Past the trailhead, you at once find yourself scampering down the side of a gorge. You chase your body’s momentum. You feel your ankles wrench on the blunt basalt that juts up from the path. You leap over exposed roots that lie across the trail. A sharp pain stabs the bottom of your feet as you land on the path in full stride; your body sways and clings to its center of gravity. Everything is a blur. A burst of adrenaline courses through you. But soon, the descent comes to a sudden end. You cross a rocky brook on a wood-planked bridge. Once across, you find yourself climbing the opposite side of the gorge. Your breathing has become heavy. Finally, the trail levels off at the crest. You lean up against a puddingstone boulder, a gift from a last retreating glacier. As you take a sip of water, you sense the forest. You are surrounded by deciduous trees. With their bare branches, they look like a troop of ballerinas poised in a pirouette. The trees, the soil, the carpet of fallen leaves merge into one soft, earth-tone hue. You concentrate on the distant chirp of birds.
Although I grew up one block from the Watchung Reservation (Mountainside, N.J.) it took most of my life to realize it was there. I knew of its existence as I traveled through it daily. But, I never really knew it. It was just part of existence; something that is ever present yet pushed halfway into the subconscious.
I was 6,000 miles away from home when I realized I had been taking the reservation for granted. I was passing through the Suez Canal on a ship bound for the Persian Gulf. As I stood on deck, feeling a bit homesick, I saw Egyptian children piling out of a matchbox-sized schoolhouse on the canal bank, their faces lit up with excitement as they watched our steel titan float through their city. How thrilling to live near something unique. As I looked out at the children’s faces, a pang of consciousness hit me. Familiar images of forested ridges filled my mind. My “something unique” was the Watchung Reservation.
I began to feel a bit ashamed. I wondered how these children, who undoubtedly saw countless ships in their lives, could find it possible to become excited by yet another ship. And here I was: someone who couldn’t take interest in something that had been omnipresent in my life.
The trail becomes less rocky. The soil is still saturated from the snowmelt. But it is not muddy. Your feet sink comfortably into the earth as if into a cushion.
The trail now parallels the side of a ravine. A slow-moving stream moves over volcanic rock at the bottom of the fissure. There is something attractive about the ravine. With slow, careful steps, you descend the embankment and follow it upstream. You come to a point where the ravine turns sharply. At the bend, an alcove has been dug into the 30- foot-high embankment. The exposed igneous rock has been symmetrically carved in rows. You run your palm along the rock wall. It is jagged to the touch.
When I returned to New Jersey I started hiking the reservation frequently. I soon discovered the copper mine. As a child I knew about the mine, but I never visited. Adults would tell us stories about witches kidnapping children and bringing them to the reservation to do wicked things to them. Perhaps they were trying to keep us out of the woods by scaring us. But they never told us it was the colonial settlers who founded the mine. Standing next to the alcove, one can visualize these settlers lugging mining equipment through the forest from their rudimentary village two miles away to toil for hours at the mine. Our parents’ folktales robbed us of this link with the past.
The trail slopes down the ridge into the mossy recess between the two Watchung ridges. There the forest is mostly evergreens. The green firs add a pleasant hue to the earthen woodland. After paralleling Blue Brook for a mile, the path leads you back up onto the ridge where you soon find yourself in a pine grove. Diffracted sunlight has turned into a spectral amber glow. The forest floor is a blanket of fallen pine needles.
You hike for a few more miles, gradually ascending the ridge. When you reach the summit, you note a rocky vista with a makeshift fire ring placed close to the ledge. You sit on a rock. In front of you is the northernmost Watchung Ridge. Its face looks chiseled, columnar in shape. You listen to the sound of water rushing against rocks in the valley below.
The poet William Wordsworth saw himself as a prophet of his own religion of nature. After hiking the reservation, I understand the affinity he felt for nature. We are all part of nature. Being in it gives us a feeling of fulfillment. It reminds us that we depend on the Earth to live. This is vital as we sprawl out across the land, erasing natural environs and replacing them with the shopping malls and the townhouses of suburbia. The Watchung Reservation can teach us much about who we are.
The sun is setting. The sky has turned vermillion. Soon, the moon’s reflection will float on the water of Surprise Lake below. The sky will be a parasol of stars. One word enters your mind: peace.
Alan Kennedy explored the Watchung Reservation in Mike Zeugin’s class, Creative Nonfiction, at Rutgers-Newark.
