I’m starting with the bird who lifted my low spirits this week, in case you need them. Look at that natty herringbone cape and snazzy red hairdo. What’s not to like? I’ve never seen the red belly that gives these their name.

Why did my spirits need lifting? If you read news, you know.

Journalism can be a force for good, but “news” has never been neutral or objective; it’s always been a product, something to sell. And you are not the buyer, but the consumer, and also the product. The buyer is the billionaire who owns the “news source” and he’s buying you…and specifically, buying how you feel after reading, hearing, or viewing it.

I got that from Fix the News, which I highly recommend. Without it, I wouldn’t have known that Renewables generated 26% of the United States’ electricity in 2025 (a new record). It was also reported by The Weekly Anthropocene, another good source which focuses mostly on news affecting the climate. I’ve mentioned Earth Hope before, another good source.

As an atheist, faith can be hard to come by. Conservation Works mentions this:

[O]ne of the things that faith requires of you is an ability to believe that this current state that you are in is not the end. There is a possibility that something can be greater. And even though you cannot see it, you believe that it can happen.

I may not have faith in gods or higher powers, but I can have faith that nature doesn’t give up hope for the future. It believes in a future that some of us maybe cannot see; I’ve shared a photo of a Prickly Pear cactus growing through asphalt and surviving a snowy New Jersey winter many times. Those cacti have thrived every year I’ve seen them, bearing fruit and feeding pollinators. They don’t read the news.

Unfortunately, I do. And I think I’m going to stop most of it. No more Reddit, no more NPR. I like supporting my local paper, but even they adhere to the “if it bleeds it leads” method, and I’m not sure I need to know about every shooting or traffic accident.

Between the news and the gloomy weather, I’d been quite down lately. I’ve been looking at more gloomy and winter-bound cities as an escape from the political madness in my country, but I’m not sure how well I’d fare with even less sun. I managed years in Minneapolis, so I know I can do it. And I think in the longterm it will be better for my mental health in Montreal or Edinburgh, near water and mountains, where I could walk or take a metro to a cafe in the morning and a pub at night.

One thing that made me hopeful recently was hearing my old friend the Belted Kingfisher quietly chittering at Timber Creek. I didn’t seem them, but I heard them. And I have faith that I’ll see them again, and get better photos. These cute little honkered and mohawked divers make me smile every time.

Red-bellied Woodpeckers are much more common here, but I never take them for granted. They announce themselves with their scolding as you enter their territory. I’m glad I saw a couple yesterday. I also saw Wood Ducks, but didn’t have my camera. They are very shy around here, as they are hunted.

The sun is teasing its way from behind the clouds, so I’m going to go make the most of it. As Lou Reed says, it takes a busload of faith to get by…

Tufted Titmouse is a fitting insult for the quiffed blowhard currently inflicting suffering on so many, but that would insult a welcome and delightful bird. More often heard than seen, this little twitterers are often found at the tiptops of trees, having incessant conversations which we can only dream of understanding.

This one was at Timber Creek, joining the Blue Jays and American Crows in harassing a lingering hawk. The Red-Bellied Woodpeckers were at it, too. The Egrets and Herons haven’t been around. I think the water level is too low for it to be good fishing.

I visited John Heinz Wildlife Refuge in Philly to have better luck, but they had drained the ponds to rid them of invasive Snakehead fish. They quickly get too big for herons to eat, and there’s only so much the resident Bald Eagles can do. Eagly (my name for all Bald Eagles, now that I’ve been watching Peacemaker) flew by me, with a large hawk right after, as soon as I got on the trail, and before I had my camera ready.

I met two birders looking for warblers, specifically a Connecticut Warbler, at a good spot where we saw many Downy Woodpeckers and other songbirds, but no warblers. I found out why, later. We had a nice chat, and I stayed to watch American Robins and Downys, along with chattering Gray Catbirds; this trio of birds are usually active, and can keep your interest.

The Catbirds were in cover and not photogenic that day. I was supposed to join a Walk Philly group and walk ten miles, but I was still feeling worn out, so I opted for four miles at John Heinz at my own pace, which was enough. Not far from where I met the birders was a boardwalk, which I followed to see a female Red-Winged Blackbird who was perched high on a marsh reed. She was scouting, and rightly so. I managed one photo before she dived for cover:

The Blackbirds became quiet, so I scanned the skies, and got lucky. A Merlin was sweeping over the marsh looking for a meal:

This was my first time seeing a Merlin. Or a Peregrine Falcon, which this could also be, according to the guides. Either is a “lifer” for me, in birder parlance. I try not to think too much about life lists, as I find it obsessive and annoying, as many facets of a nice hobby can become when taken to extremes. Likewise with mountain biking; I just want some exercise and some beautiful scenery, I don’t need to jump like Evel Knievel, thank you very much. I’ve gotten some air here and there, but it’s not what gets me out there.

I am glad I saw the Merlin or Falcon, but I had fun watching the woodpeckers and songbirds, no matter how common. I also had a good time watching these American Goldfinches arguing in my backyard:

Goldfinches had eluded my camera until then, so that was a nice catch.

The Timber Fox is feeling a bit less silver today. I managed a ten mile ride at Black Run Preserve. I’m clawing my way back. My Garmin smart watch keeps me apprised of stress levels and heart rate variability, and neither were out of whack. Usually when I’m sick, HRV will plummet. When stress levels are high for days, I expect to feel run down. Neither were the case. Enough rest and I’m back lifting weights and riding multiple times per week. Not at the levels I was earlier in the year, but an improvement. I promise I won’t turn this into an old man health complaints newsletter.

When this posts, weather permitting, I should be birdwatching at Pennypack on the Delaware. You’ll see what I found next week. We’ve got a trip to Montreal planned next, and I’ll try to look for birds in between beer and poutine.

Is that a Northern Parula? I can’t tell for sure. This little one was daring enough to hunt spiders while I snapped away, standing in the muddy foreshore of Timber Creek.

I took Friday off from work as things finally cooled down a bit, and I wanted a day to myself to go for a ride when it’s less crowded on the trails. I still worked an hour or two to satisfy a demanding customer, and visited the Maurice River Bluffs, because it was a beautiful day and when the weather is perfect, my spirits are lifted by seeing mountains, or water, or both, and the nearest mountain of any majesty is half a day’s drive away.

Lake Parvin is my go-to, with its Bald Eagles and Buffleheads, but Maurice River is a little closer, has groomed hiking and biking trails thanks to the Nature Conservancy, and also has its share of wildlife. I heard a Belted Kingfisher and a Bald Eagle chattering, and saw the eagle and its broad white tail circling overhead, but only got to see a shy Downy Woodpecker. I want to see otters, so I’ll likely book a kayaking trip sometime this autumn; you’ll get to see what I see, of course.

I read somewhere that you hit a “wall” around ages, 45, 54, and 61; maybe it’s mind over matter, but I hit the middle one a few weeks ago and I’m still recovering. I coasted past the first wall, but this silver fox just mountain biked into the second one at full speed. Are you familiar with the movie adaptation of The Princess Bride, where Wesley is recovering from being Mostly Dead, and has to bluff the evil Prince Humperdinck while sprawled in bed, even though he can barely move? That’s how I feel these days. (See fox above for reference.)

Here’s more of what I think is a Northern Parula.

At least we can still write about birds without being doxxed and fired, or having the government threaten the publishing platform, so there’s that. I didn’t get a good look at the Great Egret at Timber Creek, I think he was roosting. This suspicious white shape could also be a volleyball stuck in a tree, though.

The Great Blue Heron was out, looking to inflict Grievous Bodily Harm on fish and amphibians. I only caught them mid-flight, and these are the best I could do.

There were a lot of female Redwinged Blackbirds feeding, and Northern Cardinals. I saw a pair of them, but only got a decent pic of the male. I call him the Postcardinal because it looks like a greeting card or postcard image.

I don’t only look up. If you look down, you find things like these Black Velvet Boletes. The orb weaver who made this web took shelter from the morning dew, and left us this glistening web.

Being old didn’t keep me from a good bike ride and getting outside. I’ve also been watching Nova and Big Cats 24/7 on PBS to keep from doomscrolling. Outside is better. The bats have begun feeding at dusk, and I like watching them swoop and circle.

Until next week…

The first day of my return, I met a pair of talkative American Goldfinches, a bird that’s eluded my eyes for a long time. I didn’t have my camera with me, and I was too dazzled with how close they were to try my phone. The female insistently called the male, ignoring the gawking human, until he finally appeared and called back to her. I admired the beautiful pair a while before moving on, and leaving them be. They had a lot to catch up on. On my second trip, I came prepared with my camera, but the goldfinches were shy.

Another visitor had come calling, one they dared not invite in.

This morning, I saw a hummingbird, and heard Cedar Waxwings and those elusive Goldfinches, but they were deep in the branches, before they all went silent. I crossed the park from one favorite perch to another, and then heard a Gray Squirrel’s warning call, and looked to the sky in time to snap this Cooper’s Hawk as it flew from where I’d been to where I was headed. This one ensured that all I’d see or hear that morning were Gray Catbirds and squirrels warning everyone to take cover.

Except for one brave little Eastern Wood Pew-Wee. I’m proud of this photo! This small bird is more often heard than seen, at least for me. Named for their call, I hear them from spring on through autumn. Perhaps this little fellow was warning others as he sang from the low branch of a small tree instead of the usual perch in higher, deeper cover, but I was grateful. I managed to use another tree as my own cover, and approach for a zoom shot through the branches. I’ve only seen these a few times, high above, and these are my first photographs of one.

I got lucky with the background and deep focus, which brought out his details, but I couldn’t get a better angle of the stripes on his wing before he flew away to the treetops where he was more comfortable.

The catbirds were vociferous but hewed to low cover, mindful of the hawk, who followed my usual path down the creek. One step ahead of me, he frightened the other birds and kept them in cover. A Red-Bellied Woodpecker, a Song Sparrow, a Downy Woodpecker, and a small flock of Tree Swallows made brief appearances. The Great Blue Heron and Kingfisher who sometimes frequent the creek were elsewhere. The creek may be too overgrown for them; I saw the heron fly over my house a few weeks ago, perhaps looking for better hunting grounds.

On the walk back, I met a Red-Spotted Admiral on the trail.

It pays to be observant. I met some equally striking, but more aggressive fliers shortly after. A tree had fallen on the edge of the trail, which must have been home to a nest of Bald-Faced Hornets; the unbroken nest rested one step off the trail, buzzing with the white-faced yellowjacket workers as they flew in and out the holes. They have a queen and are known to “vigorously defend” a nest, so these photos were taken at full zoom.

Is the one with the bigger face on the below right the queen?

I gave the nest a wide berth after verifying that the hornets weren’t buzzing across the trail, and when I encountered two people with unleashed dogs not far from here, I warned them to leash their dogs or take another path, as their pups were about to have a very bad day if they ran up to investigate this nest.

Thankfully they took heed and turned back. The Pew-Wee was able to sing his song, despite the predator looking for a meal, and the dogs had a good run in the woods, because someone warned them to avoid the hornet’s nest. Not everyone is so lucky, but we can watch out for each other. Some things are beyond our control, but we can still watch out for each other.

I did cook rose hips from her rose bush, but I drew the line at cooking slugs. My uncle Paul was the mushroom hunter, who knew a spot where Hen of the Woods mushrooms grew. Italian-Americans guarded these spots carefully; my grandfather actually went to his grave without telling his. My uncle visited a neighbor who was in the Veteran’s Administration nursing home, who’d had a spot and no children to pass it down to. Every few months after a good rain, he would go and harvest some funghi, fry it in a pan with olive oil and then steep it in a rich marinara sauce, and give away the jars.

I’ve had Hen of the Woods—and maitake which is similar—at fine restaurants, but nothing tastes as good as his did. We don’t get a lot of oak trees in the Pinelands, so there are fewer Hen of the Woods to be found; the only one I’ve seen in the wild was at a dog park, so unlikely to be harvested in a state that you’d want to eat.1

Two types of fungi that you don’t want to eat, but are delightful to observe, are stinkhorns and birds nest fungi. These were both in our suburban backyard, likely transported in commercial mulch.

This is a Wrinkly Stinkhorn, which grows practically overnight, then exudes a stinky syrup that attracts flies, which spread the fungi’s spores. Job done, they then deflate like a flaccid dingus, and dissolve into the soil.

Other types of stinkhorns are called The Devil’s Dipstick, or Dog Dick fungus, because of the resemblance.

Fluted Bird’s Nest fungi are very cute, but most photos hide their diminutive size. These are all smaller than a dime, perhaps even smaller than the fingernail of my little finger. I recognized their speckle of growth and used the macro lens on my phone to take these pictures. This month’s rain also brought several amanita that resembled giant puffballs at first, but I knew about their tricky murderous ways.

I’ve had puffball, and it’s flavorless to me. Lion’s Mane is similar; give me an earthy mushroom like morels! King Trumpet mushrooms in stores are a favorite. You can get them inexpensively at Asian markets like Huong Vuong and H-Mart; about half the price of other grocers.

At farmers’ markets, bearded young men often sell mushrooms they’ve foraged. I know people who’ve gotten sick. I trust these guys about as far as they can throw me. (I say that because in my wrestling days, I used to throw people, and I do not trust them that far.)

That’s because I went to a mushroom foraging workshop at a local arboretum and the experts taught me how difficult it can be to identify them. They recommended a spore print before eating; you tap the mushroom on paper and compare its spore patterns. I can barely tell some actors apart, and you want me to bet my life on spore patterns? No thanks, I’ll buy cultivated.

That workshop visit also led indirectly to my marriage. When a mutual friend was trying to set up her cousin on a date, she chose me as a go-along so it wasn’t obvious; one of her selling points was that I “did stuff” like hunt for mushrooms, visit craft breweries, and hike. (This was the early 2000s when such activities were not mainstream, at least in the New Jersey suburbs.) So the funghi paid off.

Now when I go to the farmers market, half of the vendors are from afar, even though many of the actual farms are closer. And the bearded young white men have tattoos of sawed-off shotguns below “Pride” in Gothic lettering. They didn’t cause any trouble for the Jamaican couple selling jerk chicken, or the Mexican man selling tamales and elote. Tattoo removal can be costly, but it made me leery of remaining in this country. But where to go? Ireland, the rest of the EU, and the UK all have their own problems, inflamed by social media bot farms and media owned by doddering fascist billionaires.

I’m privileged to have choices, but right now they all seem like possibly jumping from the pan into the fire. At least some of my neighbors feel like members of terrorist hate groups should be afraid to show themselves in public, as this graffiti attests…

Yesterday was the Summer Solstice, and the Prickly Pears took notice. They’ve soaked up the welcome heavy rain that doused the Pine Barrens wildfires, and have come into bloom.

A green Sweat Bee was enjoying a feast of pollen. Later in the year, they will bear fruit. I’ve tried some before, they weren’t particularly sweet, but I’ll see how they fare this year. My serviceberries improved in flavor over a few days, and I managed to nibble a few before the birds took their share.

The forest is lush and the Eastern Box Turtles are doing their best to impersonate speed bumps on the trails. I’ve moved three or four of them this season. I’m back on the trails after my accident, taking it easy and enjoying the humid mornings. I saw an Eastern Towhee up close on a recent ride, a rusty-bellied bird like a smaller, squatter Orchard Oriole. I’ve heard plenty of their calls, but this is the first time I’ve had a good look.

This abandoned Chevrolet is hidden deep in the woods and would make a good base camp for anyone who needs to go off-grid. I got first dibs.

I’m working on a piece about my visit to Sandaig, also known as Camusfearna, where naturalist Gavin Maxwell lived when he wrote his books about raising wild otters on the coast of the Scottish Highlands. I visited his memorial stone there, and a few weeks ago, I also visited the grave of another favorite naturalist writer, Loren Eiseley. Then I’ll begin sharing our days in Skye, and get to the excursion where we saw many Atlantic Puffins. I hope to have the Gavin Maxwell post published for this coming Sunday.

The Mountain Laurels have come into bloom while I was off exploring the other side of the Atlantic, and I’m grateful I didn’t miss them. Their blossoms are little faerie cups, pink or white pattern china for the pollinators to sip their tea. Their scent is delicate and not overwhelming, and the blooms last for weeks, speckling the forest with color from afar, that rewards a closer look for fine details.

I found myself stopping to enjoy being in their midst. Black Run Preserve is a good place to see them, but they are everywhere in southern New Jersey, including the trails at the community college where I ride in the mornings. For bigger blooms, the trails in Wharton Forest near Batsto Village are pleasant walks lined with these flowers.

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At Black Run, you may run into a mated pair of Red-tailed Hawks, like I did. I saw the big female first, and didn’t notice the smaller male until he flew off. It’s a good spot to see a variety of birds like Pine Warblers and Eastern Bluebirds, but this time of year you get a lot of Eastern Towhees and occasional woodpeckers, usually Downy and Red-bellied. Tree Swallows over the water, Turkey vultures and crows over the old airport. Occasionally you’ll get a Bald Eagle, too.

I met a bumblebee who was glad they didn’t miss the mountain laurels, too.

I rode in the rain the other day, part of my resolution to not have the good sense to come in out of the rain. It means I leave my glasses in the car and stay off my phone when I’m outside, which is good for the mood.

Next time, I’ll share my visit to the Roman Baths, Chatsworth estate, and Solsbury Hill—with Eurasian Skylarks, Rooks, and waterfowl.

Until then, Go Outside. The turtles are waiting:

A gem of the southern New Jersey park system, Parvin State Park was built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, who were employed aspart of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal during the Great Depression. As the current administration fires all probationary workers in the National Park Service, I wanted to cite the origin of this park, so that it isn’t taken for granted. It was built by American workers and paid for by American citizens, like many other agencies and governmental infrastructure that they plan to dismantle to pay for a $4 trillion tax cut for the obscenely wealthy.

The rich mocked this as “paying people to dig holes and fill them back up,” as they do with every government program that puts people to work to create things of value to others. We’re still enjoying this “government waste” ninety years later.

It was oddly appropriate that I saw two Bald Eagles on my latest visit. One adult, one juvenile. I couldn’t get close, so these are tightly cropped photos taken at full zoom.

This was my first time seeing eagles here. The pair of Mute Swans stays year-round. The last time I saw them, a third wheel kept attacking the male. A birder I met on the trail said that particular swan was also known for attacking people and cars, and the rangers were trying to capture it for its own safety. It was nowhere to be seen, so perhaps they succeeded.

I saw my first Black and White Warbler here, pointed out by the same birder. I learned to identify them by how they hop at the end of high tree branches. Cedar Waxwings like to feed along the hardwood swamp trail, and they are always pleasant to see. This time, I saw mostly waterfowl and the two eagles. A woodpecker scolded me from a high branch, but I was unable to spot them (this was before I got the new field glasses.) There were Buffleheads, both Hooded and Common Mergansers, the swans, plenty of Canada Geese, and also many Herring Gulls on the water. They were all quite shy, and my attempts to walk around the lake to get closer to the swans were foiled. By the time I got there, they moved to another little cove.

I met joggers and dog walkers and couples walking the path. It was quite lovely for a gloomy and cold Saturday. Parks, whether state, municipal, or national, are a natural tonic for our bodies and minds. We fail to protect that at our peril. The new leader of the Bureau of Land Management is looking at public land like he’s the landlord, reviewing National Monuments for mineral extraction.

If you’ve never seen an open pit mine, consider yourself lucky. I visited the hellscape in the Minnesota Iron Range that Robert Allen Zimmerman fled to become Bob Dylan, and it looks like an evil AI’s vision of the Grand Canyon. The Hull Rust Mine in Hibbing, Minnesota:

Surrounding this abcess on the Earth are abandoned and overgrown streets with the street signs still standing, as human habitation gave way for further profit. I pored through twenty years of digital photos looking for any I’d taken from this visit. It’s on the way to the International Wolf Center in Ely1, Minnesota, which is a great place to visit; if you leave from Minneapolis, you’ll pass through Duluth, where the ore boats that export the taconite iron pellets by the thousand-ton, to be smelted into steel. The Edmund Fitzgerald was one of those ships, lost in a storm on Lake Superior. She may never give up her dead, but the lake gives up beautiful agates, of which I have one, which I polished myself. It’s only eye-size, but I keep in on my desk.

North of Ely is the Boundary Waters, along the border with Canada, and to the west is Voyageurs National Park, which is being eyed for its mineral wealth.2 The news today read that one thousand people were fired from the National Park Service, so I hope you weren’t planning on visiting any of them this year. I wanted to visit Yosemite, but locals are already in a panic because of the effects of these illegal actions.

Well, there’s always State Parks.

I attended the late Tom Brown’s Tracker School in the Pine Barrens, and one of the lessons he taught was that every track is a story. And everything is a track: a pawprint in the soil; a leaf bent by a passing creature; a blade of grass shorn by the sharp teeth of a tiny rodent. It is up to us to follow these tracks like words, a stream of consciousness that tells a tale.

Living on the intracoastal plain, I often see prints in the sandy soil. I’ve found beaver tracks leaving Timber Creek, the fine fingers of a raccoon waddling as it looked for an evening snack, and chipmunk prints, right after their owner scampered into the leaf litter. The chipmunk left a complicated dance step of prints for me to read, as they waltzed around the pine needles looking for seeds. Sand makes tracking easier, but so does snow. And snow is magical, because it reveals stories that have been there all along, passing unnoticed.

My friend Suzanne, who I join on long walks some Sunday mornings, spotted a red fox trotting along the path towards us one Sunday morning. The fox saw us as well, and altered their direction towards cover. Despite seeing the fox cut into the snow-mottled grass, it took a while for us to find its prints among the dog-walkers’. A fox walks in a direct register, as do most felines, which means they place their rear paws in the same place their front paws were a moment before. Like cats, foxes also keep their claws retracted so they aren’t dulled, but they have an ovoid print, like canines, unlike cats, which have a round one. (So do some domestic dogs, but they are easy to exclude because of the large size and clawmarks.)

Once we found the fox, we tracked the prints backward for nearly a mile, losing them when the snow was clear or flattened into ice, and picking up the trail again in the fresh snow. I showed Suzanne how the “crumbs” inside a track can indicate freshness; the tiny snow crystals haven’t had time to melt in the sun, be blown by breezes, and so on. We followed the fox’s story as they trod a familiar trail criss-crossed with squirrel and rabbit tracks leading to “runs” through the grass and brush that such prey animals use for cover. Without the snow, we would have had to be well-trained trackers to see a single print at all, but the secret story was revealed to us.

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Once you think this way, you can read stories others will not stop to see. Some have been lucky enough to see the imprint in the snow of an owl landing on its prey, but not all stories are so dramatic. The scatter of a thousand bird feet beneath an empty feeder as they look for scraps; a mountain bike tire track with dog prints beside it, following joyfully, the bounding prints of a squirrel planting its big rear feet ahead of its small front ones, as it digs up an old cache. Bird tracks in the snow remind me of how much time these little fliers spend on the ground. It feels like whenever I’m looking, they are high in a tree.

Maybe I need to start walking like a fox.1

I’ve changed the name of this newsletter to Fox at Timber Creek, because I plan on focusing on nature from now on. The title is meant to honor Annie Dillard and her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which inspired me to look more closely at the natural world, many years ago. I’ve felt kinship with foxes from a young age, and it still horrifies me that people with too much money dress up to murder them on horseback.2

While I trudged through the snow at Timber Creek yesterday, I admired the perseverance of a large flock of Canadian Geese as they bedded down on the ice. Their feet have no blood vessels, but they must still be cold. I took shelter in the woods from the wind, and my hands were numb in my gloves. But out there, any foxes or other predators would have to skitter on the ice to reach them. There’s a spot in the swamp with running water that hasn’t frozen over, and Northern Shoveler ducks were diving to nibble weeds, showing their butts. A couple of Hooded Mergansers were there as well, splashing and preening. It reminded me that I considered joining a Polar Plunge for charity this year.

I’ll send them a check and stay warm. Speaking of resilience, here’s a Prickly Pear Cactus growing through asphalt, in the snow.

I chose to avoid the muck and the mosquitoes of summer. I’ll have to return next year to see them in bloom. There is plenty of beauty here, but you have to go looking for it. My trip to Joshua Tree and the Grand Canyon reminded me that living in a flat Pineland means I need to look deeper and closer to find beauty. Next year, I will follow the orchid blooms in the Pine Barrens and try to find some of the tiny beauties like Pink Lady’s Slipper and Dragon Mouth.

I shared the two photos above for my friend who lost a great tree friend this year. A dead tree is never dead. It gives life to countless other beings when it falls and grows no more. Whether it’s dry and serves as a seat for us two-leggers, feeds fungi and moss, or becomes home to little furry creatures or the crawlies that lived in its bark when alive, it lives on through its gift to us all.

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The hike to see the trees was a pleasant one, and the first mile of the trail is used by joggers and dog walkers. One mystery I encountered was finding a whole turnip on the trail. My guess was a local gardener tossed it here for the squirrels and the woodchucks, but it was amusing to find.

While the trees have dropped their leaves, the birds remain to pick them free of bugs. Woodpeckers abound, and I got my first photos of a Brown Creeper on this hike. They are relatively small birds with a long, curved beak, easily identified by their behavior of crawling up tree trunks in a spiraling climb as they seek bugs and grubs in the bark. They have a distinctive high-pitched call you can easily learn to recognize.

This is also the season for White-Breasted Nuthatches, who like to climb down tree trunks. I haven’t seen what happens when a Nuthatch meets a Creeper on the same tree, but I imagine it’s quite unlike when a body meet a body, comin’ thro’ the rye.

For the last week or two, I’ve been exhausted even after a good night’s sleep. The winter, the election, and a family member’s declining health are pushing me towards a depression. I usually go for hikes or bikes in the early morning, but I need the sun right now, so I am shifting towards the early afternoon. Here’s a reminder (mostly to myself) that there’s still beauty in the Pinelands in winter, and there are pink elephants to keep you on your toes, if you care to look.

Look out for beauty and watch out for pink elephants.

Saturday, I managed to sneak in a ride and some Pine Barrens exploration before it became brutally hot. I went out to Franklin Parker Preserve for a longer ride, and while most of the birds were smart enough to stay out of the hot sun, I saw a Great Blue Heron, Pine Warblers, Red-Winged Blackbirds, Canada Geese, and a distant eagle or vulture. (I’m told there are Indigo Buntings at Black Run Preserve, so this weekend I’ll be out there.)

Not far from Franklin Parker, through the heart of the Pine Barrens—the town of Chatsworth, where the Blue Comet train once stopped, where Buzby’s General Store has been revived, the home of Hot Diggity Dog—there’s an old water tower accessible only by rutted and humped sand roads. I crawled the Outback around the washouts with the bike on the back, and made it to the tower. The site is where the Central Jersey Railroad once ran, but the tower itself is supposedly related to a foundry that’s since been demolished, except for a cellar hole hidden in the sand. It’s a lonely and eerie site lost between two well-traveled roads. One entrance is barred by buried earth mover tires, but if you’re careful and it’s not too muddy, a sand road off of Chatsworth-Barnegat Road will get you in. There’s a lot of trash and debris, so take care and mind your tires.

I didn’t bring the good camera or stop to photograph the birds. The humidity from the brief rain made the bike ride a tough one, and the water is so low at Parker that a birder I chatted with said that he’s unsure that the usual shore bird migration will stop there for long. I’ll be in Cape May soon, and I think I’ll visit the birder haunts early in the morning, to see what I can see. I may even bring a bike.

What I did photograph recently was a Tiger Bee Fly, a parasitic fly that lays its eggs in Carpenter Bee nests. This one landed on a towel by our pool. I love the transparent spots on the wings; at first, I thought it was a moth with ragged wings!

I identified it with Seek, an app that uses photographs from your phone. It can be very vague unless it has a good match, but it can be very helpful in identifying insects and plants.

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Thank you all for the wishes for a quick recovery from my crash earlier this month. I’m nearly as good as new, unless I sneeze or cough. Then I remember that I bruised or hairline fractured a rib. I swam a thousand yards in the pool, I’ve biked dozens of miles, and I’m back lifting at the gym, so it’s mostly healed.

Here’s the eroded drop that I crashed riding, before and after repair.

And because I couldn’t get Redd Foxx out of my head, here’s my favorite comedy album cover, and a clip of Foxx in his later years, expounding the virtues of goof hygiene.

If Redd isn’t to your taste, here are a few good reads from the past week or so:

A Word About...

A New York Story

“All New York stories become real estate stories.” —David DenbyA Word About... is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. A thing I like to do of a morning, while I’m glugging down coffee and trying to get my brain in gear to perform whatever tasks need tasking that day, is hop…

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2 years ago · 41 likes · 14 comments · Benjamin Dreyer

On the Commons

True believers and mass movements

Welcome! For those new here, On the Commons explores the ancient roots and ongoing consequences of private property and commodification—from the Doctrine of Discovery to ancient enclosures of the commons, and more—along with love for this world and being human in the middle of systems that often make such “being” difficult…

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2 years ago · 62 likes · 51 comments · Antonia Malchik

The Ariadne Archive

Waxwing lanterns

Hello friends—I’m sharing a favorite post from the archive this week, as I work on a few more things this week and next. Waxwings have arrived in flocks of late, alighting high in a single birch, facing towards the sun, trilling their soft calls in a chorus that sounds like a wave of crickets has spontaneously erupted into song. I love how mysterious th…

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2 years ago · 42 likes · 16 comments · Freya Rohn

On the Commons

Dis/connection

Welcome! For those new here, On the Commons explores the ancient roots and ongoing consequences of private property and commodification—from the Doctrine of Discovery to ancient enclosures of the commons, and more—along with immersion in the offline, off-grid world, and examining the various systems that can make it difficult to simply be human…

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2 years ago · 77 likes · 31 comments · Antonia Malchik

Bookwise, Here are some recent reads that I’ve enjoyed:

Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. A future-now where prisoners fight to the death on reality TV, a vision of the police state that calls itself the only free nation.

After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz. In fragments, like Sappho, a story of liberation at the turn of the century.

Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi. Another great YA fantasy in the same realm as Pet. Both explore resistance and the burden we place on the young when we expect them to fix our mistakes, and many other things. Great reads.

Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York, by Elon Green. I’m not much into true crime, but this focuses on the victims, and is set in the gay bar scene of Manhattan where my uncle managed several bars, and the Pine Barrens.

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart. Another tough yet sparkling coming of age in Glasgow tale from Stuart, it is gripping, heartbreaking, and hopeful.

Everything in its Place: First Loves and Last Tales, by Oliver Sacks. He is one of my favorite writers and this last collection is a gem.

I’m currently reading the heroic fantasy classic Legend by David Gemmell, Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak, and the lesbian classic Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg, and enjoying them all. I also added Word Perfect by Susie Dent to my “read a bit a day” pile, which also includes The Book of (More) Delights by Ross Gay, Metamorphoses by Ovid, translated by Stephanie McCarter, and The Complete Poems of Jim Harrison, volume 2.

Movies…

Robot Dreams was nominated for Best Animated Feature last year, and it is a wonderful story of making friends, losing them, and making new ones. I also read the book, and the movie is better. This made me want to watch Castle in the Sky again, and I really enjoyed it. One of the often overlooked Studio Ghibli films, it holds up very well.

I also finally watched Tank Girl and it also holds up surprisingly well thirty years later. A goofier apocalypse, but never a boring one. Lori Petty, Naomi Watts, and Malcolm McDowell make it a blast. One that isn’t worth seeing if you missed it is Looney Tunes: Back in Action, which is the final nail in the coffin of the beloved characters. It had a few moments, but Joe Dante was not given any freedom to give them life, and the short bits in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? remain the last time they were ever successfully revived.

I also watched Cool World, which was Ralph Bakshi’s answer to WFRR?, essentially a two hour mess of “what if you could fuck cartoons and it somehow broke the fabric of space-time?” It certainly has its moments of bizarre, Krazy & Ignatz-style chaos, and Kim Basinger and Gabriel Byrne have a lot of fun with their characters. What stunned me most was how incredibly terrible Brad Pitt was back then. He’s gotten a bit better, but this was right after his abs got everyone twitterpated in Thelma and Louise, and before any acting lessons.1 Cool World has an amazing soundtrack, and some of the set pieces are a lot of fun, but many scenes are excruciating.

Sticking with animation, The Imaginary is an interesting new film about the life of imaginary friends. It’s little light, but can be spooky and beautiful. You can watch it on NetFlix. Also on NetFlix is Nimona, which was a great fantasy that takes a lot of risks and is a lot of fun. Based on a graphic novel by ND Stevenson, the book is also worth your time.

Not animated, but lots of fun, is Godzilla: Minus One, which takes us back to the origin of the king of the monsters. Like the first 1954 film Gojira with a big budget, and a script that cribs a lot from Jaws, it’s the most realistic kaiju monster flick imaginable. As awesome as this incarnation of Godzilla is to watch, the people aren’t just there to be stomped on, and how they deal with the monster is the real story.

The trees were cut down for ships and charcoal, the sand scooped for glass and sifted for bog iron. There’s a 1500-year-old shell pile nineteen feet deep at the eastern terminus of the Pinelands that proves humans have lived here for many centuries. It took the threat of flattening it to build an airport to protect it.

The New Jersey Pinelands National Preserve is home to many carnivorous plants—such as the pitcher plants and bloodworts you can see at the link there—as well as sundews, which catch insects in their sticky sap:

When you read this it will be Sunday, and I’ll be biking at Black Run to see the prickly pear cacti in bloom. I’ve had to curtail my rides to wider trails, as the ticks are out in force, thanks to the mild winter. Expect more of those, and them. I wanted to explore the ruins of a munitions plant that built the firebombs dropped on Japan in World War II, and fireworks factory—unsure if it’s the same business repurposed after the war—but the undergrowth was too lush to see anything. This foundation is all I could easily see, and that mudhole was deeper and stickier than it looks. I nearly lost my boots testing it.

But it was far from a wasted trip. I found a few hidden trails to explore, and the Mountain Laurel was in bloom. They smell as wonderful as they look. On another excursion, I hiked around Parvin Lake. I woke up that morning knowing that I needed to see the sun on water. I could have visited the busy, gray Delaware River, or the cold and violent Atlantic, but I chose this small lake because it’s a mere three miles around, and makes for a pleasant hike before the heat of the day. It’s also where a birder showed me my first Black and White Warbler, who I now know how to identify as the wee monochrome birds who like to hang out at the ends of tree branches. I didn’t see any warblers this time, but the Cedar Waxwings were out, and they look like someone carved them out of sandalwood.

The birds were shy, but the dragonflies and their kind were not. I snapped a close-up of an Ebony Jewelwing that shows the veins on its ebony wings, and I found a turtle who was far from water and covered in flies and mosquitoes. They may have been looking for a place to bury eggs, but I didn’t sex them by sticking my finger up their cloaca, and they weren’t digging at the campground where I found them. I may have erred on the side of caution, but I plunked this one back in the lake, so they didn’t bake in the sun.

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A few weeks earlier, I had set out with my Subaru Trail Crew to perform a clean-up for the Department of Environmental Protection, in a Wildlife Management Area that is usually off-limits. We removed a semi-container load of broken furniture, smashed televisions, and other trash from a dump site. It was boring work, sifting broken glass out of the sand and carrying discarded roofing shingles to a trailer.

Seeing so many people show up on a hot summer day to clean up trash gave me hope, too. Think of the New Jersey Pine Barrens as the Phoenix Forest; it has risen from the ashes many times, whether from wildfires or being cut down for charcoal furnaces to melt bog iron. If you walked through it, you would only know because of the relative youth of the trees. The cutting, seawater creep, and crowding by the pines makes old growth Atlantic White Cedars a rarity; some still exist, and the aged pines blackened by fire—but unbowed—remind us that this sandy barren land sits atop an immense acquifer of pure water that will feed an immense and varied amount of life, if we stop abusing it for a few decades.

You can see Philadelphia from the top of Blueberry Hill, but that’s not the thrill that the local teenagers come for. If the poem seems a little dramatic, it’s posted in an area where the kids go to smoke weed. It’s legal for adults, but they scarpered when they saw this old man hiking.

Two ravens also live in the area. I thought I heard a “gronk!” and saw them, and a Peregrine falcon, circling the apocalyptic landscape of the quarry. It’s a good birding area, with the radar installation as a high point for raptors and vultures to perch, the wetlands and forest for the prey to hide. I saw my first Eastern Bluebird here; this time I saw none, but a Brown Thrasher sang to me from the trees. The ravens were scarce, and I thought I’d mistaken them until I met a birder with her grandson at the Community Garden nearby, which is festooned with bird houses. The young boy was photographing little songbirds with an old camera of grandma’s; she, the veteran birder, had a camera with a 1200mm zoom lens hanging from her neck, and told me that the male raven was named Edgar, and the garden keeper fed him Vienna sausages. I’ll have to return more often, to catch a glimpse.

The FAA Radar Base is managed by the Air Force, but in a relaxed enough fashion that a beekeeper has a hive guarded by a skeleton on the grounds. The community garden is nearby. The quarry is technically off-limits and still in use, by TRI Borough Sand & Stone, but it’s easy to wander into. One section had Mallards, Tree Swallows, and Canada Geese visiting. There are parts where you’d forget that it’s a quarry.

The Community Garden is lively, and two groups were tailgating in the parking lot. It’s also known as Pole Hill. There are hiking paths throughout Blueberry Hill, paved paths used by dog walkers and cyclists, and several geocaches in the area. It’s a nice place, but reminds me of how many preserves we have only because of infrastructure. Sewer and gas lines run through Black Run Preserve; the Pinelands are free of that, and lack even cell phone towers. Even though the trees in the Pinelands Preserve are recent growth that was replanted after nearly all of it was cut down to feed the need for shipbuilding material, charcoal, and fuel for bog iron furnaces, preservation since the ‘70s makes it feel like a more wild place.

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This kind of fits in with the urban landscapes explored by in his Field Notes newsletter, so you can read more there if you’re interested in this subject. While this quarry isn’t quite as striking as the prickly pear cacti at the ruins of Aero Haven it paints a picture of how we can rewild and let nature reclaim land we’ve purposed for obsolete projects. It won’t always be pristine, but it doesn’t have to be. I believe in “Leave No Trace” when visiting preserves and parks, but we can’t expect humanity to leave none at all, everywhere. Beavers, termites, woodpeckers… they all leave a trace.

We are part of nature; we need to make our traces easier for nature to heal, so we don’t leave a litany of scars upon the Earth.

The poem:

Superposition & Rapunzel

I must admit the most dire mistake

Was I just deluded for loving you?

That lie, a Fever that broke at daybreak

My swayed position what are you to do?

No not this, although many have accrued

Many times I could have listened much more

I heard your voice and knew what to construe

As it wavered in startled fear, your wars

That friend is why I called you my Comrade

It's Tough as to which is my gravest sin

Who puts their weight on a friend in combat

I gave you a hand that could never win

What a mess; this is not how I visioned

Leaving a love in Superposition

—author unknown

I bought a Subaru because Sarah got tired of me getting Pine Barrens sugar sand in her Honda. I looked at Jeeps (ridiculously expensive for the capable models, terrible reliability) and the new Ford Bronco (hard to get in the capable models, very expensive, and buying a new model Ford means you are asking to be an unpaid Quality Assurance tester.) A few web searches led me to local Subaru groups who went on camping and road trips, and the dealer just happened to have a new Outback Wilderness edition in metallic green with copper accents that reminded me of my grandmother’s vintage ‘70s kitchen.

The Subaru AWD is well-established as one of the best in the business, and the Wilderness has an extra inch of ground clearance, waterproof upholstery, better gearing for low end torque, and roof rails that can support a 700lb. rooftop tent. As you can see, you can have some fun with it, if you’re careful. Or, not so careful:

The Outback has a front-facing camera that can be helpful, if you use it. I was too concerned with an approach that would get me between the two trees at the top of the rise, because I had the longest and widest car there. The bumper lip on the skid plate did what it was meant to do, but I had a lot of fun getting sand and pebbles out of the nose of the car!

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This sand pit is easily accessed from the highway and has trails of varying difficulty. We saw a pair of Toyota 4Runners, and a couple of dirt bikes. Then we set out on the back roads and visited one of my favorite places in the Pine Barrens, known as the Devil’s Hairbrush. Named after a stand of dead Atlantic Cedars in the swamp, it’s one of the first places I visited. It’s still beautiful:

The bridge is washed out and replaced with a culvert and gravel, and requires driving through two spots with a few inches of running water. From there, we tried several roads to make it to Hidden Lakes, which I visited in January. That was a fun trip, but we weren’t meant to visit again. One road was flooded out and required a detour. We followed another to a dead end, and finally followed one that crossed railroad tracks which tore out the exhaust of that cute white Forester with the heart headlights! The pipes were sort of jerry-rigged on, but Ilya had to drive home with a very loud exhaust and couldn’t hear us on the mobile radios.

I wanted to take this trip because I invested in some Primitive Racing skid plates to protect the engine bay, transmission, and the rear differential. As you can see in the video I posted above, the bumper lip earned its keep. I’ve decided not to upgrade anything like the suspension or tires until they break or wear out. As I’ve heard off-roaders say, the best upgrades are the driver and then the tires. I’m working on the driver—I’m too eager to “full send it” as they say in the mountain biking community—and the tires haven’t let me down yet.

If car stuff ain’t yout thing, next week there’ll be Woodpecker Wednesday, and a visit to the Leatherman’s Cave (not a BDSM joint).

And a reminder, Vyx Starts the Mythpocalypse will be released on Tuesday, March 26th in ebook and paperback! It looks amazing:

Vyx Starts the Mythpocalypse is available for pre-order on Kindle and all other e-book formats, and soon, paperback will be available through Amazon. A special edition hardcover from Barnes and Noble is in the works, as well. The print editions contain nearly three dozen illustrations by Kim Parkhurst! It is a book of fierce hope, and I can’t wait for you to read it.

Until next time… I’ll be bouncing around the Pines.

You white-breasted nuthatch!

Such birdfanities were flying fast when I joined naturalist Keara Giannotti for a birding walk at Black Run Preserve, visiting the preserve’s bird blind with stocked feeders, and a nearby bog. We had a good-sized group of birders of varying experience, and I learned a lot about the species that visit or live in the preserve.

The feeders made for easy photography, as you can see. Eastern Bluebirds fed on the ground (they don’t usually eat at feeders) and an uncommon Brown Creeper walked up and down the same pine tree you see above, where the White-Breasted Nuthatch was doing its thing. My favorite nickname for them? Upside-Down Charlies.

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I talked all about titmice and peckers last time, and fierce little Downy Woodpeckers abounded, pecking the suet log. A day or two later, I spotted a Red-Bellied Woodpecker at Timber Creek and got a half-decent phone photo, as well:

At the bog, the ducks kept their distance. Keara identified Hooded Mergansers and Ring-necked Ducks from across the bog, from the light on their heads and bills. Mergansers are a favorite of mine, and I’d never seen Ring-neckeds before. I don’t really count this as seeing them, as they were miniscule even in my binoculars. While beavers are disliked in the area, as humans have wiped out most of their natural predators (bobcats and foxes remain) they are needed to kill trees for woodpeckers to nest in, so a balance must be preserved. Beaver trapping is allowed, but doesn’t have much of a market. There used to be a yearly “Muskrat Fry” in the Pine Barrens, but maybe we need to have a Beaver BBQ to get their numbers under control. Hopefully the growing coyote population will eat beaver.

I couldn’t capture the Brown Creeper on camera, but they are a cool little bird. Easily mistaken for a house sparrow unless you watch its behavior or are lucky to see it sit still enough to admire its longer, curved bill and herringbone suit jacket, they ring around trees hunting for insects and blend in well with the bark. When I managed to spot it, I admired it through my field glasses and didn’t bother attempting a photo. Unlike the nuthatch, which stared at me from eye level, the Creeper kept to the thirty foot heights, and without patience and a tripod, it wasn’t worth trying.

I met some nice folks, and later had pizza with them at Zed’s Beer, for a Black Run member social. A $30 membership to the Black Run Preserve gets you free entry to their many educational programs, and to these pizza socials, and you help support the preserve. For a hiker, mountain biker, or birder, it’s a bargain. It’s great for all three.

Here are my favorite photos from the day that I haven’t shared already. That’s a female Eastern Bluebird peeking at me from behind a feeder.

This Sunday, I am planning to meet with at Loch Raven reservoir in Maryland, to look for Bald Eagles and other birds around the dam, and along the various trails. That’s how we met, a year or so ago, at Conowingo Dam. That place is overrun with photographers capturing eagles catching fish or stealing them from others. Next door is a great little road house bar with excellent crab fries. Loch Raven has a pub called McFaul’s that seems to be open for Sunday breakfast… expect a full review, and glorious photographs, in one week’s time. We’ll also be dropping by Atomic Books, haunt of John Waters. Me and John go way back…

You all know what his favorite bird is… the pink flamingo.

In 1968 the New Jersey Pinelands might have become a supersonic jetport. The outrage over the desecration of this source of water that feeds the region gave us the Pinelands Preserve, the first of its kind. Not a state forest, not a national park. It is protected by its own law, but that law didn’t say the state actually had to enforce their own protections.

There are over 500 miles of roads through the Pinelands, which are used every day by people visiting the area or just passing through. Most are unpaved and many are not well maintained; some have existed since travel by stagecoach was the fastest method, others are fire roads that were not intended for traffic, but were never marked, and are now used regularly to reach spots accessible by no other trails. Since 2015, the Pinelands Preservation Alliance—of which I was once a member—has been working with the Department of Environmental Protection to block access to over 300 miles of these roads as they see fit. Some are “near” “sensitive” areas, but no definition of either has been provided to the public. The 2015 plan sparked a different kind of outrage.

People who’ve lived near the Pinelands for generations, who have hiked, kayaked, hunted, fished, bird watched, and explored by foot, bicycle, motorcycle, and motor vehicle, found that their preserve, which they have used and protected, was going to be off limits. That plan was scrapped, but the people behind it bided their time and tried a new tack in 2021: they found evidence of illegal off-roading and manufactured a crisis on social media, a documentary, and a campaign to stop the “destruction.” To stop it, they wanted you to have to buy a permit to enter the area and not get a ticket.

Anyone who explores the Pinelands, like myself—if only for the past few years—has probably run into people on dirt bikes. A few times, I have. I have never seen them off the roads. On occasional I’ve seen tracks where they should not be. One thing I have not seen is law enforcement. Over the years I think I’ve seen law enforcement twice. Once at Bass River, on a paved road. Another time on a sand road near Forked River, looking for unlicensed ORVs (off-road vehicles). We need a lot more of that before we start closing roads.

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I get it, it’s expensive. It’s easier to put up pylons or dump fallen trees to block trails. But that won’t stop ORVs, legal or not. It will only stop cars from using established roads. Unless your intention is to reduce usage of the area to protect wildlife that crosses these roads, which is a reasonable goal, but a much harder sell than “destructive rednecks ruining sensitive habitat.” I’ve attended many meetings of the PPA and there is a contingent who would remove all roads, including highways, through the Pinelands if they magically could. This would save the lives of many animals.

How would we get there? These sound like the same people who would be against train lines, which existed through the Pinelands previously. The Pinelands, prior to protection, were cut down for shipbuilding, mined for clay and sand, and cut down and burned for charcoal. There’s little if any old growth left; the Pinelands renews itself with fire. If it was anything approaching a pristine wilderness, with only a few roads through it, this could make sense. But when you’ve had roads through it for a hundred years, and people who live there, it becomes an extremist position.

I am all for strict enforcement against illegal off-road vehicles and anyone who damages habitat by taking vehicles off the trail in the Pinelands Preserve. Just because it is not easy does not mean we do not try, and instead punish those who follow the rules by denying them access to places they’ve loved and visited responsibly for many decades. When the DEP asked for input, I was one who selected nearly all the roads as ones I found useful. I want to explore the whole area! These were discarded from the survey, apparently (there were 1610 of us.)

I have already contacted my representatives, and their staff has mentioned that many people have called and written to voice their opposition to this new attempt to close access to the Pinelands. If you are a New Jersey resident, please sign the petition below, and use the Open Trails NJ Contact Your Representatives page to write your own personal message to your representatives. If you are out-of-state, or do not have the time or inclination to write your politicians, here is a petition you can sign.

If they cared about damage, they would lobby for enforcement. It is my opinion that the Pinelands Preservation Association, who also owns Pinelands Adventures, which sells kayak trips and delivers you by driving a school bus down these same roads, wants to limit access so they are the only game in town. Exploring local nature preserves is one of the few things Americans can do these days that doesn’t cost anything. Demanding that you need a permit, and closing roads so kayakers and nature lovers can’t reach spots within the million acres of the preserve… unless they have a guide from the “Alliance”… is not a future I want for the Pinelands. That doesn’t sound like an adventure, it sounds like a monopoly.

I’ve followed the original stagecoach road that ran from the Philadelphia ferry landing in Camden, all the way to Tuckerton on the Jersey Shore (and you can read about it at the link) and as much as I love hiking around Batsto village, and mountain biking the twisty trails through the multiple state forests within the Pinelands National Preserve, sometimes it is best explored by car.

Now, you need the right car. The roads are sugar sand and clay, which turns into sticky pine mud when wet, and washouts stay filled and stagnant for months after the rain. Some roads can be traversed easily with a Honda CR-V, and one of the great explorers of the Pine Barrens Forums has used one for years; some roads are so rutted by mudding 4x4 trucks that even they can’t pass them in high water anymore. If you choose to explore, bring some boots and a stick so you can test the depth of puddles, and do not be afraid to turn back. As I have learned, getting winched out of the mud is a costly experience, and that’s if you have phone signal to call for help. I had to walk a mile up the road to make the call.

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My first ride into the forest was with the Mtn Roo Tri-State group of Subaru enthusiasts, but we welcome all capable drivers. This trip had a Toyota RAV4 and a Lexus SUV, and we met up with a group of Jeep drivers as well. Subarus are quite nimble on dirt trails, and while they can’t keep up with a loaded Jeep, their AWD is advanced enough that sand is no problem if you drive carefully and air down your tires when necessary. I’ve never had to air down, but I don’t do doughnuts in the sand, either.

We began at Cedar Bridge tavern, site of one of the last skirmishes of the American Revolution, known as “the Affair at Cedar Bridge.” The tavern itself is nice to visit, and has historical artifacts inside. It’s one of several old taverns I have visited.

From there we took some old roads that lead to the ruins of Union Clay Works. We didn’t go searching for ruins, as they are scant, but the mining operation left its mark on the area with a beautiful scar, a blue hole. There are many of these in the preserve, as while the trees were burned in chimneys to make charcoal fuel, the sand was mined for glassworks, and the clay for kilns. Sand works are still active in the area, and anyone can visit the graffitied ruins of the Brooksbrae Terracotta factory, which is easily reachable from Pasadena Road.

Blue holes are most famous for being the Jersey Devil’s bathtub, but they should be infamous for drowning many swimmers who are unaware of how deep and cold they are. Think of a quarry that has filled with water, with no bottom in sight. I don’t know how deep this one is, but I’ve seen a photo of a hatchback that someone disposed of there, and it was several feet below the surface. Some have been described as five feet deep until they reach a sudden fifty-foot drop-off, as you might expect from a mining operation meant to extract enormous amounts of sand. Some holes are big enough to contain powerful currents created by the temperature drop due to their depth.1

They are beautiful even on a gray winter’s day in a rainy January. I made a highlight video of our drive, which is below. My favorite part is in the middle, when I had to drive over roots and then a steep drop. I took video front and back of that one. The Outback has a front camera above the license plate, so I could see the way better than the windshield view suggests, but sending it was a sphincter pincher.

After enjoying the serene beauty of the lake, we met at the local Wawa for our repast. It doesn’t get more South Jersey than that. I had a hoagie. We called them subs, in North Jersey. Others say hero or grinder. But hoagie is the most fun to say, and no one knows why they are called that. Some etymologists say it is a corruption of “hoggie” as if it’s a sandwich big enough to satisfy a pig, or that it was named for singer Hoagy Carmichael, but neither satisfies. (If you want a satisfying hoagie from Wawa, I recommend the hot honey chicken.) I am going to tag the inestimable aka Mister Slang, to see if he would like to weigh in…

Upcoming adventures:

A hike or bike trip in north Jersey (Chimney Rock or Norvin Green State Park)

Eagle watching with Hannah the Wanderfinder

A guided walk around Philadelphia

Forsythe Wildlife Refuge

Looking for the abandoned beach railroad at Cape May

(And ticks.)

The forest replenishes me. As I said a few days ago, when I drove to Apple Pie Hill on New Year’s Day, I felt joy as soon as my car was surrounded by trees. Before I even left county road 532 onto the fire roads, before I smelled the pines and was enveloped by their silence. Get outside in the winter! I went for a walk at the local park today and it was only a couple of degrees above freezing, and I had to tolerate the crap music pumped through loudspeakers to keep people from sleeping on the benches, but it lifted my chilly spirits.

Not as much as the forest, mind you. Black Run Preserve and Camden County Trails are my go-to for mountain biking, and I know them very well by now. They still make me happy to visit, no matter how familiar. When I need a pick-me-up, I’ll make a detour to the van in the woods at CCC, or Aerohaven at Black Run, with its feisty prickly pear cactuses breaking through the ancient asphalt. Nature swallowing up manmade things always makes me smile.

To slow myself down a bit, I bought a camera. Remember a few weeks ago, when I decided to go for a hike instead of a bike ride, and I met the molting rat snake? Well, that inspired me to take more nature photography. Because I do not like fiddling with all sorts of devices and lenses, I bought the absolute largest point and shoot camera made, the Sony Cyber-shot RX10-IV, with a 24mm-600mm zoom lens. It even lets a goon like me take halfway decent photos. Here’s house finches in my yard, a cardinal at Saddler’s Woods, and a northern flicker at Timber Creek:

I wasn’t really into birds until I bought a house, and northern flickers started feeding in the trees around the yard. I’d never seen one before, and they are one of three kinds of woodpeckers in this area. (The other two are downy and red-bellied woodpeckers.) One of my favorite things about these birds is that they sound like Woody Woodpecker. They really do sound like machine-gun laughter. And little downy woodpeckers have a sassiness belied by their size. I saw a pileated, the iconic big redhead of the bunch, in the heart of the pandemic when I was hiking every trail near home. It was high in the tree, but its silhouette was unmistakable.

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One of my ironic lifer birds was the yellow-bellied sapsucker, and I saw one in Cape May at the now-abandoned Audubon Society Bird Observatory. I say ironic because I only wanted to see one because of the silly name that was a comedic shibboleth in Looney Tunes cartoons and other pop culture mainstays of my youth. My favorite funny bird names are yellow-billed oxpecker and white-breasted nuthatch, both of which serve as fine exclamations and insults for any occasion when profanity is unwanted or unwise. (I’ve known quite a few white-breasted nuthatches in my day, and I’ve behaved perfectly like a yellow-billed oxpecker more times than I care to count.)1

The birds are scarce but not all departed. On Christmas Day, I caught a hawk of some sort having a nosh on a chunk of bloody roadkill as I left the reenactment of Washington crossing the Delaware; swamp sparrows and mute swans were abundant at Franklin Parker Preserve, where I saw carnivorous pitcher plants up close. Here are the plants next to a charred pine tree, the bog in which they live, and my bike near the defunct cranberry bogs where the sparrows sang.

I went for a ride here after climbing the fire tower. The tower used to be open to the public, but vandals ruined that for everyone by throwing old televisions from it. Now the Department of Environmental Protection allows you to climb it on certain days. It is worth the wait, as at 200 feet above sea level, the hill is the highest point in the southern New Jersey intercoastal plain. The tower itself is another hundred or so feet above that, over the oldest pines, and you can see Atlantic City and Philadelphia from it on a clear day. It was clear enough for us to see AC, but only a misty spot where the City of Brotherly Love resides. Not bad for a gray day.

What struck me up there was the silence. The Pines are always quieter than you expect, living up to the “barren” in their name. Hardy plants and wildlife abound there, including birds, but never as many as you expect. I’ve heard more tree frogs than birds in my explorations, and the bird I heard the most was a whippoorwill who liked to sing from ten at night until five in the morning, the only time I’ve camped in the Pine Barrens. (Earplugs were a lifesaver.)

Here’s the tower and a view from up top.

A few good reads, before I leave you. Chris La Tray, on winter and the end of the year:

“For all the talk of it, how many of us are actually allowed to slow down anyway?”

An Irritable Métis

Taking Bold Action

Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. This is the final edition of 2023, in fact, and if you are expecting some kind of meaningful reflection on the year just gasping through its final stagger across the finish line you’ll be disappointed. I have a hard enough ti…

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2 years ago · 136 likes · 68 comments · Chris La Tray

An interview with Ben Goldfarb, author of Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future, which I’ll be reading soon. Ryan Blakeley’s newsletter is new to me, but this made me subscribe.

I have named the new bike! The Surly Ice Cream Truck, which itself is a name that’s hard to beat, is now dubbed The Sweaty Yeti. That’s the name of a fat bike race in Wisconsin, which I’ll probably never attend, but I do hope to ride in snow someday. There were big fat flakes coming down as I rode at Black Run today, but nothing stuck. My friend Johnny calls me The Temperate Yeti because I am a big hairy ape, so the name fits. The second photo is my car parked on Apple Pie Hill.

And here are a few videos from the trail. The first is from a run through Camden County College’s trails, which have been well carved into a fun place to ride:

And this one is riding with the Outdoors Club of South Jersey at Black Run. Watch closely and you get to see me crash in the sand! I was riding “the Gorn,” my Trek Marlin, to keep up with the faster riders, and I took a bad turn in the sand. Thanks to years of grappling, I rolled with the bike instead of face planting, and I was back on the trail in a few seconds. I’d just never done it with a bike before.

Next time: Haruki Murakami, Saltburn, and the mellow moods of Mogwai.

But alas, I did not require a 50 gallon drum of cheese puffs or a flannel merkin, so I did not complete the triangle. It was a lovely day at the lake. I found a parking spot at a trailhead and began exploring all the trails where bikes were allowed, which is most of them. There are two lakes in Parvin State Park, along with campgrounds and cabins you can rent, though the cabins are under maintenance until next year. Once I get a kayak, I might camp there overnight and paddle the larger lake.

The smaller one is too dangerous.

Not because of the waves. Because of the swan.

He looks rather stately and harmless, doesn’t he? Don’t be fooled.

It was a brightly sunny day, thus the blown-out whites in my phone camera photos. The shade of the pines was welcome, and the rooty sandy trails were an enjoyable, mostly flat ride through quiet forest. I looped around the trails for nine miles, meeting birders, dog walkers, other bicyclists, and nature hikers of all ages. It was packed! In mid-September, nature flipped a switch and sent summer packing a few days before, her heat only a memory, and the sound of her flip-flops still kept a beat in our heads.

There were just enough people to give the place a sense of camaraderie, as I announced, “good morning! can I squeeze by?” if walkers were two abreast on the trail. Everyone was friendly about it. Which made the violent sounds from the water all the more surprising.

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The first thing I saw as I pedaled up to Thundergust Lake was something large and white thrashing far from the marshy shore. I pulled over, in case it was a kayaker in distress. What I saw was much more harrowing:

Attacks like this are not uncommon in the mating season, but that is two seasons away. One male is trying to drown the other, while the victim’s mate circles and cries. Adult male mute swans can weigh nearly thirty pounds and sport a seven-foot wingspan, with bony spurs on the wings for striking. They are known to kill ducks and geese in their territory. And if you listen, they are hardly mute.

The good news is that the victim survived this attack, and left to be comforted by his mate. The video of the lone swan was taken after the fight. And here’s one of the mated pair together, after the struggle.

The swan got lucky. Mute swans have even killed kayakers who paddled too closely to their nests. They are beautiful and romantic and they will kill you.

When I circled back to the other side of the lake, I came upon a birder. She was trying to fill out her year list during the fall migration, and pointed out an American Redstart and a Black-and-White Warbler to me in the trees above. The B&W warbler is one of the few of its kind that hop along branches to the very end; they have distinctive plumage, and I was delighted to see one. The redstart was more shy and I barely caught a glimpse; there was another she was eager to see, but I couldn’t spot it.

She told me the story of the swans. The mated pair are older, and haven’t had a successful brood with a cygnet in years. The new swan has been attacking not only the male, but dogs, people on trails, and cars, and the rangers want to capture it. I’m not sure how they are going about it, but you’d need a pretty big net. I don’t envy the people tasked with doing it, as capturing it unharmed will surely involve a lot of biting and buffeting with their wings.

My guess is that the attacker wants the territory of this older mated pair. Maybe he was driven from his territory, or his mate was killed, or both.

Meeting the birder sparked my interest in the fall migration, and I made sure to bring my binoculars on my morning walk at Timber Creek. That paid off immediately, as I heard a bluejay and a catbird squawking warning, and spotted a red-shouldered hawk in the trees across the creek this morning (identified thanks to Merlin.) I didn’t spot many others, but I spooked a few wood ducks, rare for this area and time of year, and heard a northern flicker giving someone hell. I wished I’d seen the flicker, as they are handsome, spotted birds and larger than songbirds, so they stand out among the warblers and jays and other woodpeckers, except perhaps the pileated.

I’m getting the birding bug. I may pursue it a while, if only to slow down. I have trouble slowing down these days; every weekend must have a ride, and miles to go before I sleep. A birder must have patience and perseverance. I’m not sure I have enough, but I do enjoy the delight birds bring. Christian Cooper was recently on the PBS Going Wild podcast with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, which was a good listen. If podcasts ain’t your thing, this is a good read by birder Bill Davison.

Easy By Nature

Becoming Part of the Flock

I sat under a Red Cedar tree and waited for the sunrise. The north wind was rustling leaves, setting the stars twinkling and buoying migrant birds on their southward journey. Every morning is different; the cast of characters is in a constant state of flux. Ancient seasonal rhythms immerse us in mystery. Beautiful birds following celestial guides drop f…

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3 years ago · 39 likes · 27 comments · Bill Davison

And if you like either listening, or reading, or both, check out the Desert Oracle. I just subscribed to his print magazine, after enjoying many episodes of Desert Oracle Radio. If my long road trip next year happens, and I swing by the Aley-Inn, a roadside bar near Area 51, it’s thanks to him.

Next time:

A visit to Bell Labs

The places I explored as a child, and where they are now

Saving the telescope that proved the Big Bang

If you enjoy my explorations and bloviations, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Comments and weekly posts will always be free, but I appreciate any help with the gas money.

Reading the newspaper is an old person thing to do. It slows me down, and makes me wrinkle my eyes at headlines while I decide whether to read them. I don’t get distracted by an ad or a link. I don’t read it cover to cover. I skip the sports coverage, but I do peek into Real Estate and Health, as interesting articles get stuck in there sometimes. I still peruse their website, to pick up stories that didn’t make it to print. And a week or so ago, an article about a land purchase led me to the Michael Huber Prairie Warbler Preserve.

The old way I found nature preserves was using Google Maps to get nosy about any green spots on the satellite view. This led me to a few abandoned Nike Missile bases to check out, and I’m saving them for fall and winter. For bike trails, I use the Trailforks app, which pointed me to my favorite morning ride, at Camden County College Trails. But the trails at the NJ Conservation Foundation preserves are not mapped in Trailforks. The Foundation website is very clear about which trails are for bikes and which are footpaths only, and I obey the rules. I remember when mountain bikes became popular and there were zero trails for them; we had to learn to share, and it was not helpful that New Jersey MTB bros yelled “move!” as their way of saying “excuse me, I’m using a trail that hikers made for hikers, without permission, can you please let me pass?”

I didn’t run into any walkers or hikers at Michael Huber, just two guys in a truck, probably performing deer management. But when I come across people on a trail, even if it’s a bike trail that they shouldn’t be using, I say “good morning,” and then, “can I squeeze by?” Because I’m not an asshole. If they have a dog, I stop until they have the critter under control, in case they are scared of bikes. It’s just courtesy. I try not to lecture people. If they were walking their dog on a single track downhill bike ramp—which has happened, I’ve seen the videos of bikers crashing into them—I might warn them that bicyclists can’t stop on a dime and it would suck to get hit. But mostly, I try to be kind. For example, I met a bicyclist at the local dog park yesterday, where I go walking on the trails. I don’t think the trails ban bikes, but they aren’t very good, and they get crowded with people and unleashed dogs. It’s dangerous to ride them. So I told this new bicyclist about Camden County College trails, which are about ten minutes away, and much safer, bigger, better tended, and more fun. Maybe I’ll run into them there.

But back to Hoobler Warby Parker Preserve. It’s a nice hidden little spot off the road in Vincetown, between Apple Pie Hill to the south and New Lisbon Development Center to the north, and unless you know it’s there, you might drive past the trailhead like I did. There’s no parking lot per se, you just park on the grassy shoulder. There’s an official trailhead sign, you know the kind on many hiking trails: a corkboard warning you about snakes, bears, ticks, and chiggers, with a cozy little useless shingle roof to make it look like a two-dimensional cabin from afar. I suppose this is to shade the plastic-coated trail map and notices from sun and rain? There are always empty little boxes for maps and pamphlets; they expect you to take a photo of the maps with your phone, or go to their website and download it, if you have signal. I’m not sure if this is just New Jersey, with its ridiculously underfunded park system, or if it’s common elsewhere. Let me know in the comments.

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The trail maps and blazes are a little confusing, but I found my way around on the paths. I made a small loop that took me across a stream, and to a spung—that’s Piney for a wetland that dries up, depending on the season—and back to the parking area in about seven miles. I could have stretched it to eight or nine, but I wanted a reason to return. As it’s a Warbler Preserve, and the warbler migration has begun, I imagine it will be crowded with birders in the coming weeks. So I’ll wait until winter before I explore again.

I’m not good at spotting birds. I saw American Robins, and heard Eastern Wood Pew-Wees, which are pee-wees, but sound like they are saying “pew-wee!,” thus the name. More recently, I met a birder who pointed out a few warblers to me. They are tiny, pretty things. In the autumn they are quiet, as mating’s long done, so you are looking for little hoppy critters in the treetops that are barely larger than a Chicken McNugget. And hummingbirds, which I’ve been happy to see at my feeder in the yard, are barely the size of a piece of Popeyes Popcorn Chicken. If you can’t tell, I’m hungry.

I have yet to hear a warbler warble, except for a Pine Warbler, which are common in the Pines, as you might expect. I heard a mute swan the other day, and I want a refund from whoever named that enormous, gorgeous bird. She was crying because her mate was being attacked by another male. I’ll share the video of that drama next week after I edit it. But here’s a stream running across a woods road at the Warbler Preserve, with baby fish darting around and eating mosquitoes:

The spung is nearly a mile hike off the bike trail and might be good for birding, but it’s not much to see otherwise. I found a viewing stand with a critter turd on it. No hair in the scat so guessing it wasn’t a predator. About thumb sized. Might have been raccoon. I’m not good at turdentification.

The preserve is quiet and peaceful and would be lovely for a walk as well as a ride. There’s another mile or two for me to explore, and I’ll be back to see what I can see. I’m glad the New Jersey Conservation Foundation buys land and preserves it like this. If you ride in, there’s a gate to stop dirt bikes and ATVs; be aware that you will need to lift your bicycle through the bars.