Before and After

 

Scherman Hoffman field, October 2024
(Margo D. Beller)

Same field after a controlled burn in 2017
(Margo D. Beller)

Everything changes. Nothing stays the same. Babies are born, they grow, they become adults and have babies of their own. Places where I used to walk often I don't visit for different reasons.

Years ago, working at a stressful job five days a week where I had to rise long before dawn to catch a train that would get me to my 7 a.m. shift, I would rise before dawn on Saturdays and go birding. One of the places I'd visit was the closest New Jersey Audubon center, one county away. I would take the 8 a.m. bird walk with the then-director or with the then-education director. 

Eventually, I overcame my squeamishness at being part of an organization and became a member. I started volunteering by putting plants in the ground. But soon I decided I'd rather write so I suggested running the center's blog. The then-director liked that idea.

The path to the river trail, one of the few areas that hasn't changed
much except for some erosion. (Margo D. Beller)

I wrote that blog for many years. It allowed me to attend various events such as an owl prowl and a program on the American woodcock. (One woodcock landed about a foot from me after doing its high-altitude mating flight during the group's subsequent night walk.)

Unfortunately, the head guy at the NJ Audubon organization decided that to strengthen the "brand message" all the centers should end their blogs and there would be only one, produced by a company that specializes in hiring freelancers to take press releases and turn them into articles. My blog was summarily obliterated, not even archived.

Luckily, I had kept copies of those posts, some of which I have republished on this blog. 

I was damned mad. I stopped going to Scherman Hoffman. There are plenty of other places for me to visit that are within closer driving distance. I did not renew my membership. The then-director, who said he was sorry I had to go, later retired. So have the people I once worked with for the blog. I even stopped buying my bird seed there.

The Passaic River from the river trail. Across is Morris
County. (Margo D. Beller)

One of the times I took my husband (MH) there was just after a spring controlled burn, done to eliminate the overgrown of invasive weeds and other plants. The 2017 picture above is from that walk.

I've written about the gnats that infested my bird seed. Slowly but surely the pail is getting emptied so I will need more seed. I went back to Scherman Hoffman recently to see if it was still selling seed grown by NJ farmers. Like everything else, it isn't doing that anymore.

As long as I was there I decided to take a sentimental journey and hike the trails again. After all, now I have much more time on my hands and I don't have to rise before dawn on a Saturday to get in my birding. What I found here, as I have also found at another place I once visited more often, the Frelingheuysen Arboretum, is things have changed, and not for the better.

At the arboretum, which is off a road that has become four times busier with traffic seven days a week because of the malls that have gone up where there were once woods, trails have been marked, paths have been blocked, other paths have been created and all have been made more "inclusive." It is too stressful to drive there unless I am going to the county library across the road, which I rarely do.

Autumn colors (Margo D. Beller)

Like the arboretum, the center was created from an estate - actually, two estates. The arboretum is a Morris County (NJ) park. The NJ Audubon center is privately run and depends on what funds it can wrangle from members and other sources. So while there are now many, many more plants providing food and shelter for the birds, the hillside paths have become seriously eroded from flooding rains and thousands of feet. Trees have been planted in some areas but some of the paths have become so rocky I was glad I was going uphill so I could steady myself with my stick and walk against gravity.

A bridge over a brook now has handrails, which is an improvement, but the path along the Passaic River - the border between Somerset and Morris counties - is so filled with tree roots as to be dangerous for someone like me who is not always steady. Another path, once marked "vernal pool" is now a "Pond Trail" named after someone I don't know and who has probably been a NJ Audubon benefactor.

Dogwood (Margo D. Beller)

Even the store where I once got my birdseed and some of my feeders has changed. Where once it was run by one woman - now also retired - it has two part-time managers; one woman who knows birds, another who knows retail. Retail is definitely important, tho the seed is relegated to the garage. High-end optics, however, are front and center.

I guess you can sum up my feelings with the old Yogi Berra-ism: Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded. I suppose it has to be that way for parks to survive. The more people who come, the more they will care about the environment. That's a good thing in the abstract. But for me those "popular" parks, even those with a nice number of birds in season, are not where you'll find me now.

Goodbye to All That

Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.
   -- Yogi Berra

With April and the start of the spring migration I have traveled to several birding locations near me to see and hear what could be out there in the morning. Of late I have been going to familiar trails, as well as those I haven't walked in a few years. In the latter case I found things that were disturbing.

Atop Hawk Mountain, 2010 (RE Berg-Andersson)

I suppose it is a good thing so many people in my area feel the need to "get out" and go hiking. They like to dress themselves and their children in the latest outdoor gear out of the catalog of their choice and then scamper around, splashing through streams and bushwhacking off the trails on foot or, on occasion, on a mountain or other type of bike, taking pictures or filming with a portable camera to post to social media.

The problem is, in a national or state park or a sanctuary run by a private organization, there isn't always the money (or interest?) to repair trails worn down by all these people as well as the heavy rains that bring up tree roots and rocks or that have eroded ground around bridges and other structures.

The other problem is, I am getting older and afraid of falling. I've had several falls in recent years, including one just today in a national park located not far from me in New Jersey. I haven't broken a bone yet but I don't want a first time.

More birders on Hawk Mountain, 2012
(RE Berg-Andersson)

Back in September 2010 MH and I went to the north lookout at Hawk Mountain. On our climb up we found an assortment of warblers feeding during their migration south. After watching the raptor show we came down a second trail and found a life bird, a Bicknell's thrush. Two years later we went back. Thousands of people climb to the north lookout atop Hawk Mountain and it showed. The rocks were broken and worn. Maybe the hawk counters who know the area like the back of their hands didn't mind, or the rugged outdoor types or the ones who had no idea what they were doing but just wanted to be up there because they'd heard about it somewhere. But for MH and me the climb up and especially the climb down were full of peril, with several near-falls on my part. And that was when MH's knees were still good.

Never again unless we go to the south lookout, the one that is flat and wheelchair accessible.

I have also found worn and dangerous conditions at the Scherman Hoffman sanctuary run by NJ Audubon, a private group, and at the Freylingheusen Arboretum, a county park that was the first place I went to hike when I moved down the road over two decades ago. I wandered that place, usually alone, so much you could drop me anywhere blindfolded and I could find my way out. Now, all the paths I explored are blazed and filled with map-clutching people who want to walk in the woods and be "in nature," with or without phones on. Paths are eroded and not fixed, or they lead to locked gates or are closed entirely. Tree roots stick out. One uphill climb I did for the first time in years was so eroded near the top I had to grab the nearby beech until my panic ebbed. And now, today, my hike in the national park, Jockey Hollow, where the path I took was narrow and well traveled.

Scherman Hoffman, before the erosion (Margo D. Beller)

I know there are those who like a hiking challenge, the more extreme the better. I am not one of those people and I try to avoid them as much as possible. Luckily, to look for little birds during migration season it pays to get out early, before the mountain bikers and the hikers with their day packs and ski poles to steady them over rocks and ravines. It helps that I am now semi-retired and can travel on the weekdays during the school year and avoid the families who want to get their kids away from their phones and scramble up hills as tho' they were in a public playground.

The downside is, if I slip and fall, as I did as I was leaving a muddy trail up a slight incline to the road, I am usually alone. This fall was relatively mild. The next one might not be.

MH, bless him, is not too worried when I go off myself. His knees are such that there is no way he could've walked on any of the trails I mentioned above. After my most recent fall, I am not going back to any of these places either. For now, there are plenty of flatter places I can get to where, despite the erosion, I can find plenty of birds, and there's always out of state.

I'm not that sad to be saying goodbye to these old haunts. I'm just sad that I must.

Taking a Different Path

When I moved to Morris County, NJ., over two decades ago, the first big park I discovered was the Frelingheuysen Arboretum, a county park on land donated by one of the area's illustrious families that goes all the way back to colonial New Jersey. I walked the unblazed paths, saw quite a lot of birds and bought many plants for my garden at the annual sale.

(Margo D. Beller)

Not far from there is the Jacob Ford Mansion, part of the Morristown National Historic Site, where George Washington stayed during the winter of 1779-80 while his army was in what is now Jockey Hollow, a prelude to the better-known winter encampment at Valley Forge. Jacob Ford's land stretched all the way to the Whippany River, and along the river he had a powder mill - gunpowder, not flour for baking. We learned this the other day when I read of a planned tour down Patriots Path to the site of the mill.

I realized that if I went to the arboretum I could get to Patriots Path and the site on my own and from the other direction instead of taking the planned tour and thus spare MH and his balky knees. The tour would have people walking down a steep hill in back of the county historical society. I'd hiked up that hill years ago and didn't like it. I didn't recall any historic markers of the site. I resolved to go again.

But since the last time I've hiked the arboretum there have been many unfortunate changes. Storms, starting with Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and continuing through the nor'easters of this past March, damaged stately old trees where I'd see birds in spring. These trees have been removed, changing what had been shady areas into sun fields. The paths I've walked for years without problems are now blazed with yellow, green or red markers to make it easy on visitors, of which there are now a lot. The part of Patriots Path through the arboretum to the historical society along the Whippany River is blazed blue. When I last took this part of Patriots Path, you went through the woods. Now that is cut off and you have to use a different path around an open field. Several trails in the woods or along the Whippany River have been allowed to disappear in the grasses.

This was once a hiking trail (Margo D. Beller)

Even getting to this park has changed in recent years. Much of the woods along the multi-lane road have been torn down and replaced with shopping centers, creating more traffic and less of an incentive for me to travel the three miles here. (There are many other places for me to hike, including other parts of Patriots Path where I'm not risking my life among those hot to get to a mall or office park.)

When I got past the gate and started on Patriots Path I learned the condition of the path seems to be based on which property abuts it. The first section of the path, running behind an office park that has its own bricked walkway to it, is mowed grass. The next part, behind a garden apartment complex, was dirt, with branches down and roots to step over. Part of the path takes you along the edge of a parking lot, where the branches of trees and poison ivy hung low, forcing me on the hot asphalt. Then the path returned to the shady woods and down a hill where I discovered a giant downed tree I would have to somehow get over. I was too close to my destination to turn back so, with difficulty, I got over and continued along the difficult terrain. (I thought of MH back home and was glad he was not testing his knees here. How I'd be in the coming days would be another matter.)

Past the knotweed and other invasives, I got around another downed tree, carefully forded a dry culvert and then found two signs marking the powder mill site. One was obviously older and nailed to a tree. It must've been there when I'd last hiked this path. However, since then a newer sign had been put up by the historical society. Ahead of me was the steep hill leading to the historical society, whose part of Patriots Path had been cleared of debris, perhaps in anticipation of the coming tour. I took some pictures of the sign for MH, listened to the murmur of the river and a few birds, then went back the way I came. The path had been deserted during my travels because it was a weekday, and that had me slightly nervous. I could listen to the birds, including a calling yellow warbler, but many of the calls were hard to hear because of the din of continual traffic on nearby Route 287, one of New Jersey's major highways.

Whippany River (Margo D. Beller)

Back through the gate on the property of the arboretum, I was forced to travel along the edge of the woods and could only look with longing at where the old path once ran.

I am sure there were many reasons why the woody trail and the one along the river on the arboretum property were closed to hikers. Where the former river trail turns and heads back uphill are two major roads nearby, Route 287 and Hanover Ave. Perhaps in this terrorist-crazed world we live in someone determined a nutcase could do a lot of damage to these roads and thus ordered the path be erased. Or perhaps the arboretum didn't want to spend the money on mowing the path or other maintenance anymore.

I don't know. I do know that like a lot of the world I live in now, it is changing and not necessarily for the better.

Here are some of the other pictures from my travels:

This is the first, grassy part of Patriots Path leading away from the arboretum.

(Margo D. Beller)

This is the log I had to climb over. It is bigger than it looks.

(Margo D. Beller)

This is the historic marker for the mill, my destination on this hike.

(Margo D. Beller)