa.

I want to capture what was given on this morning’s hot towpath, before all so rudely ended.

A bower of berry blossoms - hence, heady, even dizzying scents on all sides

Fern groves; hefty skunk cabbage clusters in the hollow.

First swathes of bright yellow ‘flags’, wild iris, –very very native.

Mockingbird trills, –over and over and over again.

PHOEBE!  PHOEBE! - this tiny bird shouting its name, and answered to my right and to my left.

Bullfrog bellows.  Sometimes they call to mind Casals or Yo Yo Ma - but this is too earthy and flat-out territorial for classical reference.

“Pretty pretty me!”  “Pretty pretty me” - the sweet narcissism of the yellow warbler.

Two fragrances now - honeysuckle vying with berries, –too much sweetness, really, until I long for a whiff of fox, of skunk, of something rank decaying into the trail.

But I find myself flinching every time I move out of treeshadow into sunglare.  Now, I remember hot Memorial Days, even in Michigan, definitely in Princeton.  Even so, there is a suffocating inescapable quality to this sultriness, even so early, that thrusts me right into the subject of catastrophic climate change - something NJ WILD readers might suspect I came out on the trail to forget.

Spring is at its zenith.  Summer, that predator, is literally at my throat.

Everything is that too-green that it will stay until the first coppery glints of woodbine and poison ivy remind,  “Don’t worry.  Fall is coming!”

At first, others on the Towpath are captivated by the miracle of running through this tunnel of blossoms.  Their gaze meets mine, even the men whispering in passing.  Then, as heat takes over, runners flash past without greeting.  “Ha!,” I think, bitterly, “fitness is more important than fellowship.”

But my soundlessness and timelessness are short-lived.

I become aware of frenzied traffic, hurtling like missiles along the road that used to be Tranquillity Central.  Then, the sound I hate above all others, back-up beeps of trucks.  I don’t know where I am, because the green and blossoms are so thick here — so I don’t know how to avoid these trucks, which clatter, clang and growl frontwards and shriek backwards, while the hard-hatted men who tend them shout above their own cacophony.  Overhead, first one helicopter.  Then another.

I turn, pick up the pace, head back to the bridge.  Damn!  I probably can’t ever hike this part of the trail again.

It holds everything I flee - what NJ WILD readers have heard me decry over and over, DESTRUCTION in the name of CONSTRUCTION.

Others turn, also.  We’re a human traffic jam fleeing human traffic.

The only blessing is a birdsong I almost know but haven’t heard yet in 2010 — and then I see it in silhouette, right over my head.  As I focus my ‘glass’ upon the unknown soloist, orange and black that out-Princeton Princeton flash in the hot white light.  First Baltimore Oriole.

Worthy of the journey…

Equal of the Eastern towhee who blessed my departure for work yesterday morning.  I want to see Nature as the victor…

Can she be, with us in the equation?

Sand Along ‘The Hook’          Carolyn Foote Edelmann

NJ WILD readers know, my favorite past-time is taking friends to NJ Nature — especially to places they have never seen, despite having lived here for decades beyond counting.  Yesterday, I experienced the joy of opening the book of Sandy Hook to dear friend, Tasha O’Neill.  It’s her birthday-time, so this was in honor of that milestone.  My further motivation was to cross a bridge with her into to a year of newness.

‘Cranes of Sandy Hook’ - Bridge to Newness     cfe

Sandy Hook did not disappoint.  First, it shimmered on our horizon, as we feasted on seafood at Bahr’s Restaurant.  Fishing boats and fishermen arrived and departed, many garbed in those deep yellow or orange waterproof overalls which set apart the lobstermen of Maine.  All too soon, Tasha will be on the Maine coast for the summer.  Meanwhile, this landlubber must continue day-long excursions to encounter saltwater, salt tang.

The surreal new bridge filled some Bahr’s windows, as pile-drivers created their own anvil chorus during part of our immersion in oysters, then scallops and soft-shell crabs.

Bahr’s Seafood, across from Sandy Hook    cfe

Bahr’s Essentials, Across from Sandy Hook   cfe

Then off, over the wild bridge to the true wild — nature pruned only by seawinds, air-borne salt, and time.  Yes, there is the military presence.  I have scant patience with that anywhere, and here among the dunes their batteries are just that - they batter my aesthetic consciousness, batter my soul.  But even batteries look good in sharp coastal light, and Tasha, Gallery 14 fine art photographer, may have captured their abstractions in her long wide heavy but magical lens.

Home is the Fisherman — Bahr’s Docks  cfe

A walk out on the boards into Spermaceti Cove yielded her first osprey of the season.  It was low-coasting like a harrier, then float-landing upon its last-year nest.  What it bore was not food but nest-material, plentiful in the salt marsh.  Evidence of strong full-moon tides was painted everywhere in that meander-landscape.  The austere lines of the boardwalk created a perfect foil to all that circularity and dampness.

Tide Signatures, Spermaceti Cove, Sandy Hook  cfe

We marveled, as always, at prickly pear cactus among a profusion of soft pinky-white blossoms (shad bush? beach plum?  I do not know my shrubs).  Above these native succulents, ruddy poison ivy shivered and glistened in harsh wind.

Lifesavers’ Station    cfe

We circled the lifesavers’ headquarters — weathered since that profession was founded in this country, along New Jersey coasts.  We forged into the wind, through too-shallow dunes, to the ocean - eerily silent as lowering tide tugged waves away from us.  I shuddered at the sight of an obese woman, on this April day, in this near-gale, sunburnt, standing, talking on her cell phone, back to the ocean.  This was right up there with the friend who allowed her cellphone to shatter the tranquillity of Ringing Rocks Park last week.  Sunbathers were everywhere, admittedly bundled.  Oblivious, it seemed, to avian riches awaiting at the hawk platform at the north end of Sandy Hook.

Yesterday’s Gale — cfe

We took the Fishermen’s Trail for awhile, where, I knew, oystercatchers awaited.  Nesting oystercatchers!  But, word on my birding hot line from Scott Barnes that morning had revealed over 1000 raptors flying over ‘the Hook’ the day before, fully engaged in spring migration.  Asking Tasha if she wanted to go into the lifesaving building and museum, which is fascinating, she answered swiftly, “I want to see birds!”

Fishermen’s Trail, leading to Hawk Watch Platform    cfe

So, we trekked right up to the platform, where a generous counter was already trying to keep up with the sharp-shins and Cooper’s (hawks) and Merlins (falcons) zooming overhead, over the Verrazano Narrows, right toward Wall Street, misty upon the horizon.  The determined speed of these migrating miracles was a recurring surprise throughout the rest of our bird-blessed afternoon.  Zippy tree sparrows coalesced overhead.  A mockingbird serenaded, invisibly, as did a feisty Carolina wren.  Mike pointed out an American kestrel arrowing past, then turned the scope on nesting female osprey, vigilant males near enough that we could frequently ‘capture’ “two in one glass.”  One osprey nest was on a chimney.  That osprey battled a too-interested local immature red-tailed hawk, –too near, too near, he made that clear.  Mike barely had time to add to his already hefty list of raptors, before he calmly noted an immature American bald eagle right overhead.

Brenda Jones’ American Bald Eagle Flying Straight — [ours was immature]

Soon Tasha and I were delighted to see Scott Barnes hurrying up the trail - having been tethered to a desk for one entire, probably interminable, hour on this scintillating day.  Hearing the two men report on their own bird-blessings and those of Pete Bacinski, the other expert on ‘The Hook’, it became clear that it would be hard for either to tear himself away before sundown.

They taught us that they can tell migrants from locals because the migrants are in such a hurry — they don’t even pause (as birds are said to do at Cape May, at East Point Lighthouse) to consider the water, but plunge on north.

Pristine Waters of Sandy Hook    cfe

We were part of something sacred yesterday, Tasha and I.  We were within a river of birds.  And two splendid ‘captains’ were at the helm of our understanding, –expanding, expanding, seeming to call forth wonders just by their intense attention.

Do the same, NJ WILD readers.  You won’t regret it.

Barnegat Bay, April, Carolyn Foote Edelmann

OK, it’s cold, dreary and rainy in our New Jersey today.  Even so, we remain the only state with three coastlines.  So, I am thinking of beaches.

Nobody seems to realize that we are tri-coastal:

the Shore, of course.  As in ‘down the Shore’.  As in Atlantic Ocean washing our barrier beaches and our mainland.

Island Beach April Solitude, Full Atlantic   cfe

the Delaware River.  A few do remember ‘Del.’  Right now she’s surging with healthy shad, hurtling upriver for spring’s re-creation rites, while pale shadbushes bloom along her banks.

and, our most unknown blessing, the Delaware Bay.  Where there used to be more millionaires per block than anywhere in the world — because of our oyster industry.  Shellpile.  Bivalve.  Caviar — where we shipped sturgeon roe from our waters to Russia to turn into that most luxurious commodity.  The Delaware Bay, where increasingly scarce red knots, ruddy turnstones and more plentiful laughing gulls and others and some sandpipers, must feed on horseshoe crab eggs at a crucial moon of May, in order to reach their breeding grounds.  Without doubling their weight in that two-week sojourn on our Delaware Bay (Reed’s Beach especially), they cannot make the journey.  Or, making it, they cannot successfully breed.  Rising waters, shrinking beaches, to say nothing of overfishing horseshoe crabs for bait and fertilizer, seriously compromise red knots and ruddy turnstones.

Ted Cross, whose art is at D&R Greenway Land Trust here, immortalizes his favorite red knots

It is possible to live in or near New Jersey for decades without meeting her spectacular unspoiled beaches.  Just as outsiders think oil tanks when they hear our name - they also think gambling, boardwalks, honky tonk and cotton candy.  These do not constitute destinations for me, rather travesties, tragedies, of what used to be WILD NJ.

Bayfoam, Barnegat, April    cfe

Public beaches generally cannot hold a candle to Sandy Hook and Island Beach, where dunes and sands and bayberries vie with holly and lichen and poison ivy, never pruned except by salt-laden winds, all these centuries.  On certain points of ‘the Hook’ and all points of Island Beach, it is possible to be where there is not sign of the human except for the road or the trail through the dunes…

On a recent Sunday, I spent an idyllic day trekking Island Beach’s many sideways, dune-sheltered paths  –first to the Bay, then to the Ocean.  I did not set out due south for Barnegat Inlet and its seminal view of ‘Old Barney’, Barnegat Light, because the wind was too high.  Flags straight out, which usually means 25 - 30 miles an hour.  The secret of I.B. is that one can escape winds in all seasons by heading east and west through those towering dunes.

“Heather Bald” — Hudsonia and Lichen    cfe

My idea of a perfect beach day includes beachside greenery, especially Island Beach’s rare Hudsonia, and its (to this Midwesterner) always unexpected but so native prickly pear cactus.  Ten years ago, June, I met highbush blueberries along the Spizzle Creek Trail.  Each bush offered berries of a different hue, size, juiciness, and above all savor.  It was like a wine tasting, each new handful of sunwarmed berries.

Tomorrow’s Blueberries, cfe

My paradise must include osprey - and this Sunday they were everywhere, on feeding platforms, on nests, building nests, guarding nests, changing the guard on nests, carrying fish in that aerodynamically flawless position, head first into the sea winds.

My heaven days, again because of having grown up in Michigan, includes the distant sound of surf.  Our  ’surf’ rolled in on Lake Michigan and Lake Superior beaches — (I had little patience for the other great lakes.)  Michigan didn’t have salt air or tides, and tides continue to baffle me to this day.

If one is, as I am, of a certain age, one is given, with no trouble atall, a free lifetime pass to Island Beach - merely by filling out a quick form in the entry area.

They’ll also hand you a stern reminder that it is absolutely forbidden to feed the foxes.  A pale fox, nowhere near red - rather strawberry blonde — met us immediately after we read the notice.  Hours later, another blonde fox bid us farewell.  I have been told that normally nocturnal foxes are bleaching now, because the spend so much time in the sun.  Their rose-petal footprints are everywhere in the far dunes — straight and determined, knowing, eternal explorers.

Place of Fox Tracks, Reed’s Road to the Bay   cfe

My favorite first walk is almost immediately on the right.  It meanders through a handsome split-rail fence, then slices through dunes and wends through evergreen woodlands to the Bay.  For all the world, this could be Good Harbor near Lake Leelanau on Lake Michigan in childhood.  There is no vista dearer to me than first spying blue water through evergreens - in this case, red cedar.

I met this walk, Reed’s Beach, years ago at 20 degrees with 20 mph winds, in quest of Bohemian waxwings among the cedar waxwings and robins.  As a dear friend and fellow birder taunted, at the end, “Carolyn, you are 0 for 5!”  (Number of total trips to Island Beach and Sandy Hook for never-found Bohemians, although I discovered the flock in literally blinding fog on excursion #5.)  Those journeys were as important as any bird.

And one of those quests, at Island Beach, brought me a Northern Shrike.  I didn’t even know there WAS such a thing — thought it a masked mocking bird.  Home, describing its field marks, more importantly its behavior and setting, I was not only told the species (very rare in NJ) but also listed on the Audubon Hot Line for having (1) discovered it; and (2) noted all essential particulars, about which I knew nothing.

Walking a side trail at Island Beach, I came upon this snake — evidently, being cold-blooded, it had perished in those sudden winds.  Its last supper was apparent in the midsection.  Someone thoughtful had laid a reed over the snake, an offering, a eulogy…

Snake’s Last Meal    cfe

Spring’s First Oak,   cfe

Island Beach is full of gifts, as is all of WILD NJ, in all seasons.  See (sea!) for yourself!

And remember, this paradise is the gift of PRESERVATION in our State.  See to it that preservation here expands!

“Clouds From Both Sides Now”  Spizzle Creek, April, cfe

Rocks That Ring, Bucks County, PA, by David Hanauer

Most people claim, when I mention Ringing Rocks Park, –above Upper Black Eddy on the New Hope side of the Delaware–, that they’ve always been MEANING to go there.

However, most people I know visit for the first time at my side.  And, frankly, they don’t quite believe me that we’ll strike boulders with hammers to call forth a concert.  Frankly, I am usually the only one determined enough to carry a hammer.

Barren Rock Field, Dense Tree Line, Visitors Ring the Rocks - David Hanauer

Except for the time I was privileged to introduce a Princeton University geologist to the rocks — he portaged an entire collection of purely metal professional hammers, which resulted in the finest rock music of my nature-life.

At Ringing Rocks, minerals and placement are proposed as the reason that certain rocks ring.  Humans need hammers to call forth the chorus. Some use other rocks, but that exquisite pinging sound does not result from rock on rock. Hammers without cushioned handles strike the purest notes.  Rocks with white ’scars’ in profusion, tend to be the ones that ring best - others insist red rocks sing most truly.  I don’t know and I don’t care — the experiment is the whole point!

This rock field has been measured at ten feet thick.  Basically nothing grows among the boulders, unlike the rest of the forest in this Bucks County Preserve.  I’m assuming this will change in a few millenia.

Oddest of all is that the rocks were not left by glaciers, which did not progress this far.  And they are not at the base of a mountain, not a rock slide, not tumbled there by coursing waters.  ‘My’ geologist insisted it’s all about weathering of rocks once molten…  Hard to believe — but he should know.

In addition to music and new playfulness, there are other gifts in Ringing Rocks — above all, what calls me forth any day, WILD BEAUTY.

Near the Waterfall in Winter, Chuck Rudy

Other life essentials exist at Ringing Rocks in profusion.  For example, the opportunity to listen to silence.

Birding by ear is a vital skill in this dense forest.  We heard red-wings, robins, distant crows, the purring of the red-bellied woodpecker, the insistent identification of Phoebe! Phoebe! - who conveniently, but needlessly, revealed himself upon a waterfall-side bare branch.  We were blessed by red-tail shadow and the tipping search of the turkey vulture.  On the way over from Hopewell through Sergeantsville, we’d had bluebirds upon bluebirds, flashing iridescent beauty at the side of the road.

Bells of Solomon’s Seal Also Ring at Ringing Rocks, cfe

Photographer Anne Zeman Zeroes in on Waterfall’s Gifts

Birding-by-ear was also essential, since our eyes (and lenses) were fully occupied with a bounty of ephemerals - spring wildflowers that will vanish the moment the tree canopy fully leafs out.

Jack-in-the-pulpit, some with burgundy stripes; some with royal purple.  May apple - well before May, its white smiley-face blossom peering out from green umbrellas at every trail meander.  Sensitive fern, hay-scented fern, Christmas fern, and some even my garden-savvy friends could not name.  Spring beauty - already bleached, barely revealing the red/pink landing-stripes that guide pollinators earlier in their blooming.  Violets peeked from below heart-shaped leaves - mostly truly violet, some yellow, some even white, — elongated, slim ballerinas upon the stage of that woods, rock music pinging in the background.  Best of all, at the brink of the falls, saxifrage lived up to its name, literally breaking the rocks of Ringing Rocks, nodding sturdy-delicate white tufts above the rush of falling water and its delicate spray.

Saxifrage-at-the-Brink, Carolyn Foote Edelmann

Deeper into the Ringing Rock woods were the semi-circle leaves of bloodroot, the lacy leaves of Dutchmen’s britches, their frail white flowers ‘gone by’ a week or so ago, as this tree canopy leafed out.

Today, what remains in my mind, however, is what rangers call ‘bear sign’.  On standing trees and fallen trees, on stumps, everywhere on either sides of their drinking water, the falls, we found paw-sized scrapes and entire raked trees.  Some sites old, browned-over, and had risen, with trees themselves, far above our heads.  Some were raw and golden.  Even without having ridden a tree-elevator, these scrapes were well above our heads.  Some were raw and golden and about at the height of our waists — baby bears fresh from winter’s den?

Bear Browse Near Falls, Ringing Rocks   cfe

Bear-sign, –where I learned it, out West–, meant places where these monarchs of the glen had torn at bark in quest of insects.  Preferably old bark.  Preferably trees already marked as failing and therefore housing insects, –marked by the presence of turkey tail fungus, nature’s restaurant sign to woodpeckers and bears.

But here, even newly fallen trunks had been raked from brunette to blonde, and not long before our visit.  Bears usually flee humans, and mid-day is not their feeding time.  I admit to deep regret on these scores…

Bear Sign Near Waterfall, cfe

Where the Bears Feast, cfe

THE GIVING TREE - TO WOODPECKERS AND BEARS   cfe

Second to bear browse, I remember what I call either “The Hall of the Mountain Kings” or “Indian Council Rocks”.  Towering above wild greenery and us, imposing rocks remind that the Transcendentalists insisted that God, the spirit, even life itself was in everything, not only trees — also rocks.

In the center of the waterfall trail is a cluster that resounds with echoes of Indians gathering here, perhaps to debate yet again who really had a right to all those grasshoppers, essential bait for shad in the nearby Delaware.  Not far north of Upper Black Eddy is Indian Rock Inn and beyond that the Indian Rock itself, where the Grasshopper War played out to its tragic ending for one tribe, victory for another.  I always feel that great decisions were made among these boulders.

Some resemble whales, coming up for air.  Others, manatees.  One, an elephant’s eye.  Bowling balls downstream from the falls.  Snails.  THRONES.

To presume to sit upon one of these monarch rocks is to allow rock power to stream into our beings, buttressing and sustaining.

Rock energy seeps into every cell, the way iron would seep in from a sip in the stream.  Calming and strengthening, all at once.

Animate Rock, Ringing Rocks   cfe

High above, all that time, is another form of music.  What my sister calls ’soughing’ and no one can convince me whether it rhymes with ‘canoeing’ or ’stuffing’ — do YOU know?!  It is wind’s humming, especially poignant when caught in spring’s first leaves.

There is a visual flickering which translates into the audible.  Each leaf is ignited in April light.  Each leaf seems a newly arrived moth, a butterfly, before we’re seeing many or even any of these, at least any we can identify.  Tethered moths, attached butterflies, all a-tremble in the light breeze.  And, in the background, always the ping, ping, cling of so many hammers.

Also in the distance is the song of the falls.  Far gentler than either Vivaldi or Handel with their water music, which is either too frenetic or too triumphal for the sound of Ringing Rocks Falls.

It is the whisper of shy waters, so elusive, indeed, camera-shy.  They seem to carol, “We will do our work,” these trilling waters, “of refreshment, nourishment, of holding the sun itself, here at the corner of these flat rocks.  We choose the shadows, near-invisibility.  Nearly inaudible.  Essential…”

If you need ‘my’ geologist’s ‘explanation’, this is the best I can manage.  Basalt, long ago deposited as molten, has been pried by time itself, its cracks intensified by snowmelt, spring surges and cataclysmic floods from the nearby Delaware before it had a name.

Violet Profusion, cfe

Striations were deepened over milennia.  Now, bitter green moss fills some cavities, darkening yet highlighting.  The molten time gave over to the cracked time, turned into the time of the rocks.  However ‘time’ is absolutely the wrong word here, since this all happened in the time before time.

Now each rock has its own voice, shrill or dull and everything in between.  Called forth by toddlers playing and singing “Jesus Loves Me” and by their parents and strangers returning to toddler, just for this moment.  The ‘anvil chorus’ blends with the soughing of overhead trees, in fresh spring garments, and the hushed trills of waterfall, far far away.  These woods are truly “alive with the sound of music.”  Real music.  Wild music.

The Kingdom of the Rocks, cfe

Rock music of the winds — true WOODWINDS!  The wild music of invisible birds, bent upon breeding in the shadows.

I rejoice also in the music of children, unplugged for this one afternoon, scrambling among the boulders, heading eagerly yet cautiously toward the falls.  Rapt, as we are, by light in the dark wood, caught in wildflowers beyond counting, spilled at our feet.

Only one of my guests breaks sanctuary, by having brought her cell phone, turned ON, on our wild walk.  News, bad news — any news is bad news in the wild — shatters until I say, “We are leaving that, now.  We are here for the WILD.”

It’s not NJ WILD, I admit.  But it’s only an hour away - cross the Delaware at Frenchtown and turn north or Milford and turn south.  Either way, you’ll never regret hours at Ringing Rocks.

In July, we can find Indian pipes, white bell-like flowers without chlorphyll, which feed upon decaying wood in old forests.  True miracles — they enchanted the geologist’s (Certified Master Gardener) wife even more than the rocks that rang.  I can hardly wait…

One advantage of 21st-Century snowstorms, that seems the polar opposite (pun intended) of the snows of childhood, is that we are not, thereby, cut off from our friends.  In fact, comparing snow experiences and snow images and memories, is bringing friends of all parts of my life nearer, since those first Nor’easters of November.

Joy Kreves - Valentine’s Snow

Joy Kreves is one of our D&R Greenway artists, a ceramicist, yes, but renowned for mastery in many media.  Joy maintains a riveting blog and lively web-site, upon which her poetic gifts are as evident to me as her visual mastery.  Joy gives me permission to use this, taken on The Day, needless to say.  She laments that Valentine’s Day is past, which thereby seems to mean to her that I would not want to use this scene.  On the contrary, I was with friends on Valentine’s Eve, two people of very different backgrounds, and yes, ages — who declared, frankly and adamantly, “For us, every day is Valentine’s Day.”  The way it should be.  And they’re not even poets…

So I thank Joy and yes, indeed, utilize her loving vista for NJ WILD - because Joy’s art most of the time is drawing attention to the urgency of saving nature, especially in our beleaguered state.

Enjoy Joy’s snowstorm tribute to our splendid Delaware River - which renders us the only state with three coasts — the Atlantic Ocean, to the east, to be sure; the Delaware River herself to the west; and the Delaware Bay - the most overlooked coast in our country, if you ask me!

Here is the work Joy is now turning out, with an eye toward her one-person show at Rider University this coming September.  Joy is legendary for finding beauty, even majesty, in weeds, especially dandelions:

Dandelions and Twilight by Joy Kreves

In her life and in her art, Joy seeks out and celebrates the wild - often through some of Nature’s humblest offerings.  Joy demonstrates that there is no class consciousness among the wildlings, nor should there be.

Ways to relish more of Joy’s wizardry, even with all this snow:

www.joykreves.com : Galleries of Original Artwork
http://littlebangtheories.blogspot.com/
www.zazzle.com/jkreves* : shop art on products

http://www.jerseyarts.com/ArtistGallery.aspx?ID=81

Ready to Roam  –  Young Monarch on the ‘Eve’ of Migration

Making the World Safe for Butterflies - the Kate Gorrie Butterfly House

at the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association

Two Allisons are naturalists with the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association.  Educated and experienced in the wild and wildness, they can identify the age of butterflies inside Kate Gorrie Butterfly House:  “Third generation, all they want to do is mate.  Fourth generation, LEAVE!”  This Monarch, above, a fourth-year, is electrifyingly ready to roam.   [http://www.thewatershed.org/]

I was blessed to be at the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association last weekend to hike to the Hobbit Tree with author, Sophie Glovier; photographer, Bentley Dresdner, of “Walk the Trails in and Around Princeton”.  This compact guidebook to 16 trails upon preserved land, features the Hobbit Tree, to which we headed on a blustery, overcast morning.

There was an Allison at both the head and the tail of our trail queue, –each a naturalist, each brimful of energy and enthusiasm. 

A few nights before our trek, one of the Allisons had harvested the wine-red berries of trailside autumn olive trees.  A vigorous (seemingly malevolent) invasive species, seeds inside those berries can leap from sprout to tree in one summer.  With no natural enemies to compete, autumn olives out nourish themselves, outgrow and therefore shade grasses and flowers that belong in our meadows.  Including those wildflowers which shelter and sustain butterflies.

Eating the berries, and/or making a tart and gemlike jam of them and discarding the berries, as Allison did, keeps that many bird-fertilized seeds from germination. 

People of all ages were on that walk, and all were full of questions.  The Allisons had answers for most, manifesting eagerness to find answers for the others (mostly mushrooms, in this rainy summer). 

At the end of our journey, sharp autumn sun welcomed us out of the woods and into a meadow studded with dark purple New York asters and gold-glimmering goldenrod.  The fulness of these two species sent the two Allisons into rapture.  “Asters and goldenrod!,” they exclaimed, like teens over a rock star.  “What does that mean?”, they asked us - and we had no idea beyond beauty.        “Monarch migration!”

New York Aster and Goldenrod

Kate’s Welcome Sign

Kate Gorrie’s Memorial Butterfly House and Sky

So they took us into the Kate Gorrie Butterfly House, identifying winged miracles large and small.  They amazed us with the age/interest connection among the monarchs.  Out came a butterfly net, supple and soft, yet right out of a cartoon or a caricature.  With a deft twist of her young wrist, Allison 1 (who had headed the walk) scooped the most energetic orange and black butterfly from the ceiling into its pale folds. 

Current Residents List

Alison 2 (tail of the walk, the jam-maker) had pen, paper and near-weightless tags ready.  The tag would go onto a non-primary wing, where it wouldn’t interfere with flight.  Its number and the fact that ‘our’ monarch was male - identified by two pheromone dark spots on certain wings, would be noted, and the date of release.  It was as hushed as first communion in Kate’s memorial shrine.

At D&R Greenway Land Trust, I am blessed to work with Meg Gorrie, Kate’s mother.  Volunteers Meg and Tom both contribute so much to nature at D&R Greenway and at the Stony Brook.  Their daughter, Kate, a Hun student fascinated with nature, perished in a car driven by a friend, who had swerved to avoid a deer. 

Kate’s Trail for us and the Butterfly House for the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association, keep Kate’s memory and her passion for nature alive among family, friends and strangers, to this day and beyond.  New life takes place because of the death of young Kate.

Statue, Child with Butterfly, in Bee Balm

Appropriately reverent, the Hobbit-quest group followed the two Alisons outside.  The pictures tell all but the end of the story.

Departure was completely up to our orange and black hero.  He’d spent four years in that house, and yet, right after the final picture, up up and away!  DUE SOUTH.  Toward Mexico.  Unerringly.  With amazing energy, considering that butterflies don’t like cold, are known to consider the 70’s cold.  It was barely 70.  Yet instinct was fully operant.  Kate’s monarch is on his way.

NJ WILD readers know that I ‘get on my high horse’ about preservation, stewardship, gardens with insect-friendly plants, native species, non-poisonous realms, (and you haven’t even heard me on genetically modified corn which contains a chemical that destroys the intestinal systems of caterpillars.  Remember, this monarch was a caterpillar. 

My theory is that all this GURD, all these intestinal problems, acid reflux and the rest, which never existed in my childhood, is the result of human manipulations of natural systems. 

I’m on that ‘high horse’ for the sake of the monarchs.  What will YOU do to make the world safe for butterflies?

A Story of Seasons, at Sandy Hook - for the Dog Days of Summer

The Boathouse, The Base of Sandy Hook Light -

America’s oldest continuously operating Lighthouse

There’s a secret birders know:  New Jersey Beaches hold gifts in all seasons.  Sandy Hook is one of my favorite birding spots.  There I have quested for Bohemian waxwings among the winter robins. 

Bohemian Waxwing, Marie Read, for Cornell Lab of Ornithology

There, also, Anne Zeman loaned me her Swarovski’s (Ur-binoculars) so I could focus on the impossible silhouette of the scissor-tailed flycatcher.  There I have walked hot sands until my toes actually blistered, egrets to my left, tankers on the horizon to my right, impeccable shells on all sides, and silence, in August…  There, Betty Lies, Janet Black and I withstood nearly gale-force winds to take winter’s drama fully into eyes, lungs and soul.

Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher, Brian Small for Cornel Lab of Ornithology

Sandy Hook is one of the New Jersey nature sites that teaches me, repeatedly, “The Journey is the Destination.”  Yes, we’re going for birds.  But a major part of the joy is riding over and back through Lexington-like horse farms of Monmouth County, then over Swimming River Road (called that because the faithful swam that river to reach services on the Sabbath), and into true opulence just before coming upon rivers that nuzzle the sea.

Birders are allowed into Sandy Hook without paying beach fees, because we truly are not interested in taking up beach or parking space in order to sizzle in the sun.  For birders, it’s the back roadways, subtle bay beaches, the hawk watch platform at North Beach that lure.  For birders, winter is NOT the empty time! 

Even ‘fruitless’ birdquest, such as mine at Island Beach and Sandy Hook for Bohemian Waxwings (Mark Peel ultimately teased me, “Carolyn, you are 0 for 5!”) brought enormous gifts.  Island Beach granted me a Northern Shrike instead, my first ever accepted call-in to a Birders’ Hotline, with Scott Barnes.  Sandy Hook gave me an enormous flock of robins and waxwings, all of them muffled in a fog as dense as Chatham, Cape Cod.  I couldn’t even see the hood of my car - but I could feel the blessings of those avian silhouettes.

Sandy Hook Dunes and Sea, from Inside Life-Saving Station

The first time I met Sandy Hook was nine years ago right now.  From that platform, we marveled not only at a great egret wading in a tide pool in the dunes.  This truly wild creature was feeding within binocular range of the Verrazano Bridge and the World Trade Center Towers.  Their lack now is as palpable as their presence had been from those sands. 

I have literally been out there at Sandy Hook in all seasons.  Especially memorable are Audubon birdwalks (A winter one met and left for the wild ones at 8 a.m. from Spermaceti Cove.)  I’m sure that inlet was named because whales became confused and came ashore there in the centuries before there ever was a Sandy Hook Park.  I’m betting the Indians named that cove.

What I remember most of that birding dawn is February light trampolining off bay and wave-side, and (later) off grim grey military bunkers.  What I cannot forget is that nearly 50 of us gathered that morning, at 20 degrees in the sea wind, ready for action.

Foul Weather Gear is in Order during Sandy Hook Winters

Sandy Hook was a fort for much of its official life.  The military presence remains.  Sounds of nearby gunfire starle while we are searching from the North Beach platform for migrating raptors. 

People I take to Sandy Hook cannot believe it when I drive them alongside military dwellings.  Long abandoned, the feel frankly haunted.  One senses the tenseness of inhabitants, eternally vigilant, never really in combat…  My every visitor wonders aloud why these houses haven’t been restored.  Whether as residences or B&B’s or both, they could bring in significant revenue to NJ coffers.  While I’m at it, let me propose Birders’ Rates…

FORMERLY OCCUPIED MILITARY HOUSING

Everyone I take to Sandy Hook is astonished at every turn; disbelieving from start to finish.  Here, there is nothing boring.  The word that comes to mind here, today, far from its beaches, is “pristine”.  Within sight of Manhattan…

Even here at my keyboard, I feel the elation of her high surf; the beauty of flotsam and jetsam on Sandy Hook’s quiet side; the nobility and serenity of the American Bald Eagle in the towering pine of Spermaceti Cove, and everything in between.  Ospreys fight over a spring nest site.  A green heron arrows across a marsh.  Once, Janet and I quickly put down our binoculars, which had picked up rare species indeed - nude bathers. 

Scarce ruddy turnstones line up on dark rocks - resembling rocks in reality, as well as in my attempted photographs, which I’ll spare you.  Midwesterners marvel at all that holly.  Everyone shudders at the healthy poison ivy - but its berries are essential for fall migrants.

Sparkling Foam Among the Flotsam and Jetsam of the Quiet Side…

Among the joys of Sandy Hook are the people you meet there.  Scott Barnes and Pete Bacinski are ideal birding companions, birding mentors, actually.  Both are also ‘up’ on the multi-faceted history of ‘The Hook’, –from the fact that no shot has been fired from that fort in anger, to the fact its presence, right below the Verrazano Narrows, having saved Manhattan from our enemies in any number of wars. 

Others who preside at information desks, at Lifesaving Station/Museum and Audubon Center, are savvy about the entire process of using the cannon to fire the rope to which the breeches buoy was attached and flung onto sinking ships.  If you’re lucky, you’ll get them started on tales of lighthousekeepers (including solo females).  Ask about wreckers along our coast; about submarines in recent wars…  

CANNON THAT PROPELLED ROPE FOR BREECHES BUOY

When my sister, Marilyn, was here in May, the entire Audubon team worked to attach soft, comfortable Audubon neck straps to my sister’s and my binoculars, whose furnished string-straps had been cutting into our necks.  We can bird longer now!

All are very helpful re plants, as well.  I asked, but did not write down, the name of this vibrant native species, so it remains The Unknown (to me).  Let me know, please, if YOU know.  Or go out to Sandy Hook and ask.  Yes, they are in among prickly pear cactus, a New Jersey native species, at Sandy Hook, at Island Beach and hither and yon in the Pine Barrens.  No, the red plants are not salicornia - it was too early for that salty succulent.

RED MYSTERY PLANT, GREEN PRICKLY PEAR -

out of whose fruit the Indians made/make jam…

Sandy Hook is a good place to take people who are grieving, as is my recently widowed sister.  The limitlessness of the full ocean always makes its mark.  The quiet side blesses with remnants of other eras, –from abandoned bunkers to weathered driftwood to the skeleton of a fish on the sparkling beach.  Everything, even subtle tidal change reminds of cycles, of renewals. 

And, afterwards, over superb plain fresh seafood at Bahr’s Landing, on the water (obviously) one can stare out to sea, thinking long thoughts, letting the healing in. 

Finding out that one can be distracted from loss is a major part of the process, as I was forced to learn in Provence…

There Once Was a Fish - The Quiet Side…

My sister, Marilyn, is pensive in this picture, because her late husband Bill so loved boats, especially pleasure boats.  Many are in view from Bahr’s, tucked in among rough solid fishing craft that matter most to me.  My sister still relishes her Bahr’s memories.  We take Bill with us wherever we go.

A Good Day on the Bay

Fishing Boat From Bahr’s - Lunching, we watch cleaning of fish, feeding of gulls…

VISUAL TOUR OF BAH’RS:  http://www.bahrs.com/virtualtour.html

Here is Sandy Hook Light, Winter and  Summer - we don’t have to choose! 

Mariners’ Comfort

What Hurricane Bill Hath Wrought along Towpath below Alexander Road

When you awaken to the squabbling of ducks, you know there’s been a flood.  At least that’s my Canal Pointe reality, where the catchment basin is the color of someone’s old cold coffee overfull of old cold milk.

I had actually learned the truth about this weekend’s rain at 1:24 a.m., when a roar worthy of Niagara blasted me from sleep.  I knew what it meant - the Millstone River had overflowed its banks again, luckily across the well-termed floodplain, over at the canal below Alexander.  Hour after hour, I’d doze, then wake to torrents of sound.

GOLDENTHREAD OF EVENING, D&R CANAL

One of my all-time favorite poems is Jane Kenyon’s “Let Evening Come.”  When Evening Came tonight, I dug out some OLD hiking shoes, my trusty camera, a bottle of water (totally consumed, for the first time this summer, in all that heat and post-hurricane humidity), and headed out to see what Niagara had generated in the night.

Millstone, Flood-Dyed

Paddling in Flood-Time

Coreopsis After Flood

Jane Kenyon had an indomitable spirit.  She seemed the human embodiment of Mother Nature, Herself.  I love seeing flood-smashed grasses already lifting laden heads; bright wildflowers such as the roseate marsh mallows and these sunbursts of coreopsis, still flood-slanted, but rising. 

The resilience of Nature is her blessing and her curse.  We take that bounce-back for granted.  Never forget that many individuals and groups strove to save the D&R Canal and Towpath, to turn it into a State Park - among them the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association, and ‘my own’ D&R Greenway Land Trust.  Vigilance remains necessary, to preserve, protect, defend, repair and provide stewardship for this historic waterway, whose presence caused the genesis or renaissance of many a New Jersey town in the 1830’s.  Never relax that vigilance.  Support your natural land trusts.  They’ve worked miracles.  And, by the way, it’s our drinking water…       Never forget…

ENTICING D&R TOWPATH BELOW ALEXANDER

(This looks like the scene the Packet chose for our NJ WILD BLog a year ago…)

THE CALM AFTER THE STORM - OUR OWN RAINFOREST

CARDINAL FLOWER OF D&R CANAL, TOWPATH - Sign of healthy water

I once walked the Towpath, 9 years ago right now, with a very wise girl, who’d been running on ahead.  She skidded to a halt before this stand of coreopsis, hurtling back to say, “Take time to see these hot flowers!”

May I always remember to take time for flowers.  May YOU!

 “Progress…”

THE MEGALITH

Last year, –when NJ WILD had just begun at the Packet’s request–, I was horrified to waken one morning to desolation, where trees and shrubs and wildflowers had sheltered birds, butterflies and other wild creatures.  Adjacent to the lost greenery, across Canal Pointe Boulevard, verdant cornstalks have always burgeoned.  Driving home through our tunnel of trees, beside that cushion of corn, all adding oxygen, removing carbon dioxide from our all-too-corporate environment, I felt literally and metaphorically blessed.  My thoughts turned to the wild creatures safe in all those trunks and vines.  My spirit was soothed by trees that met overhead, cushioning not only hot sun but also muffling the traffic sounds from nearby U.S. 1.           No longer.

DESTRUCTION IN THE NAME OF CONSTRUCTION 

 Across from my ‘tree house’, at Canal Pointe, someone had shattered the wild environment.  Calling to ask “Why on earth?”, I was told in a lilting voice, as though this would be delightful to me, “They’re going to make it look just like Carnegie Center!” 

Right, I thought, X million cubic feet of office space.  What I said to my blithe informant was, “Just what Princeton needs, New Jersey needs:  More impervious surface!”  She had no idea what I meant. 

When I wrote of this disaster (which means ‘torn from the stars‘) in NJ WILD, I called our new reality “Slaughter on Canal Pointe Boulevard”.

INSTRUMENT OF DESTRUCTION

Friends who live directly across from the devastation had gone to sleep to our usual wild greenery, awakening to scraped earth.  From last summer through now, skies have been pierced by rapacious cranes.  The wild scene has given over to the hideousness and racket of dinosauric earth-moving vehicles. 

Then and later, to make way for more macadam and concrete (imperviousness), we watched the felling of handsome, healthy trees of the famous, late lamented Princeton Nurseries.  In a matter of moments, at the hands of men with buzz saws, we lost healthy deciduous trees.  In a moment was negated the passion and precision of our storied Flemer family.  Since the early 1900’s that family, that Princeton Nursery, had developed, grown and shipped healthy cultivars to replace diseased trees (such as chestnuts and elms) all over our country.

Each night, driving home, instead of a tunnel of peace, every nerve is set ajangle on Canal Pointe Boulevard, as I pass DESTRUCTION IN THE NAME OF DEVELOPMENT.

CORPORATE POND, CORPORATE TREES

“WHERE THE WILD THINGS WERE”

 I felt you should see that for which we have sacrificed wild greenery, and the creatures whose cocoons and nests had been safe therein for decades. 

GAZING FROM WILD GREEN TOWARD CORPORATE REALITY

What do you think: worth it?

�If you feel as helpless as I in the face of this so-called progress, there is something you can do. 

Write checks to D&R Greenway Land Trust, One Preservation Place, Princeton 08540, and HELP US PRESERVE THE GREEN SPACES THAT REMAIN.