Once Around the White Oak

Back in November I wrote a post about my dismay at finding another trail at the Great Swamp, the 7800-square-foot national wildlife refuge, was being boardwalked so that more people can walk through a variety of habitats without the danger of slipping on icy or muddy ground.

That was then. (RE Berg-Andersson)

This "managed" part of the Swamp has been slowly but surely planking paths to get more people walking, and perhaps limit where they walk. Too many people have a habit of walking wherever they feel like, with or without dogs and children, thus disturbing wildlife and eroding sensitive areas.

My husband (MH) and I need our exercise and I wanted to get us out of the house. So on the last Saturday of 2023 we decided to check out the finished pathway and compare it to when we last walked the 1-mile White Oak Trail, as it is called, in January 2016. At that time it was cold and the path was icy. We wore boots and carried our walking sticks. 

The path is a loop. You walk a bit and then can either go to the left into the woods, or to the right toward the many old white oaks. At that time there were more things growing in the area of the path, including trees, which is why we were surprised when we suddenly came upon the large trees.

THE White Oak, the one for which the trail is named, is a massive tree reckoned to be several centuries old. The tree was around when the road we drove up had a neighborhood along it. The tree was around when the federal government planned an airport on the property, and it was around when Helen Fenske and other activists got that plan blocked. The trail begins across the road from the education center named for her.  

This is now. THE White Oak is
to the left. (Berg-Andersson)

I have stood at the base of the redwoods in California's Muir Woods north of San Francisco and been impressed by the sheer size and majesty of the trees. I was similarly impressed by the White Oak, though it is not nearly as tall. 

I walked over to the tree and MH took my picture. I look puny, but I like the picture because it reminds me of my - and humankind's - place in the general sphere of things. Stand next to a mighty tree and you will gain some perspective. (At least I hope so.)

We continued on the trail, entered woods, walked through and around and eventually came back to the road and our car.

Fast forward eight years.

View from the boardwalk back towards the
Fenske center. (RE Berg-Andersson)

The boardwalking certainly kept our feet safe from the cold mud of the old trail, which we could see as we walked. I wore sneakers. MH used his cane for his balky knees. It was chilly from a breeze but in the 40s, normal for the time. However, for the previous two weeks temperatures had been above normal and it was very wet for December, so it felt colder by comparison. (Of course, had the temperature been normal all month we would've been walking in several inches of snow.)

We forked right, heading to the oak. Unlike last time we could see it quite clearly because where we were walking had had a controlled burn a few years ago to make a habitat conducive to woodcock. (This was before the boardwalk went in, of course.) The wide openness unnerved me, for some reason.

Another difference: When you stay on the boardwalk you can't get close to the White Oak. Perhaps that was by design. Weeds and other plants have grown in the area where I stood next to the tree. I suppose this was just as well because the old tree was showing signs of damage, either from age or from this autumn's major wind and rain storms. (I have a sizable brush pile at home thanks to those storms.) 

As MH took pictures I wondered how much longer the tree would last. 

We pushed on into the woods, where I felt more comfortable. By now the boardwalk gave over to cinders. Here were the birds, starting with a calling redshouldered hawk. The trees blocked much of the wind and we could see water everywhere from the last major storm less than a week before. This is what a swamp does - it collects water. However, on paved areas water runs off, flooding streets and backing up sewers, damaging the many residential areas now built on former barrier islands or meadowlands. (Ironically, the paved road in the Swamp where there were once houses was closed this day to car traffic because of flooding.)

Vernal pool (RE Berg-Andersson)

We then entered another cleared area I didn't remember being so clear, but this one was smaller and led back to woods that were again boardwalked and featured some benches. One bench was near a vernal pool. Vernal pools fill with spring rains and are essential to the lives of salamanders and wood frogs. What should've been empty was filled to overflowing from all the rain. I wondered if this would have an effect next spring but I leave the explanations to the experts. 

A woman at the Fenske center said that while many areas had been cleared for the boardwalk, the route of the trail had not been changed and it was still a mile long. It had seemed much longer.

We were lucky there had not been many people walking this trail when we were, either because of the cold or because they were doing other things in other places in the week between Christmas and New Year's, when schools are closed. I do not like noise when I am trying to look at a bird. Nor do I like having to get out of the way of a large group of people approaching. But MH, who has become very careful about where he hikes, said he'd be willing to walk this trail again in the spring when the migrating birds pass through. I hope my luck will hold at that time.

So maybe I was too hard on the boardwalking of this trail. However, I still believe my concern to be valid that too many natural areas "opened up" to all are being overrun by people who learned during the Covid pandemic that being outside can be therapeutic for them, if not for the land they walk upon.

When Too Much of a Good Thing Can Be Bad

Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.

-- Yogi Berra

As more trees are cut down and more buildings are put up in urban and suburban areas, I've noticed it is rare to have a static piece of open space. It has to feature more things for people to do rather than boring stuff like walking, listening to the birds or sitting quietly on a bench.

These pieces of open land have to include soccer fields, playgrounds, areas for "special needs" people, cross-country running tracks and the occasional field hockey rink. This is known as "mixed use."

Boardwalk under construction at Great Swamp
(Margo D. Beller)

I can understand the need for such facilities. As there is less open land and more people living in new developments, those creating a park know residents need a place to run the dogs or get the kids outside to play in a supervised environment. It adds to the "quality of life," and is an attractive incentive to move to that development.

What I don't like is the effect of such thinking at federal "refuge" areas. 

There is a school of thought that if land is opened to more people, they will want to protect it. Or people who approve the construction of a park want to justify the cost because you can't collect property taxes on land where no one lives or works. In a state like New Jersey, where property taxes are the highest in the U.S. because they are used to pay for so many services, the latter is no small thing.

So, for instance, you have the Central Park of Morris County, created out of the old Greystone Hospital that was closed because of horrendous conditions. Empty stone buildings were taken down, including the historic Kirkbride Building, and the fields opened for soccer, cross-country running, even disc golf. The state had sold the land to the county for $1 at a time when people were yelling for affordable housing to be put on this huge piece of property. The park people won out, thankfully for me and my small town abutting the land, and the park is usually filled with people. If I go there birding, it is early in the morning and never on a weekend during school months.

Here's another example of how the law of unintended consequences could come into play.

In the central part of northern New Jersey lies a 12-square-mile piece of open land that is known as the Great Swamp. Most of it is overseen by the U.S. government through the National Park Service, with sections that became county parks run by adjacent Morris and Somerset counties. Private groups, such as the Great Swamp Watershed Association, also have a hand in making sure people are enjoying themselves responsibly, although park rangers do the enforcing.

Great Swamp entrance, not far from a network of boardwalked
trails (Margo D. Beller)

Half of the property is maintained as "wilderness" where the land is left alone for the most part - mud, overgrowth and all. There are no cinders on the trail, no boardwalks, very few signs. There are birds - wonderful birds - in season as well as deer, fox, possum and sometimes bear, among others.

The other half of the swamp is "managed." Fields are periodically burned to get rid of invasive plants or to open an area to a field bird like the woodcock.The main road through this part was once a real residential street. Little by little the federal government bought up the land. As people moved out the houses were knocked down. That empty road has become a tour road, allowing cars to drive through the sanctuary. Half the road's stretch is paved, the rest unpaved. In another part of the managed area trails are boardwalked to allow people to get to blinds or, in one case I'll get to, an "observation" area.  One particular trail in this part of the Swamp tends to get a lot more people who "find nature" while wearing sneakers or other footwear not suited for mud. On weekends and holidays they bring their kids, who usually rush ahead of them shouting.

Overlook, replacing a blind
(Margo D. Beller)

I avoid this particular trail.

The Swamp, located in the midst of suburbia, serves the same function as New York City's Central Park - a large area in the middle of a concrete jungle where migrating birds can rest before pushing on or arrive to spend the winter. Back in the 1960s, no doubt in the name of "progress," there was a serious move to make the Swamp the New York metro area's fourth airport. Protesters, led by Helen Fenske, fought over many years to get that plan blocked. 

When the Friends of Great Swamp decided to leave its old center at one end of the tour road to refurbish a larger property at the other end, the new visitor center was named for Fenske.

It is what is now taking place across the road from the center that sparked this musing on unintended consequences.

The old center was small. It had a bookstore, a bathroom and a kitchen where visitors could get a cookie, coffee or a glass of water. It had a very homey air about it. Outside were bird feeders, which attracted many birds as well as some of their predators, including a redtailed hawk and a kestrel. 

However, as a place where it could draw large numbers of people for lectures and showcase everything the Swamp has to offer, it was considered insufficient. After the Fenske center opened the old house was taken down. 

The larger center does not offer coffee and cookies. It has a larger bookstore, more bathrooms and more meeting areas, but is not particularly homey. There are still feeders, positioned so those inside can look through a plate-glass window without disturbing the feeding birds.

Winter, Great Swamp (Margo D. Beller)

When the Fenske Center opened several small trails were put in. However, another, much longer trail was soon blazed on the other side of the road. It was dubbed the "White Oak Trail" because, as my husband and I discovered when we walked it one winter, it leads to some huge oak trees several hundred years old. That winter the trail was icy, and I'm sure it became muddy in spring.

Now, it is being boardwalked.

The managed part of the Swamp, as I said, has long had boardwalked trails. And, unfortunately, there was precedent for taking a trail and making it more accessible with boardwalks. One trail I walked all the time was boardwalked until you came to the woods. Then you continued on to a blind. This trail is now fully boardwalked. No more trying to get around ankle-deep water after heavy rain. No more tripping over tree roots. 

No more old blind either - it was removed for a large "observation platform" named for a local environmentalist. It has plenty of seating. More people troop over there, climb the steps, look over the tall reeds at the distant waterfowl. When I am up there, which isn't as often anymore, most of those who come up do not stay long because they are not birding, they are only walking to the end of a boardwalked trail.

On the White Oak trail, before it was paved.
(RE Berg-Andersson)

As for the White Oak trail, even tho it is not completely boardwalked people are already on it. Perhaps one day MH, with his balky knees, and I will do it, too, if only to see what birds are still hanging around the area and check in on the old oaks (like the one in the photo above).

But I think something is lost when you open up an area like this in the name of making it "accessible" and getting people "back to nature." More people mean more erosion, more noise, less opportunity to stand in a truly quiet area.

I guess I am being selfish in wanting governments to leave parks alone. During Covid, this part of the Swamp was one of the few areas not closed down by a misguided federal government and thus available to people who needed to get out during a time of great fear. We came, too, and found the tour road crowded with cars, people walking (many with dogs on a leash) and riding bicycles. People fought over parking places. Cars crawled along the road, just like during rush hour.

It is nowhere near that bad now. But it could become that way again, and that is what I dread.