Showing posts with label Trails. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trails. Show all posts

Monday, October 04, 2021

Help Your Local Trail Crew -- Sew a Rock Net

Here's an indoor way to help out the volunteers who take care of nature trails in your local nature preserve. Sew a "rock net" for carrying the big stepping stones that help hikers get across streams and through muddy patches. I was corresponding with Alan Hershey of DR Greenway to update trail info for Herrontown Woods on NJTrails.org, and somehow the conversation turned to rocks--big rocks, the kind that work really well for trails--and how to get them to places too rugged for a hand truck. He recommended a rock net--a kind of cargo net developed by Deb Brockway, who has made several and steadily improved the design.

Below are instructions for anyone who has a knack for sewing and is looking for a good project. I know we could use one of these at Herrontown Woods, and other organizations could benefit as well. Thanks to Deb and Alan for this information.

The rock net, sometimes called a cargo net, looks like this:


Here are instructions from Deb:




Below are some helpful ideas from Deb on where to find materials:

"It is possible to buy a custom-made cargo net but they are relatively expensive, which is why I decided to make them. I have used 2-inch width recovery tow straps. The first straps I used I bought at Home Depot, which allowed me to feel the weight and clearly see the weave of the webbing. Those straps were no longer available from Home Depot, so I bought the next ones from Amazon and was not as pleased with the quality of the webbing (though there are lots of options, so I’m sure there are some with a tight weave). Next time around I will go to one of the online webbing sites to purchase it. That is a less expensive option and some of those outlets will cut all the pieces to requested lengths for no additional charge as compared to cutting a single entire length. The added benefit is that all of the ends would be (or should be) heat sealed when they arrive. If you cut the webbing you will need to melt all the cut ends to prevent fraying.

The attached document has additional information and sketches for cutting, assembling, and sewing a net like the orange one in the photo.

FYI… another option is to tie a net using thick rope. A trail crew I have worked with created such a net fashioned after a fishing net. It had a diamond net design, with knots tied at the junctures and some sort of gummy substance covering the knots."

Monday, February 01, 2021

Sourlands as Big Bro to Herrontown Woods

When my daughters suggested a walk in the sourlands, I took it as an opportunity to test out a theory: that Herrontown Woods is in some ways a miniature version of the sourlands preserve. 

The trails are certainly larger, wider, longer than those at Herrontown Woods, with sections of broad boardwalk between stretches of familiar mud.



Some things are of similar scale. Familiar at Herrontown and the Sourlands are efforts to aid hikers through muddy patches with dense gatherings of stepping stones,
and places where the rocky landscape threatens to swallow the trail whole with its boulders.
Whereas Herrontown Woods has its boulder field, beneath and through which a gentle stream flows, making a kind of stereo music in the spring, the Sourlands has Roaring Rocks, named for the spring rush of water beneath super-sized boulders. 

My daughter provided scale for the jumble of giants spilling down the valley. 
This long, smooth boulder, like a whale surfacing for air,  is an outsized version of a similarly shaped boulder that surfaces near the Veblen Cottage in Herrontown Woods. 
This rock face, too, is a larger version of a prominent geologic feature at Herrontown Woods, 
with a higher, longer view from above.

There's a familar play of lichens and mosses on the boulders,
and a familiar mix of smooth and finely fissured rocks.

These boulders, by the way, are not a legacy of glaciers, which did not extend this far down, but of igneous upwellings exposed by subsequent erosion of the surrounding, less resistant material.
Probably not a source of pride, but the Sourlands even has its own derelict fence, newer and longer than the one at Herrontown Woods. Something there is in a woods that doesn't love a fence.

The Sourlands probably has more examples of trees perched on boulders, if anyone were to count.
It took awhile to figure out the Sourlands' system of trail markers.
A half hour in, my younger daughter had a useful insight, that these two angled squares mean that the trail is about to turn left. 
Where the blue trail splits in two, one of the routes carries a black dot in the middle. Pretty clever.
The gas pipeline right of way at the Sourlands is steeper, with a more dramatic view than the one at Herrontown Woods. My daughters pointed into the distance, where the Manhattan skyline was clearly visible. That was a surprise. 
As at Herrontown Woods, the Sourlands pipeline is a mixed bag of invasive mugwort,
and chinese bushclover, with some native species like Indian grass and tickseed sunflower mixed in. Whenever I walk one of these right of ways, I think of Leslie Sauer's The Once and Future Forest: A Guide to Forest Restoration Strategies. Therein, read long ago, she made the point that these linear openings have a different ecological impact from the small, isolated, more circular forest openings that would naturally be created by fallen trees or fire. The linear corridor facilitates the spread of invasive plants and the parasitic cowbird in ways that natural, disconnected openings do not. 

One of the invasive plants spreading along the edge of the pipeline corridor is Ailanthus, or Tree of Heaven. The Ailanthus has in turn been expediting the spread of the newly arrived invasive insect, the spotted lanternfly. Cutting and treating Ailanthus--a favorite host of the lanternfly--is a way of discouraging both of these introduced species.
Sometimes smaller is better, as in Herrontown Woods' smaller problem with Ailanthus, and its smaller population of deer (thanks to the more intense management Princeton has been able to sustain), which reduces browsing pressure on native species. 

One of my favorite features at the Sourlands are these very shallow stream crossings, where there's no distinct stream channel. The water becomes like us, just one more traveler over stones, and we become like the water. 

The Sourland Mountain Preserve is ten miles from Princeton. Drive up 206 and take a left on Belle Mead Blawenburg Road.



Friday, June 19, 2020

Towpath Nature Trail Loop in Late Spring


It's good to see a nature path well used and free of obstructions, which is the current state of the nature loop that winds through a wide section of the DR Canal State Park, just up the towpath from Harrison Street. (for posts showing the trail in different seasons, type the keyword "loop" into the searchbox for this blog) The whole area was being mowed until I convinced the state park folks to let the wildflowers grow, back in 2006. They then created a nature trail loop through the open woodland landscape between the canal and Carnegie Lake, and maintained it beautifully until a couple years ago, when they asked Princeton University to take over the mowing of the trail. PU actually owns the land, even though it's part of the state park, and they finally agreed to maintain the trail. I was out there with a chainsaw, doing what I could during the transition, given the tendency of trees to fall across the path.

As of June 2, the path was looking great, possibly due to university care, but thus far maintained more by foot traffic than anything else. Here's a plant-person's take on the interplay of native and non-native species to be found along the way.



Common milkweed is one of the few natives that can compete with the highly invasive mugwort. Both spread underground.


Bittersweet nightshade blooming on the shore of Lake Carnegie.

Blackberry flowers, with the green beginnings of the berry emerging as the petals fall.

Here, for comparison, is multflora rose, a nonnative shrub, more common than blackberry, with larger clusters of flowers, curved thorns, and lacking the linear grooves on the blackberry's stem.

Orchard grass blooming. Non-native but not very aggressive, often found as a single, erect clump here and there.

The orange-tinted remains of last year's broomsedge, which is not a sedge but instead a native grass, here lining the trail. Like other native prairie grasses, broomsedge is adapted for periodic fire, which its persistent stems encourage. A field of broomsedge can be very pretty after it turns color in the fall, though farmers associate it with poor soil.

Learn to recognize poison ivy in all its forms. It often looks glossier than other plants with three leaflets, reddish when young, with traces of red remaining in the stem later on. The pair of lower leaflets often show a "thumb" along the lower edge, a subtle version of which can be seen here in the mature leaf. People are surprised to learn that vines like poison ivy only bloom when they find a tree to climb up.

This is a hopeful sight for any lover of Joe-Pye-Weed, which will ornament the trail later in the summer in the patchwork of shade and sun beneath the scattered trees.

One of the dogbanes, which like milkweed will exude milky sap when you pluck a leaf.
Look closely at the photo below of Viburnum shrubs, and you'll see that the leaves of the one on the left are more distinctly toothed. That's the native arrowwood Viburnum (V. dentatum), while the shrub on the right is linden viburnum (V. dilatatum), a nonnative that has become surprisingly invasive in local preserves. As often happens, the native is seldom encountered, while the non-native is common, most likely due to deer preferring to eat natives.




If you know your plants, then you'll look at this small clump of leaves and feel happiness at all the yellow, cone-shaped flowers cutleaf coneflowers will produce later in the summer.

And even happier when you find a large congregation of cutleaf coneflower rising like a very slow-motion firework that will explode in color a month from now.

But knowing plants also allows you to foresee less auspicious trends, as the porcelainberry (NJ's kudzu wannabe) begins to grow up and over most everything in a smothering embrace. Persistent emails have yet to convince the university of the need to mow the field once a year in late winter, like state parks used to do. Annual mowing is the key to sustaining this open woodland of scattered trees lording over a vista of wildflowers.
There's a little parking just across the Harrison Street bridge. The trail loop is on the Princeton side of the towpath, just in from Harrison, with what looks like a birdhouse at the trailhead. Returning via the canal, I happened to see this yellow iris (I. pseudacorus), framed in the trees' reflection in the canal. The native iris sometimes seen is blue.


Sunday, April 16, 2017

Mentoring Youth at Herrontown Woods


It's been particularly satisfying to mentor youth at Herrontown Woods. Various projects have lent themselves well to this. For his public service project leading up to a bar mitzvah later this year, Jensen Bergman has been helping spread seeds of native grasses in a detention basin that catches water from the Smoyer Park parking lot, across Snowden Lane from Herrontown Woods. The basin was converted from turfgrass to native meadow this past summer, and through volunteers like Jensen, our nonprofit Friends of Herrontown Woods is applying the TLC (tender loving care) to better insure success.

These are seeds Jensen collected from last year's planting of Indian grass, a native of the tallgrass prairies that also is common in New Jersey's meadows.

Thanks to Jensen's mother, Nicole, for these photos, including the panorama below of the basin in early spring. As we add more species of wildflowers and grasses, the basin will become an oasis of native diversity within the surrounding expanse of ballfields and mowed lawn. The deep-rooted natives should do a better job of filtering out any pollutants that wash in from the parking lot.


Another project that Jensen has undertaken is the clearing of a new loop trail next to the Herrontown Woods parking lot. With signage, the trail will acquaint visitors with the preserve's ecology and the plantlife they might encounter on longer walks into the woods.

Jensen's father, Jeff, has been helping as well.

The Duke hat led to the realization that we share a past in Durham, NC.

Clearing brush offers some perks and surprises, like encounters with charismatic snakes (below).

This short loop trail had been in the conceptual stage for some time. Thanks to Jensen and his family for providing the impetus to bring it to reality.




Another recent cross-generation team effort was posted at the Friends of Herrontown Woods website.