Souls Tourne Apart

an ancient rock shelter with petroglyphs and a cat warrior

One of the things I love about living in New Jersey is that despite having lived here for five decades, I keep discovering interesting places that I didn’t know about. One was the Nothnagle Log Cabin, one of the oldest houses east of the Mississippi; the Emilio Carranza Memorial; the radio antenna that helped prove the Big Bang. This weekend, I visited the Parsippany Rock House:

And I wasn’t even planning on it! I was visiting friends to play Dungeons & Dragons, and my hotel was near two hiking spots that I’ve been wanting to try: Tourne County Park, and Norvin Green, which has a private natural pool that you can dive into for a small fee, and swim with the water snakes when it’s warm. I picked the Tourne, because its trails are listed as mountain bike friendly, and then asked Johnny if he wanted to hike the day after we raided the castle. Thankfully he said yes. I enjoy lugging around the Taint Hammer’s successor—a Surly Ice Cream Truck fat tire bike, as yet unnamed—to tackle trails where’er I may roam, but I have neglected my hiking.

Because southern New Jersey is flat. Flatter than Kansas, in fact. One reason I bike the Pine Barrens is that as beautiful as they may be, they are rather flat and homogenous, and trudging through sand is just not an enjoyable hike. On a bicycle it becomes a challenge. The Appalachian mountains that were eroded into the sandy beaches of the Jersey Shore and the intercoastal plains of Pine Barrens remain unbowed in the north, where glacial erratics¹—boulders kicked around by glaciers—litter the landscape in all their lichen-spotted glory. Such was my joy at beign reunited with them, that I clambered up and around this ancient rock shelter like a child, sure that my feet would remember how to find purchase. Even with a phone in my hand, like an influencer idiot, because I neglected to bring the selfie stick or my GoPro.

I only barked my knee once. I was excited for many reasons, not only to be at play in the rocks I love, but also because the Parsippany Rock Shelter has been used by humans for at least three thousand years, and is inscribed with petroglyphs, which are rare to find in New Jersey. It’s unknown if the shelter was used by the Lenni Lenape, who lived here before American colonists took the land. The carvings were dated to three thousand years ago, and are hard to find, which may be why they have survived. I didn’t find them, which is a good reason to return.

4 views of the stack of boulders that makes the shelter.

The last photo is from the top, which wasn’t that hard to climb, but probably would have given Sarah palpitations to see me scale it. I’m never going true rock climbing, but I do enjoy a “scramble” as hikers call it. This one affords you a view of million dollar Morris County homes. There’s a hiking trail nearby—magnanimously named “Indian Trail,” as we settlers like to memorialize² what we’ve stolen with the names of the robbed—and maybe Johnny and I will tackle that one next time.

We met at Tourne County Park soon after I clambered down. Morris County has many parks and hiking areas, from Jockey Hollow Encampment where Washington wintered troops, to Mount Hope, the site of a former iron mining operation. “The Tourne” as it’s called, is one that I had not visited. From the Dutch for “lookout,” it was saved by conservationist Clarence Addington DeCamp, who let the public roam its beautiful and craggy heights after he built roads into the unforgiving landscape. The trails vary fromsteep gravel roads to rocky, switchbacked climbs that made Johnny and I both very grateful that we invested in trekking poles. These made climbing the often slick rocks easy, even in autumn when they are buried in leaves.

We made it to the top of the Tourne in forty minutes and explored several outcrops and side trails. There are three named erratics, called the “Mouse Cradle,” a precariously balanced 54-ton stone that DeCamp wedged that way himself, and others called Elephant Rock and Denture Rock, which we will have to look for next time. I didn’t read up on the trails at all before we headed out. It looked steep, has a nice view of the surrounding areas, and was close by. When you’re out in a beautiful natural area with a friend, you don’t need much more.

The night before, we played in our friend Andi’s Spelljammer campaign, The Twin Suns of Zoer-Cthuko, which I’m enjoying the hell out of. The first time I played Dungeons & Dragons back in the ‘80s, I played a paladin, and I still enjoy playing an earnest “good” character. I’m playing one again, though quite different. Cath Palug, named after a Welsh monster-cat and pronounced “Cat Ballou,” is a tabaxi jaguar warrior who engaged in tribal warfare until the day a meteorite crashed through her hut and destroyed her sword. The stone told her it was a hammer for justice, and that she was to wield it. She had it forged into the head of a warhammer and now fights for those who can’t protect themselves, and hunts a secretive group known as the Forerunners, who have infiltrated groups of knights to corrupt them. Cath is a six foot jungle cat who is unaware that smiling with a huge face of fangs might be frightening. My friend Kim Parkhurst was kind enough to draw her:

Look at those nose wrinkles!

Tabaxi and holy knights are great fun to play in the right context. Cath follows no law and fights for good, which puts her at odds with power quite often. Her god is a rock that tells her to protect the weak; in Andi’s world, some planetoids are sleeping gods, and her meteorite may be a piece of one… that remains to be seen. It’s been fun to play out. I’ve taken a break from writing fiction, and roleplaying has been my creative release.

1. One of the largest glacial erratics in North America, Bear Rock, is nearby in Kinnelon, as part of Pyramid Rock natural preserve. It is eighty feet long.

2. I chose this word intentionally, as it is in settlers’ favor to behave as if the robbed are dead, or as good as dead.