Going Batsto, Odd Graves, Fungal Love, and Road Nanners

A hodgepodge of Pines fun

The Pines are recovering well from the fires this season. I went out to Lake Batsto a week or so ago for a bike ride, and met a friend from the Pine Barrens forums for a hike around the area. We followed the Mullica and visited some popular and less-known sites for swimming, kayaking, and just reading a book while the crick wudder babbles. (I’m working on my South Jersey accent). Here’s a nice little beach:

And here, you can see that the fire burned so hotly that the ends of the fence posts were disintegrated, but the rest of it was untouched. It’s rather amazing to think about. The trees that were burned showed new growth, and the cleared underbrush was renewed.

A month or so prior, I went looking for the abandoned town of Hermann. There was a glassworks there, and a hotel along the Mullica River, but not much remains. I am going to return soon when the leaves are down, to look for more ruins. There’s a geocache nearby, so I can stumble around looking for it. Last time I was there, I found some yucca that were supposedly planted in front of the hotel, and a yellow-tipped coral fungus:

I’ve been a fan of mushrooms ever since my grandfather brought home some “funghi” he picked from a secret spot, fried it and steeped it in spicy tomato sauce, and gave us a treat. Supposedly, he always gave some his brother Fiore before eating it himself. This was hen-of-the-woods, also known as maitake, which grows at the foot of oak trees. Nowadays you can get it in grocery stores. I like it fried in olive oil or butter for any meal of the day. It has a rich, meaty flavor.

My fungal obsession has led me to finding puffball spores, amber jelly fungus, and stinkhorns of the “dog dick fungus” variety, so called because they resemble the canine member. If you like slime molds and whatnot, you should follow Damaris Brisco on Instagram, who shares her explorations in the John Muir woods, and finds so many beautiful critters and fungi. And her Twitter handle is @fungal_love, which always makes me smile and hear the Steve Miller song in my head.

I found this at Timber Creek and assumed it was fungi:

These are aphids, and their infestation is known as beech blight. They didn’t dance for me, but sometimes when they are more lively, they wiggle when disturbed. I’m trying to be more aware of the woods; to quote Thoreau, what business do I have in the woods if my thoughts are not of the woods? (Sorry Henry, but I sometimes listen to podcasts.)

Lately I’ve been reading How to Read Nature by Tristan Gooley, and it’s a little simplistic, but a good start. I’ve always regretted not learning woodcraft at an early age. It feels like learning a language; that it’s easier when young. I’ve written about how reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer is an enlightening experience; if you need a preview, you can read her essay “The Rights of the Land” at Orion Magazine.

Last week I talked about fossil hunting and mentioned Big Brook. Here’s a New Jersey fossil hunter who’s more into it than I’ll ever be, wading into the creek in boots and freezing his hands as he pans for shark teeth. But look what he finds!

Not fossils, but a curiosity. New Jersey has several graves in strange areas, like this one outside a factory. The most infamous is Mary Ellis’s grave in the Loews Theatre parking lot off of Route 1, which has a connection to that ‘70s pop hit, “Brandy, You’re a Fine Girl.” (Read the link at Weird NJ for more.)

If you’re poor, we’ll just pave over your graves and build a parkway; but if you were famous or rich, and can afford to move a grave to a cemetery, we’ll make them build around you. Here’s an example, the graves of Yoos Sooy, an early Swedish settler and grandfather to Revolutionary war privateer “Captain Yoos” Sooy, and shipbuilder John Cavileer, who built the Prosperity, Captain Yoos’s ship. I love that their names are palindromes. Yoos is the Swedish diminutive for Joseph. And searching for odd graves, I found the lonely grave of Civil War veteran Noah Cherry, an African-American volunteer for the Union, who is buried at mile marker 6.1 on the Garden State Parkway. I’ll have to pay my respects someday.

And lastly, my Public Service Announcement about Road Nanners:

Upcoming posts:

Visiting the Hindenburg Crash Site

Eagle Watching at Conowingo Dam: a collaboration with the WanderFinder!

Teaser: