Introduction to a beautiful but devastated woodland
My wife and I bought a stone farmhouse on a large tract of nominally forested land in west-central New Jersey in August of 2017. This journal is largely intended to preserve our memories and history of interacting with that forest. Although it may be of limited interest to others, there seems to me to be no reason not to put our experiences online.
The property is the heart and homestead of what was once more than a thousand acre spread back in the late 1700s. The property lines are very old; they are marked by the remnants of old stone walls, now often just brush-covered mounds of chunk shale that beeline through the forest. Several old tracks run roughly east-to-west and north-to-south, marking a vague grid of trails.
We first came to see the property almost a year ago. As we were driving up the long and rutted gravel driveway, at just about the moment that the lichen and ivy-covered house came into view, I experienced a kind of premonition that this was to be the place for us. Overhead, just visible for a moment through the upper part of the windshield, I saw a flash of black-and-white, a bird, flying powerfully away from one of the towering walnut, ash or hickory trees lining the drive. I've been an avid birdwatcher since 1979, and I was certain from that fleeting glimpse that I had seen a Pileated Woodpecker, the largest remaining North-American woodpecker, and one associated with quality old-growth hardwood forests. I took it as a good omen.
We were so excited by the house that it was only after the closing that I began to understand how devastated much of the forest was. It was a gradual realization. As summer eased into fall and the leaves came off the trees, shrubs that had seemed dense and green revealed large areas of patchy, broken, scrubby woodland. Two terrible things happened here, or perhaps three. Hurricane Sandy (October 29th, 2012) is the easiest one to recognize and the hardest to deny. The forester advising us on the property, Heather Gracie, told me she had never seen a property hit so hard by a hurricane. But even on Google Earth it is evident that the forest on our property is in worse condition than those surrounding it, so it wasn't all storm. One rumor we heard was that an unscrupulous logger was hired to clean up after Sandy; instead he took only the wood that was valuable, and cut down many other marketable trees besides. Another story we heard was that the previous owners had already started cutting and selling the best timber in the decade before Sandy. It doesn't make much difference now; I'm just hoping there are things we can do to help restore the forest, even if it's just enough to keep those Pileated Woodpeckers around.
The property is the heart and homestead of what was once more than a thousand acre spread back in the late 1700s. The property lines are very old; they are marked by the remnants of old stone walls, now often just brush-covered mounds of chunk shale that beeline through the forest. Several old tracks run roughly east-to-west and north-to-south, marking a vague grid of trails.
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| Deer in the front yard. |
We first came to see the property almost a year ago. As we were driving up the long and rutted gravel driveway, at just about the moment that the lichen and ivy-covered house came into view, I experienced a kind of premonition that this was to be the place for us. Overhead, just visible for a moment through the upper part of the windshield, I saw a flash of black-and-white, a bird, flying powerfully away from one of the towering walnut, ash or hickory trees lining the drive. I've been an avid birdwatcher since 1979, and I was certain from that fleeting glimpse that I had seen a Pileated Woodpecker, the largest remaining North-American woodpecker, and one associated with quality old-growth hardwood forests. I took it as a good omen.
We were so excited by the house that it was only after the closing that I began to understand how devastated much of the forest was. It was a gradual realization. As summer eased into fall and the leaves came off the trees, shrubs that had seemed dense and green revealed large areas of patchy, broken, scrubby woodland. Two terrible things happened here, or perhaps three. Hurricane Sandy (October 29th, 2012) is the easiest one to recognize and the hardest to deny. The forester advising us on the property, Heather Gracie, told me she had never seen a property hit so hard by a hurricane. But even on Google Earth it is evident that the forest on our property is in worse condition than those surrounding it, so it wasn't all storm. One rumor we heard was that an unscrupulous logger was hired to clean up after Sandy; instead he took only the wood that was valuable, and cut down many other marketable trees besides. Another story we heard was that the previous owners had already started cutting and selling the best timber in the decade before Sandy. It doesn't make much difference now; I'm just hoping there are things we can do to help restore the forest, even if it's just enough to keep those Pileated Woodpeckers around.
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| There are far too many piles like this around the property. |
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