Walking on Cat Tail

Mouse tracks inside the deer exclosure

Whenever Jared and I come to a new place, we walk. We walk everywhere. It's free and it's freeing. When we moved back to New Jersey from Michigan (for three months we lived in a subdivision and our backyard was bordered by US Interstate 75 -- walking opportunities were slim and usually first required a 75 MPH drive in our Ford truck), we found a place in the Sourlands. Walking became a lot freer.

One woodland wander brought us to the property corner where we noticed four surveyors stakes and a sign that looked like this:

This sign was in the middle of the woods. Perplexed and excited, we made plans to visit this D&R Greenway place.

A few years later I know this part of the forest quite well. I've been lost a few times, ruined several shirts in multiflora rose thickets, made hundred of photographs, tripped over rocks, drank melting snow as it cascaded down a beech tree, watched a busy Baltimore oriole feed a boatload of chicks, learned how to use a dichotomous key, tracked a mink and whacked away at invasive vines and brambles.

Baltimore oriole nest in a tulip tree

Pileated woodpecker sign on a sassafras

Fox tracks in the snow