By Word or by Foot To the Pine Barrens
Carolyn Foote Edelmann: Don’t Call Them ‘Barren’:
Bart Jackson: Trekking Along The Batona Trail
Corrections or additions?
These articles were prepared for the May 12, 2004 issue of U.S. 1
Newspaper. All rights reserved.
From the Temple of Literati, a Trek into the Heart of the
Pine Barrens
The books are still there, arranged in stacks, but everything else
about the Princeton Public Library is new. If you enter from the main
door and wander through the building, you see that one half – the half
that looks out on Witherspoon Street – ricochets with light and
energy. Light pours in from the huge windows through the glass-walled
staircases. Shaped like the prows of a boat with steel columns for
masts, the staircases float in a space that opens, like an atrium, to
the third floor.
At the opposite end from the entrance, where the windows look out over
Princeton Cemetery, the pace slows. Here are the chairs for
contemplative reading, and even a gas fireplace. On the second floor,
a glassed-in corner conference room is visible from the ground floor
entrance. In that same corner on the third floor, the architects
carved out a glassed-in round room for story time. The windows on that
floor open out onto a terrace with tables and umbrellas overlooking
Witherspoon Street.
In the middle of each floor are the book stacks, and once you are in
them, everything seems to quiet down. The first floor has fiction and
multimedia, and the second floor has nonfiction and biographies. The
third floor is dedicated to children’s books and media, with a special
corner for teens.
Even quieter is the space on the far wall, the wall opposite
Witherspoon Street, where rooms with glass walls are labeled “group
study.” Two are on the third floor and four on the second floor. One
can imagine a myriad of uses for these rooms, from children doing
homework to a nonprofit committee meeting to a job interview. The
rules for reserving the rooms are still in flux, says a library
spokesperson, as are the guidelines for using the snazzy-looking
conference room or the J. Seward Johnson Community Room. Both will
require a fee.
Computers for surfing and looking up book locations are sprinkled
everywhere, as are the commissioned art works, including the huge
mosaic wall that incorporates hundreds of Princeton memories on the
first floor, the third floor aerial sculpture of E.B. White’s
trumpeter swan, and an elegant doll house. Princeton Public Library’s
renowned reference department and business reading room each have
their own spaces.
Hillier architect Nicholas Garrison (Princeton University, Class of
1980) designed the three-story, 55,000 square foot building with glass
walls so that it would feel accessible and open. “The old library was
designed to bring daylight from above but to be solid along the
street,” he says. “We wanted to invite people in, so that what goes on
inside the library is part of the town’s vitality – a see and be seen
quality. But we created ways to get away from that if you wanted to.”
Princeton University is providing the library with a T3 connection for
the 101 public access computers and 150 plug-in ports and
administrative computers. George and Estelle Sands, owners of Hilton
Realty, donated $5 million of the building’s $18 million cost. The
ribbon-cutting ceremony and a street party to celebrate the opening is
scheduled for Saturday, May 15, 9:30 to 5:30 p.m. See page 24 for the
complete list of events.
A first time visitor to the new building, meandering through the first
floor, not looking for anything in particular, might encounter the
sign that says “Quiet Room” and another sign that says “No laptops
please.” This room, like the group study carrels, has glass windows
and a door, and armchairs for reading. The object on the far wall can
take one’s breath away. It is a layered hanging, and barely visible
through the layers is a shape. Is it a book? Yes, barely discernible,
the shape could be a book, but with the layers, it all seems very
mysterious, and it seems to say “h..u..s..h..h..”
This hanging turns out to be the work of Princeton’s Margaret Kennard
Johnson (see story page 31). It has yet to get its proper lighting,
but go and see it for yourself. See if you think it represents the
contemplative spirit that permeates the nooks and crannies of a good
library.
— Barbara Fox
Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street,Princeton 08540. Leslie Burger, director. 609-924-9529; fax,609-924-7937. Home page: www.princetonlibrary.orgTop Of PageBy Word or by Foot To the Pine BarrensNew Jersey readers, voting for the one book to be read throughout thestate in 2004, chose a classic look at an under-appreciated part ofthe state by a celebrated native – but just barely. In the One BookNew Jersey (www.onebooknewjersey.org) voting, 23 percent ofparticipants chose The Pine Barrens by John McPhee. Close contenderswere A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, Pay it Forward by CatherineRyan Hyde, and Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.The Pine Barrens, one of the first books written by the prolificPulitzer Prize winner and Princeton resident, is spawning discussiongroups all over the state in the One Book New Jersey program, aninitiative of the state’s public libraries. In Princeton McPheehimself will read from his work on May 15 at 11 a.m. at the publiclibrary.When the book was published, in 1968, it received rave reviews frompublications all across the country. A Newsweek reviewer praisedMcPhee’s “fine eye, great ear, and good heart.” A Kansas City Starreviewer wrote that the book “tells how this geographic anomaly hascome to be, describes its people and their distinctive folklore, andcaptures something of the dreamlike quality of this incredibly quietland in the midst of the noisy clutter of mechanical civilization.”The Pine Barrens was the third book written by McPhee, a Princetonnative. Born in 1931, he is a graduate of Princeton University and ofCambridge University. It would be hard to find a more appropriatewriter for a state-wide read. McPhee teaches writing at PrincetonUniversity, and has lived in Princeton for most of his life. His firstbook, A Sense of Where You Are, written in 1965, was a portrait ofPrinceton basketball phenomenon – and later U.S. Senator – BillBradley.The author of some 30 books, McPhee received the Pulitzer Prize forAnnals of the Former World, an ambitious four-part work on thegeological history of North America. He began the work while writingfor the New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965.An essayist with the ability to make everything from oranges to leveesto bark canoes endlessly fascinating, McPhee also excels at creatingportraits of people going their own way in a homogeneous society. InThe Pine Barrens, he blends observations of unique people and a uniquelandscape. His work has helped to draw untold numbers of stateresidents into the back roads that lead to the heart of a wildtreasure in the heart of the country’s most densely populated state.Here – from the opening pages of The Pine Barrens – is how McPheedescribes the metes and bounds of this vast state treasure:”The picture of New Jersey that most people hold in their minds is sodifferent from this one that, considered beside it, the Pine Barrens,as they are called, become as incongruous as they are beautiful. Westand north of the Pine Barrens is New Jersey’s central transportationcorridor, where traffic of freight and people is more concentratedthan it is anywhere else in the world. The corridor is one greatcompression of industrial shapes, industrial sounds, industrial air,and thousands and thousands of houses webbing over the spaces betweenthe factories. Railroads and magnificent highways traverse thiscrowded scene, and by 1985 New Jersey hopes to have added so manyadditional high-speed roads that the present New Jersey Turnpike willbe quite closely neighbored by the equivalent of at least six otherturnpikes, all going in the same direction.”In and around the New Jersey corridor, towns indistinguishably abutone another. Of the great unbroken city that will one day reach atleast from Boston to Richmond, this section is already built. NewJersey has nearly a thousand people per square mile – the greatestpopulation density of any state in the Union. In parts of northern NewJersey, there are as many as forty thousand people per square mile. Inthe central area of the Pine Barrens – the forest land that is stillso undeveloped that it can be called wilderness – there are onlyfifteen people per square mile. This area, which includes about sixhundred and fifty thousand acres, is nearly as large as YosemiteNational Park. It is almost identical in size with Grand CanyonNational Park, and it is much larger than Sequoia National Park, GreatSmoky Mountains National Park, or, for that matter, most of thenational parks in the United States. The people who live in the PineBarrens are concentrated mainly in small forest towns, so the region’suninhabited sections are quite large-twenty thousand acres here,thirty thousand acres there-and in one section of well over a hundredthousand acres there are only twenty-one people. The Pine Barrens areso close to New York that on a very clear night a bright light in thepines would be visible from the Empire State Building. A line ruled ona map from Boston to Richmond goes straight through the middle of thePine Barrens. The halfway point between Boston and Richmond – thegeographical epicenter of the developing megalopolis – is in thenorthern part of the woods, about twenty miles from Bear Swamp Hill.”Two writers who have fallen under the spell of the Pine Barrens areCarolyn Foote Edelman and Bart Jackson. In the articles that followthey provide accounts of Pine Barrens pastimes – complete withdetailed driving directions.Top Of PageCarolyn Foote Edelmann: Don’t Call Them ‘Barren’:The Pinelands have never been barren to me. Like so many readers, Imet “The Barrens” with John McPhee’s excellent book as guide. Ithrilled to his quirky characters; yearned for mysterious sandyreaches; shuddered at the prospect of a proposed jetport. A lengthySmithsonian article, with vivid fall photographs, fueled my passionfor “The Pines”. But every single treatise on this region was awash inwarnings about (1.) getting lost; (2.) being trapped in sugar sand;and (3.) meeting the Jersey Devil. Over too many decades, I wouldinstead take myself to wild reaches of Cornwall, or Brittany’sFinistere before setting foot[e] in the Pines.In the decades since McPhee’s Pine Barrens first saw print, thejetport has been canceled. Piney rumor has it that the author playedPrinceton tennis with then-Governor Brendan Byrne, raising governmentawareness of the Pinelands’ uniqueness.This region, whose boundaries are ever in dispute (political?emotional? geographical? traditional? – all of the above) was named anInternational Biosphere Reserve in 1983. The designation means thatthe Pinelands is of global importance. Unfortunately, this honorarrives bearing no legislative clout. McMansions and mega schools nowworm their way into woodlands.Astronauts are said to identify our Pine Barrens from outer space.Beneath its unspoiled stretches percolates the Kirkwood-CohanseyAquifer – 17 trillion gallons of unmatched purity. In whaling days,captains put in at Tuckerton – the Colonies’ third-most-important portin the 1700s – for barrels of Barrens’ water. The deep red water’stannins negated spoilage on three-year voyages. Equally vital werescurvy-preventing wild cranberries from nearby bogs.Fears of becoming lost in the Pines evaporated once I became a birder.This, the fastest growing sport in America – $2.4 billion was NewJersey 2002 take from birders – “took me by the scruff of the neck”sometime in the 1990s. Our state possesses any number of meccas forthe bird-obsessed. Two prime sites are in the Pines. They are Cape Mayand Brigantine/Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge.Off Route 9, near Smithville, the Refuge shimmers all too close, onnon-fog days, to “the topless towers” of Atlantic City across AbseconBay. Even so, the Refuge’s eight-mile dike road beckons among bays andimpoundments, magnetizing in all seasons. Even in winter it ispossible to sit stunned in the car as mute swans taller than thedriver stretch and crane on the sand road outside, and a zingy greatblue heron arrows past marsh weeds to become invisible in a ditch. Inorder to get to the Brig – which sometimes harbors snowy owls, catlikeon the ground; secretive king and yellow rails; and elusive Americanbittern – I had to learn Pine roads.These stretches have much to teach, not the least of which is that itdoesn’t matter if I get lost. Most important is that the journey is,indeed, the destination. Getting to know these unique stretches ofAtlantic, Burlington, Ocean, Cape May, Camden, and Cumberland Countieswill bring nearby riches beyond wildest imagination. The Brig, forexample, is a mere 75 miles from my US1/Alexander Road apartment. “Theroad not taken” is never more alluring than in this region formerlytermed “Barren.”That name was, obviously, appended by farmers, who despaired at allthat sand, with its strange pH and swift absorption of rainfall. Ittook Lenni Lenapes to capitalize on cranberries, and the Whites ofWhitesbog, especially daughter Elizabeth, to render the Pines theCranberry Capital of the world. Elizabeth then partnered withscientists and Pineys to create the blueberry industry. Most of thiscrop throughout America now fruits from cultivars that she developedfrom wild ones on all sides, each bush proffering fruit of a differentsize, shape, color, texture, and taste.How do you get to “The Pines”? How do you glean its treasures in anyseason, discover new levels of mystery and solitude among gleamingpines, sturdy little blackjack oaks, occasional groves of radiantlaurel? How to drive empty stretches of macadam (even on majorholidays!) framed by scintillations of sugar sand? Come with me.Take Route 1 South to Route 295 South. Get off at theBordentown/Burlington exit, taking Route 130 at Bordentown. Afterabout a block, turn right/east on Route 545 (Farnsworth Avenue); andright/south onto Route 206. After the Route 70 Circle, bear/turn leftat sign for Tabernacle. At the four-way stop (Russo’s Market ahead onright), turn left/east onto Route 532. At Chatsworth, turn right/southonto Route 563. Stop at Buzby’s General Store(thepinebarrens.com/buzby_house.asp) for some refreshment in anhistoric setting, and then follow Route 563 South to the turn for NewGretna. Turn right onto Route 9/Garden State Parkway (for a stretch,no toll) to the Smithville exit. You will have been in The Pines sincethe Tabernacle turn-off.If you’re pressed for time – and try not to be – you can catch a quickfix with a hike around the Carranza Memorial in Tabernacle. Gostraight across Route 532 at Russo’s and keep going until you find thepale stone tribute to a Lindbergh-era goodwill pilot who perished in aPinelands thunder-tempest. Trails thread in many directions and acampground awaits. Under the boughs of Wharton Forest pines (yes, theindustrialist for whom Pennsylvania’s renowned business school isnamed), you will hear nothing but the whisper of distant winds, andthe twitters of unseen birds.In Chatsworth, current heart of the cranberry industry, nestled amongshimmering bogs, Buzby’s General Store presides. This is Pine Barrens”Information Central,” past and present. Proprietress R. MarilynSchmidt saved the crossroads emporium from oblivion, purchasing it ata tax sale. She chose a Pinelands builder for the sensitiverestoration. Their efforts have just been rewarded in the form ofdesignation on both the New Jersey and the national Register ofHistoric Places.Marilyn is a human dynamo with an elfin sense of humor. Beware heranswer, should you ask where to find the Jersey Devil. She does sellhis footprints, by the way. Her Morris-clone totem cat, Punkin,actually runs this roost. People come from all over, newspaper andmagazine articles in hand, to meet the feline celebrity.Media from as far as London have sung the praises of this site. Hereyou can collect anything from hewn oak furniture of earlier days tohand-wrought bird decoys; from strong watercolors of Pinelandscreatures to Jersey Devil cranberry hot sauce. Everything in the shopis Pine-linked, and Marilyn has stories to go with every piece. She isthe artist behind vital oils on various walls, precise drawings in herinformation-rich books, as well as the essential – and only –Pinelands map.Buy this no matter what, before setting out! You won’t have to worryabout becoming lost in the Pines. Anything you wonder about, such aswhat Pineys think of certain cranberry barons and assorted authors andpoliticians, you might just discover from the muse of Buzby’s. Musicof the Sugar Sand Ramblers or Pine Barons may be playing – and is forsale. Marilyn can even direct you to Albert Hall, where you can hearthe locals live.Never go to the Pines with a deadline. Too many intriguing roads leadoff in all directions. If you’re rushing, you’ll miss signs near NewGretna to Bass River State Park, with its exquisite Lake Absegami. Insummer, lifeguards preside over cordoned swim areas. I trek around acorner to dabble and bask in teak-dark water. Silken, electrifying –immersion here or in Whitesbog’s back reaches or in tiny Lake Oswegooff off Route 563 – is like sinking luxuriously into champagne. You’llnever touch chlorine again after an afternoon’s soak inAbsegami-water.The lake is forest-fringed as in topmost Maine. Trail walks inspringtime yield a sense of magical solitude, Livingston-courage, anddetermination as you bushwhack through assorted blueberry bushes. Besure you’re long-sleeved, long-panted, well hatted, and supplied withwater and strong bug repellent in season. More pleasurable wingedcompanions than ticks great and small could be the towhees andgrosbeaks murmuring on all sides.The Pinelands is legendary for exceptional wildflowers. At Eastertime, you can discover spikes of exceeding rare golden club eruptingbelow the compact dam. Demi-lune beaches beckon for a short rest or alazy picnic. Hefty cabins with generous woodstoves are tucked underthe evergreens at various points. These can be reserved – but onlywell in advance – at Absegami’s headquarters building, near the entrytoll booth.Do not limit yourself to wheels and feet, however, for Pinelandsexplorations. Exit your vehicle at any kayak and canoe rental,especially Bel Haven (www.belhavencanoe.com) near the restored villageof Batsto. You will be ferried either to the luxurious and expansiveMullica or the secretive and sinuous Wading River. The kayak is myvessel of choice. Canoeing, of course, goes back to Lenni Lenapes,whose land this was, although they were nomadic, for centuries beforeEuropeans came, saw, and conquered.You’ll be dropped off for two,three, or even eight-hour journeys.Rivers, unlike our D&R Canal, have currents so delightful thatkayaking is like a Disney ride. All you have to do is steer, andoccasionally back yourself out of tinkly gravelly ripples. You’llmaneuver among old bridge abutments and under downed pines. Waders andfisherpersons wave from dappled banks. You’ll be picked up too soon,refreshed as never before. I have traveled to a good many of theworld’s prime recreation spots, learning that no outdoor pleasureanywhere exceeds a day on Pinelands rivers.Now you’ve seen a handful of my favorite sites. If you requirehighways, you could catch the Garden State Parkway back where it meldswith Route 9, at New Gretna. Note Chestnut Neck Bridge – whereRevolutionary soldiers and townsfolk were bayoneted and burned in thedays of West Jersey. Piney spirit waxed, not waned, from that battleonward. Locals intensified their harassing, appropriating, andscuttling of British vessels, and their sabotage of the Kings’ men atevery turn. Crossroads taverns were hotbeds of Revolutionary fervorand information.The water skills of these natives and their indomitable valor servedGeorge Washington well at Valley Forge and at the battles of Trentonand Princeton. Historians insist we would not have our free country,had locals not smuggled those cannonballs and wagon wheels forged atAtsion and Batsto, from “Iron in the Pines.”Top Of PageBart Jackson: Trekking Along The Batona TrailThank heavens for those soft pink blazes on the shaggy barked pitchedpine. Windswept isles of tawny fallen needles part before me enticingme on. Trails stray in from all sides. Perhaps they’re old abandonediron roads, used for hauling chunks of dark hematite ore to17th-century iron forges. Perhaps they’re highways for white-taileddeer, or merely carvings by wind across this open forest floor.Garden Staters call these pinelands the Barrens.When the Prohibition boys came down this way in 1919, they took axesto over 500 wineries – and that’s just the ones they could reach;where their wheels did not get mired in the soft, sugar-white sand.Grapes, which crave dry feet and a high water table, loved this poroussand. So did the cranberries and blueberries. Those tough floraventuring out into this glacially formed sand plateau either witheredquickly or absolutely flourished.My wife, Lorraine, and I had selected the short trail segment from theCaranza Memorial north to Apple Pie Hill. One of our favorite walksalong the Batona Trail’s 50 miles, it takes us through one of the mostscenic and varied pieces of the Pine Barrens landscape. And, amazinglyrare, it boasts a high viewpoint. After parking our car in the lotbehind the Caranza Memorial, verdantly set in Wharton State Forest,about seven miles southeast of the village of Tabernacle, we locatedthe trailhead nearby.Famed flyer Emilio Caranza, in attempting a goodwill flight from NewYork to Mexico City in 1928, crashed onto this remote swatch of sand.Thousands of Mexican school children donated pennies in order to erectthe monument. And every year an astonishingly ebullient festivalblossoms – then vanishes back into the land – to memorialize his loss.Shortly past the wide sandy swell of the nearby Batona Campsite, theforest closed hard around us, pushing our steps tightly on the edge ofthe Skit Branch, a creek that feeds the Batsto River. At this point,the Skit ambles as a sluggish swamp weaving around a phalanx of tall,grey cedar pikes impaling the horizon. A hairy woodpecker hammersvainly at one of these dead cedars, and is noisily answered by theissue of a romantic frog, seeking mates with a moan like a knifeprying open a rusty tin can. Fragile skimmer bugs trace broad meanderson the Skit’s glassy surface, riding just above the lurking cedarknees, which always surprised my canoe when I was young.Evidence of beaver gnawings have become increasingly prevalent in theBarrens this past decade, and dams now proliferate on many creeks. Buttoday, as chickadees and red wings chorused in the thickets, Lorrainespied a beaver dragging a fresh hewn birch toward his lodge. By thetime the camera shutter had clicked he was gone, and we continuednorthward along the Batona’s pink blazes.The concept of the Batona Trail sprung in 1960 from the imagination ofveteran hiker Dale Knapschaefer. By early 1961, members ofPhiladelphia’s Batona (short for Back-To-Nature) Hiking Club hadreadily adopted his idea and were hard at work with the State ForestService charting locations, gaining easements, and clearing pathways.Today the Batona’s 50 miles runs from Route 72 at Ong’s Hat south,then east, to Lake Absegmi in Bass River State Forest.Eager to maintain the maximum wilderness feel, planners placed most ofits mileage within protected parks and forests. It cuts by twoaccessible fire towers, several swimmable lakes, the scenic BatstoRiver, and the intriguing living history of the restored iron-forgingvillage of Batsto. It is maintained jointly by the Batona Hiking Cluband the State Parks Service. Those interested in trail maintenance canget more information at www.batona.com.A mile upstream from the open Skit Branch, the sky fades under a full,dark cedar swamp. Barrel-thick, indomitable cedars rise arrow straightfrom the black waters, their bark swirling in perfect spirals. Theirscent is awesome. Beneath these masters of the grove peep swaths offiddlehead ferns and small yearning birches stretching from the grassyhummocks. Well-watered vegetation thrives in primordial display.In my own youthful logic, it always made sense that it was these hugetrees that stained the Batsto and Wading rivers’ sweet cedar water toa deep brunette hue. They were so prevalent as I paddled by, while thelimonite and hematite, the real elements responsible for southJersey’s “tea-water,” lay buried beneath my view. But they were notlost on the early Jersey colonists who, as early as the 1670s,gathered the ore and refined it in furnaces fueled by the hot-burningpitch pine. Throughout Colonial times and into the early 19th century,Pinelands forges such as the Batsto Iron Works supplied most of ouryoung nation’s iron.Though some parts can get a bit muddy and some of the sand pathwayscan engulf the feet up to the ankle, almost all of the Batona is easysneaker walking. You can hike it with the same swift pace you wouldgive the Millstone Towpath. But you will not want to. There are toomany interesting twists through too many styles of life-choked forest.Pitch pines hem the trail tightly just beyond the cedar grove, sodense they almost become oppressive. Thus this forest’s passage takeson the tenor of a Manhattan alfresco cafe. Scores of pines move pastyour vision, each with the story of its own striving writ on its ownwrithed limbs. Much of the scaly bark shows black – residue of thefrequent forest fires, which serve only to help proliferate the pitchpine by loosening its heat-sensitive cones.Toward Apple Pie Hill the forest broadens and a see-through forestopens to shades of kelly and logan green. The sun lightens heatherywhite slashes of flowers amid the pine needle and sand floor. Oaks, astough and springy as the pines, range from low scrub to high treesdraped in catkins. They call them blackjack oak, perhaps because ofthe shape of the leaf, or the sheer tenacity demanded by those thatsurvive these environs.Beckoned by the lure of this open forest, Lorraine and I opt for oneof the broader unmarked pathways that wander west, toward the Batsto’sheadwaters. Swiftly, we begin wading the numerous small creeks thatcut the open sand forest. Water is never but a few feet below thisfast-draining Pine Barrens soil.In 1876, entrepreneur Joseph Wharton began buying up lands over thehuge Pinelands aquifer. His plan was simple and fabulous: quench thethirsts of both Philadelphia and New York with conduits from thesepristine, iron-dark waters. Everyone got excited about the idea,including the New Jersey State Legislature, which nixed the plan byformally announcing: “New Jersey is not a keg to be tapped at bothends.” Wharton retired to his Batsto village, where he endured asgentleman farmer until his death in l909.Since then, and on up through my childhood, the Wharton Tract justcontinued quietly, home to a few “Pineys” and playground to those fewcampers and paddlers who knew of it. By the mid ’60s, as my familylaunched our paddling trips down the tea-colored meanders of theWading and Batsto rivers, I began to notice that the label “WhartonState Forest” took on some meaning. Nature centers and formal campingareas had been established. At Batsto, the stagecoach we’d clamber onfor imaginary soirees had been put in the barn and a nature center hadbeen erected. Folks labored to restore the huge house and the oldbuildings.But the land with all its furtive byways and history has beenpreserved. A triumph.At last our compass directs us back to those pink blazes and we walknorth up towards Apple Pie Hill. Now please understand, the term”hill” in south Jersey is a very, very relative term. My wife, anative of Boulder, Colorado, still scoffs. But when one makes a rapidascent to Apple Pie’s less than dizzying 205 feet of elevation, theresults are astounding. The view is explained by the fact that if theeastern sea level were to rise 100 feet, here would be one of onlyfour hills still standing above water in southern New Jersey.Climbing the metal frame fire tower above the tree line one obtains avista of over 100 miles. On a clear day, the Atlantic can be spied onthe horizon. Oceans of dark pines marred only by slender river cutssprawl into the mist. So much in our populated state is still green.The gulls call from above while finches dart on branches beneath. Thisfire tower was erected in l950, when human habitation in the pinelandswas at an all time ebb. One of a series of manned towers and firetrenchings, it was all part of a program to prevent the commonseasonal pinelands fires from engulfing this entire wilderness. Today,controlled burning and airplane surveillance have retired it.Slowly, Lorraine and I descend the hill and decide to retrace oursteps only somewhat. Selecting an intriguing side path and taking acareful compass reading, we are soon totally lost. Wandering by anabandoned cranberry bog, a couple of old charcoal pits, and countlesslandmarks that we swear we remember, we finally return to the Batonablazes.As we enter the Batona Campground, just before the Caranza memorial,we hear a native fisherman telling some Boy Scouts of what treasurescan be pulled out of the pines. He tells them of his youth in thisuntrod area, of finding Lenape arrowheads, and of an almost-suresighting of the Jersey Devil. The boys listen entranced. It’s nice toknow that a setting still exists somewhere where youngsters standwide-eyed before the tales of a sage.— Bart JacksonTop Of PageGetting ThereMost good New Jersey road maps indicate the Batona Trail and where itcrosses local roads. Starting at Ong’s Hat on Route 72, the trailslices 32 miles south through Lebanon and Wharton state forests, whereit then swings east, ending at Bass River State Forest’s LakeAbsegami.From the north, Routes 72, 70, 563, 532, Caranza Road (Route 648),Route 542 (Batsto), and Route 679 – along with a host of local roads –all provide excellent access points. While the trail is always leveland the walking comparatively easy, the interest and landscape variesenormously. Some parts between Lebanon State Forest and Wharton StateForest have recently been uglified by gobbling developers. Many followrivers, including the north of Batsto, and cedar swamps, which runfrom Batsto east to Evan Bridge.Maps can be obtained free at the Lebanon, Atsion, or Batsto rangercenters, or by mail from the State Park Service, CN04, Trenton 08625.A full book of events and adjacent historical sites is available fromthe Pinelands Commission, Box 7, New Lisbon 08064.Camping is only at designated sites; permits are available from any ofthe ranger stations for $8 per person per night, and the stations stayopen late, until dark on weekends to issue permits.Caranza to Apple Pie Hill: The short, four-mile hike depicted here,takes only two leisurely hours each way and involves only about anhour’s drive from your seat at Thomas Sweet’s on Nassau Street. Take206 South straight through the Route 70 traffic circle. One mile belowthe circle, veer left off 206 onto small road with a sign for”Tabernacle” and “Caranza Memorial.” Go 3.5 miles into Tabernacle,then proceed straight on Route 648 (Caranza Road) for 6.7 miles laterto the Caranza Memorial, which has parking behind it. The trail begins100 yards down the roadway. To make the trip one way, spot a secondcar at the trail crossing at Route 532, three-quarters of a milebeyond Apple Pie Hill.Top Of PagePine Barrens EventsJohn McPhee, Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street,609-924-9529. John McPhee, author of “The Pine Barrens,” is featuredguest at the day-long celebration of the Grand Opening of the newPrinceton Public Library. Day features activities for all ages,including author readings, music, dance, tours, demonstrations andmore. John McPhee, Princeton author of “The Pine Barrens,” the OneBook New Jersey selection, is featured guest at 11 a.m. Free.Saturday, May 15, 11 a.m.Howard and Doris Boyd, Buzby’s General Store, 3959 Route 563,Chatsworth, 609-894-4415. Author of “A Field Guide to the Pine Barrensof New Jersey,” Howard Boyd has a booksigning. His wife, Doris,displays her photography, paintings, and weavings. Both close to 90,they recently celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary. Their passionis nature, the outdoors, and conservation of the Pine Barrens. Free.Sunday, May 16, 2 to 4 p.m.The Pine Barrens, Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street,609-924-9529. Film screening of “The Pine Barrens: Up Close andNatural,” a documentary by the Pine Barrens Preservation Alliance. Theprogram, which focuses on this year’s One Book New Jersey selection,”The Pine Barrens,” by Princeton native John McPhee, will contrast thestate of the Pine Barrens, then and now. Free. Monday, May 24, 7:30p.m.Jim Murphy and the Pine Barons, Princeton Public Library, 65Witherspoon Street, 609-924-9529. A musical look at New Jersey’s PineBarrens. Part of the library’s “Unquiet Fridays” series. Free. Friday,July 23, 7:30 p.m.Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
