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 bus trundled off at 8:45 to discover the less populated parts of New Jersey. More nature, less suburbs. We met our guides and headed into the woods. Ben will take over from here:
Our hike was a fairly short, two-mile hike, yet it took us over 3 hours. We stopped to talk about the lichen and plants and how the leaf litter builds up and causes fires. We stopped by a pair of beaver lodges. The beavers were not there, but there was some cool fog and you could see across the lake. We hiked past the village and the dam at the end of the hike and we saw a pile of iron and the dam. There was a channel for the fish to swim through and a device for counting the eel population. We finished our hike at an outdoor picnic area for lunch. It was a nice intro day, but it makes me a bit worried about the longer hikes since this one took so long.
Julia mentioned this:
I loved learning about the community research projects being done in the area. It was amazing to see that scientific work doesn’t have to just happen in a lab or at a university, and that there are tangible ways to make an impact and protect local ecosystems. It was also comforting to know that these projects were being done by volunteers, not professionals; this means that there are people who care enough to do this work without compensation, which makes me feel a bit better about how we are responding to environmental issues.
What struck me about the hike was all the little things unnoticed on a March hike. Our guides helped us with awareness. 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.