A Unique Pine Barrens Experience 2026

Our week ended in yet another diverse ecosystem at The Pine Tree Center. It was wonderful to see our guides show, and our students remember, the many things they saw and learned this week. The site was once a Boy Scout camp. It was also a camp for disadvantaged children, and a century ago...

Thursday we headed to the Rancocas Cranberry Preserve, and our guides had a surprise for us. But before we arrived at the reservoir to enjoy the surprise, we learned about birding and cranberries. We saw red-winged blackbirds, wood ducks, and a circling turkey vulture who seemed have its eye on our stuck canoers. Bald...

Fire. On Tuesday we saw a documentary that began with fire and subtitled it “renewal.”  On Wednesday we learned about that process from a forest fire fighter who joined us for the day’s hike. Nolan wrote: “I learned about the process of creating controlled fires to prevent specific acres from being burned in the...

Today’s Pine Barrens adventure takes place at the Pinelands Alliance, home of the 72-acre Rancocas Creek Farm, where we will do a service project. The land for the farm was donated to the Pinelands Alliance in 2020 by an MFS family! Our faithful bus took us to the Rancocas Creek Farm Tuesday morning for...

T. S. Eliot called April “the cruelest month,” but this March has offered its own brand of cruelty. Rain and cold can encourage travelers to hurry by all that surrounds them. We stopped on the trail to see the little things that suggest new growth has begun and spring may have already arrived. Our...