Essay and photos by Joe Mish

Warehousing, apartments, shipping centers, federal highways changed my world. It was a natural world I discovered that was available to everyone, with few takers, now lost to the ages. Whether warehousing or condos, both are poison pills being offered as a palatable option.

The end of my world began when President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Bill on June 29, 1956, three months short of 100 years after Henry David Thoreau left his footprints along the north shore of the lower Raritan River. 

My world began at the end of my dead-end street and the Lehigh Valley Railroad tracks which bordered the vast abandoned clay banks, dotted with flooded clay excavations, swamps, streams and woods stretching to the Raritan River. The railroad tracks were my equivalent of the St Louis Gateway arch, a monument to the westward expansion of the United States into the unexplored territory stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean.  

Like the early days of frontier travel, the tracks and clay banks were said to be fraught with existential danger. Bums and hobos were the hostiles parents warned about, if that failed there was the quicksand and bottomless mud which would swallow a kid, never to be found. The real threat was from the ‘big kids’, defined as any kid who was bigger than you. Often, they would intimidate younger kids to extort any change they had, or otherwise physically intimidate them. So, the rule was, you saw a big kid, you ran away as fast as you could. And then there were the trains. The tracks stretched perfectly straight for a mile of more, so you could see it coming a long way off. Problem was if a kid was so occupied, the train could easily sneak up on him. 

We learned that if you went deeper into the wilderness, there were rarely any human encounters, as the travel was difficult and muddy and held no specific area of interest. Forays into the wild were pure exploratory expeditions or in my case, a safe place to shoot my bow and arrow.  High banks of soft clay let the wooden arrows live longer. The real beauty was the ability to draw back the bow and aim at the sky to see how far an arrow can fly. There was something about watching the arrow ‘escape the surly bonds of earth’, as you became the arrow. Surely some paleo bowman was inspired by his arrow’s high arc to imagine the possibility of human flight. Inspiration to fire the imagination was everywhere you looked. 

Being a transition zone, many plants typically found in south Jersey could be identified, sheep laurel, green briar and odd oak species. Spotted turtles were quite common and gray fox dominated the area. There were American bittern, gallinules, night hawks, rose breasted grosbeak, indigo buntings, rufous sided towhees, brown thrashers, short eared owls and even a rare Boreal owl, native to the arctic regions was documented.  The variety of colorful bird life brought my Golden Guide Book to Birds to life as the birds seemed to fly off the pages into the surrounding trees.

A short eared owl sits on a vent pipe in the area seen on the cover image. A boreal owl, native to the arctic region, was documented in the dame area. Its presence validates the importance of the Raritan River off ramp of the Atlantic Flyway.

The event of that June day in 1956 had no direct impact on my wilderness until the late 60s when flimsy tan stakes, flagged with orange ribbons, started to appear throughout my territorial claim.  

The clay banks marked the reach of the ancient sea floor, characterized by sandy, clay soil, interspersed with smooth cobble, that stood in sharp contrast to the dark brown soil and New Brunswick shale found across the tracks and up-river. This land was caught between the terminus of glacial expansion and the reach of prehistoric seas. 

The intersection of soils, blessed with a marriage of fresh and salt water, set along the Atlantic flyway, an ancient bird migration route, and the presence of a major inland river off ramp, makes this area one of the most environmentally diverse, along the east coast. The bay and river are a gathering place for migrating striped bass, shad and alewives, who have retained evolutionary migration patterns to conquer time and impediments, to fulfill their ancient upstream journey.

Before long, the significance of the flagged stakes driven into the heart of this unique parcel was realized, as machinery began to carve paths and straightaways to accommodate interstate 287. Eventually all that remained of the clay banks were a gulag of islands interspersed among the on and off ramps, dominated by sweet gum, pin oaks and green briar. An apartment complex replaced the small isolated cattail swamp which supported a population of black muskrat.  

Aside from the overflowing natural treasures, are the memories of freedom and seemingly unrestricted travel and discovery which led to a lifetime of curiosity of all things wild. Even though the change was personally disruptive and unwelcome, the clay banks served their purpose to set a course through life that never wavered from the affiliation with the natural world. Good for me, sad for future generations who will never share that experience.

Author Joe Mish has been running wild in New Jersey since childhood when he found ways to escape his mother’s watchful eyes. He continues to trek the swamps, rivers and thickets seeking to share, with the residents and visitors, all of the state’s natural beauty hidden within full view. To read more of his writing and view more of his gorgeous photographs visit Winter Bear Rising, his wordpress blog. Joe’s series “Nature on the Raritan, Hidden in Plain View” runs monthly as part of the LRWP “Voices of the Watershed” series. Writing and photos used with permission from the author.