Gulick Park: It Takes a Fantasy Village

The stereotype is that "kids these days" tend to stay indoors, discouraged from outdoor adventure in part by woods that have become impenetrable thickets of thorny invasive shrubs. A striking counter-story to that stereotype played out in Princeton's Gulick Park this past summer. Some of Princeton's open space has very little native plantlife on the forest floor, due to past plowing. In areas where the invasive shrubs haven't filled the void, the combination of trees, sticks and empty ground can make an appealing canvas for the imagination--essentially a natural playground for kids. Some schools, such as the Willow School in Gladstone, NJ, and the Princeton Friends School, incorporate natural playgrounds into their campuses. Attendees of the Princeton Environmental Film Festival will remember a wonderful documentary called School's Out about a completely outdoor kindergarten in Switzerland. Princeton's evergreen forest in Community Park North, planted back in the 1960s, was a natural playground until most of the trees blew down during Hurricane Sandy.

My first inkling that not all kids were spending the summer huddled in front of computers and lounging on sofas with cell phones came when biking through Smoyer Park. There, in the open woods near Snowden Lane and Van Dyke was a shelter carefully constructed out of sticks. The workmanship, or workpersonship, was impressive.

Weeks later, during a nature walk I led through Herrontown Woods, the leader of the informal Friends of Gulick Preserve, Ed Simon, told me of a whole village constructed there by teenage girls. He mentioned Narnia as a possible inspiration. (Update: Though mentions of Narnia are being left in the post, the actual inspiration for this village was other books. See comment below, sent by one of the daughter's parents.)

Here's what I found on a recent visit. There were promising signs of construction along the main drag, a broad trail that extends into the woods from a little deadend fragment of Terhune Rd near Dodds Lane.

Those lean-to structures are mere prelude to the village further in. Small abodes fashioned of sticks and yarn--shall we call it Yarnia?--stretch along leafy trails that hint at a matrix of streets. Might the streets have names, and if so, would they be like Princeton's tree streets, except that Sweetgum Lane would actually have sweetgums growing along it? Or would the streets have far more fanciful names from some other world entered only through the imagination?

This one reminds me of a shelter that some friends and I made deep in the woods when we were kids. The project ended when my face broke out in a poison ivy rash from digging roots out of the ground to make a nice floor. Poison ivy roots have the same oil as the leaves, apparently. The rash gave me Nixon-like jowls for a week. Still, it's a very positive memory.

At times like this, it would have been helpful to have read fantasy fiction, to better understand whether these pebbles are a literary quote or, perhaps, some sort of currency for use in transactions with other forest dwellers, with protective netting to keep the Rock Doves from stealing them.



A bit of speculation here, that the village's proximity to Gulick Preserve's pond is not coincidence. Wikipedia tells of the Wood between the Worlds, "a pond-filled forest in The Magician's Nephew (1955), the sixth book in The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. Each pond is a portal that provides instant transportation to a "world" such as ours and Narnia's."

The kids must have been surprised, one fateful day in early September, to step into the pond and be instantly transported to school.

Some Upcoming Events

Some talks, some walks. Follow links for more info.

TALK AT DR GREENWAY: DR Greenway's great series of talks continues tomorrow with Professor Ken Hiltner (we haven't figured out any shared lineage yet), Thursday, April 4, 2013, 7:00 - 8:30pm at the Johnson Education Center. The talk is entitled "From Shakespeare's London to Urban Gardening -- The Literature of Humans' Relationship with the Land" 

NATURE WALK: I will be leading a walk at Gulick Park/Preserve this Sunday, April 7, at 1pm. It's being organized by the neighbors of the park, but all are welcome to come. Gulick Farm dates back to the 1600s. Here's more info: "We will meet at the entrance to Gulick Park at 1pm on Sunday, March 10. The entrance is at the eastern dead-end of Terhune Road (east of Concord). The walk will probably take a little over an hour. It could be a bit muddy, so make sure to dress appropriately.  All ages are welcome."

COURSE ON MANAGING WATER IN THE LANDSCAPE--There are a few open spots in the course I'm teaching at the Princeton Adult School, starting with an introductory talk Thursday evening, April 11, followed by four Sunday afternoon field trips to examples of how runoff is being utilized aesthetically and ecologically in public areas and backyards.

ECO-CONFERENCE Our Future, Our Challenge: Student Eco-Conference 2013 , May 4, 9-1p, at Princeton Day School. Includes talks by David Crane, CEO of NRG: "Are the economy and sustainability compatible?", and Heidi Cullen of Climate Central, plus workshops on foraging, chickens, bees, and organic farming

CLIMATE CHANGE PROGRAM: Two speakers with "inside scoop" on legislation to address climate change. April 7, 1pm, Unitarian Church

REGISTER SUPPORT FOR CITIZENS CLIMATE LOBBY--There's a quick way to register support for this group, which has a local chapter. No obligation to donate. Registering helps them in applications for funding. Took me about a minute. Here are instructions:

                 1.  Go to The Citizens Climate Lobby home page, and in the upper right corner find the DONATE or REGISTER SUPPORT box or button. Click on that.

 

                  2. That takes you to a second page, where down in the main text, the third option is REGISTER AS A SUPPORTER OF OUR CAUSE. Click on that.

                   3. That takes you to the sign up page.  Please fill out and submit.

Nature Walk: How to get to Gulick Park

Thus far, my explorations of the little known patch of open space in Princeton called Gulick Park has consisted of finding out how to get there. For the nature walk today, Sunday, April 7, at 1pm, here are some ways to reach the obscure entry to the trails:

• Go to Google Maps and type these words--Concord Lane, Princeton, NJ--into the box at the top. The walk starts at the deadend of Terhune Road, just beyond the intersection with Concord Lane.
• Or take Route 27 east from Princeton towards Kingston. Carnegie Lake will be on your right. Before reaching Kingston, take a left on Dodds Lane, then the first right, on Corncord Lane, then turn right on Terhune Rd and you're there.
• To bike, take Terhune Road east. It turns into Van Dyke Road briefly before running into Snowden Lane. At that intersection, cross Snowden Lane and take the bike trail through Smoyer Park woods, staying to the right. At the other end of the woods, Terhune Road magically reappears and you continue east until you reach the deadend. 

The NJ Trails website (Mercer County page) is generally helpful, if you want trail maps for Princeton nature preserves, but Gulick Park isn't mentioned there.

A Walk in Gulick Park

Thirty kids and adults, plus a dog or two, gathered on a beautiful spring afternoon this past Sunday for a walk through Gulick Park, a little known nature preserve in a part of Princeton out 27 that may once have been thought of as Kingston. The loop trail starts at the eastern deadend of Terhune Road, a road that changes name as it approaches Snowden Lane, then becomes a bike path before re-emerging as Terhune Road again over near Dodds Lane.

We found tadpoles in that there pond, which reportedly holds some water even in the drier depths of summer.

The paths through this lowland woods can be muddy after a rain, but had dried up nicely in preparation for our walk.

Some appeared skeptical as I, in my role as naturalist for the walk, demonstrated the craned-neck approach to identifying red maples, pointing towards their tiny red flowers high overhead. Other tree species spoke their names through their bark--the black "potato chip" bark of black cherry trees, the mottled, army fatigue bark of sycamores--or the downward slant of the many pin oaks' lower branches. The numerous eastern red cedars--the first trees to cast shade in the abandoned agricultural fields decades back--now hang on in the shade of the higher, deciduous trees that have since grown around them. A scattering of evergreen American hollies offered patches of green in a sea of winter's browns and grays.

Just to prove I wasn't pointing at phantoms, here's a closeup of the red maple flowers that give the high canopy of lowland woods a red tinge this time of year.

Ed Simon, who leads volunteer efforts to maintain the trails (no easy task given the tree-toppling storms of recent years), told stories of the park's past and present. Though he and others have removed most of the barbed wire from the woods, a few remnants still tell of a time when the Gulicks had a massive bull that would occasionally escape into the neighborhood.

The video camera on the right in the photo is being held by Kurt Tazelaar. He and Sally Curtis have been documenting many environmental events in town.

There was the requisite stream crossing to test our balance, beyond which we came upon the field of Christmas trees. It was interesting to hear that many of the spruce trees found in Princeton's parks, including those behind my house in Potts Park, got their start in this field. I pointed out the dried remains of purple-top grasses in the field, and the graceful broomsedge (actually a grass) that gives the field an attractive bronze hue.

Beyond this high fence is the land still owned by the Gulicks, whose family ownership extends back to Revolutionary War days. A part of their house facing Route 27 is said to extend back to the 1600s, when it served as an inn conveniently located halfway between Philadelphia and New York. Each 50 mile stretch was a days ride on horseback.

Near the fence was an impressive pile of firewood, which the Gulicks apparently sell as a means of satisfying the requirements of their farm easement.

Along the trails, where the sun gets in, are some fine stands of blackberry, with its ribbed stems, and wineberry, a non-native cane with fuzzy purplish stems that bear raspberry-like fruit. A number of hikers expressed interest in returning in summer for the harvest.

The walk was made possible through the organizational energies of Nicole Bergman. There's talk of an upcoming workday to clear some of the trails still blocked by fallen trees.

A Thanksgiving Weekend Walk Through New-Old Herrontown Woods

The parking lot was packed for our Thanksgiving weekend walk in Herrontown Woods. Forty people, all told, most of whom stayed for the full two hour venture up and over the Princeton ridge and back again. I explained that the preserve had, as in a fairy tale, gone into a deep slumber over the years. The trails had become overgrown with thorny multiflora rose, and blocked by fallen trees. The house and cottage were boarded up. Landmarks like the cliff had become obscured and forgotten. Then two years ago, what came to be known as the Friends of Herrontown Woods set about clearing the trails and making the preserve welcoming again.

Neighbor Ed Simon, who leads stewardship efforts at nearby Gulick Park, added some context, describing how a corridor of preserved open space in northeastern Princeton extends from Bunn Drive eastward through Herrontown Woods, with Smoyer Park nearby and Gulick Park beyond that. An overarching vision would be to develop synergy and connectivity between all of these elements, which include nature trails, history, the active rec of Smoyer Park, and remnant farm elements.

One of my favorite parts of the walk came early on, when I mis-spoke. Our first stop along the trails was at a solitary hazelnut shrub growing beneath a grove of trees with dark, chunky bark. As I was telling everyone about these trees, which I identified as tupelos (black gum), I gazed up into their canopies far above and noticed what looked like fruits on the twigs. Tupelos would not have that sort of thing. What I was seeing was beginning to contradict the words I was saying. Then one of the participants presented me with the fruits of persimmon that she'd found on the ground. Hmmm, there must be a persimmon tree around somewhere. Then I realized. The trees we were looking at were persimmons, not black gums. Though possibly wild, this dense grove of persimmon trees could also have been planted long ago as part of the farm. Impressively, they had grown fast enough to keep up with the forest rising around them after the farm was abandoned.

Second stop was the Veblen cottage, then a side trip to the Veblen House, where I got to tell a bit of the history of the Veblens and the first owners of the house, the Whiton-Stuarts.

Then a hike up the slope of the ridge to the cliff, where everyone enjoyed the view from the thirty foot dropoff. That's Sally Curtis holding the camera.

From the cliff, we crossed the pipeline right-of-way and entered the beech forest, which looked like a wonderland with the tawny beech leaves still attached to the trees. Not far in, we hung a right, heading off trail to the north, where a mysterious expanse of water was recently discovered by some of us in the Friends of Herrontown Woods.

Here, in this flat pancake of land at the top of the ridge, which serves as a giant sponge that captures rainwater then slowly feeds it to the tributary of Harry's Brook that flows down through Herrontown Woods, a bulldozer long ago dug an L-shaped pool. A lively discussion ensued about its original purpose. Had they used the bulldozer to push up rocks for use somewhere else in Princeton? Seemed to me there were plenty of boulders available on the surface of the ground, with no need to dig. I used a stick to push down through the muck to solid bottom. Three feet deep.

For now, I'm sticking with the swimming pool theory, but it would make a great skating rink if we get a cold spell.

We then headed back to the trail, past the boulder field, and down along the creek whose broad, flat headwaters we had just visited. What a treat to lead such a walk, and introduce or reintroduce so many people to this reawakened preserve.

Nature Walk Video -- Gulick Park

PrincetonNatureNotes goes multimedia with a wonderfully shot and edited HD video by Kurt Tazelaar and Sally Curtis. The April 7 walk in Gulick Park on the east side of Princeton was organized by Nicole Bergman. I'm the naturalist at large, Ed Simon leads volunteer efforts to maintain the park, and Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee member Steve Kruze also contributes. One "good old days" story Ed told is about a giant bull the Gulicks had that used to roam the woods and occasionally break through the barbed wire fence to explore the neighborhood.

Below are a few stops along the way.

00:20:00 History of the park--Ed Simon
00:34:50 Ed explains why we don't see antlers in the woods
00:37:45 The Christmas tree field from whence many borough park evergreens came
01:00:20 Discussion of the impact of deer on ecological balance

Herrontown Wood Revisited

It was a walk through the ages, as thirty people came on the first Friends of Herrontown Woods nature walk last weekend, to see the Veblen House and farmstead, and the newly restored trails through the 142 acre tree-and-boulder garden. There were kids, adults, and a cockapoo named Wynston, whose name was claimed to be the only one that rhymes with Princeton.

The walk began with the sound of a pileated woodpecker off in the distance, and there was a rare opportunity to see Kurt Tazelaar sitting down. Kurt--a force of nature, in nature--and Sally (with camera on right), had cleared this trail, which took us past evidence of past quarrying,

and the intimate embrace of trees and rock, as with this white oak. Some time ago, we counted the rings of another white oak that had finally succumbed to a windstorm in this mature section of forest above the cottage, and found it to be at least 150 years old. The trees and the boulders co-led this nature walk, speaking so eloquently of time and endurance.

The boulders got bigger as we climbed the slope of the ridge. Many of the boulders have natural fissures, some of which were broken apart back in the quarrying days. If you look closely, you can see a series of drill holes along the edges,

which Kurt had pointed out earlier. Peter Thompson later sent us a link explaining the stone splitting technique used back in the day.

In some places, the land is pockmarked, as if boulders had been extracted from the landscape like molars, leaving a broad hole in the ground.

How the broken off pieces were transported, and to what use they were put, is part of the unfolding story as Herrontown Woods undergoes a restoration that in some ways is like the restoring of a painting, at once timeless and dynamic. Time will tell if the past's story will be told.

Perhaps some of the quarried stones ended up in this circular horse run--a bit of culture overrun by horticulture, in the form of wisteria likely planted long ago by Elizabeth Veblen.

A major cultural fixture in this wild setting is the Veblen House, which drew lots of interest and discussion about how it could be used for meeting space and nature education. (photo's from a few weeks ago)

The walk benefited from all the collective wisdom assembled. Many came who work to sustain other parks and preserves--Marquand Park, Gulick Preserve, TRI, Mercer Meadows. A couple who had been active with a Friends of Herrontown Woods group in the 1970s came, ready to help with this new wave of energy and interest. It felt good to have Princeton's original nature preserve back in the fold, its arteries cleared and flowing with appreciative humanity once again.