Nature lovers: Baldpate preserve is the place for you

The first memorial hike in Ted Stiles’ honor is planned for Sept. 16

By John Tredrea
   Editor’s note: In early July, Staff Writer John Tredrea explored Baldpate Mountain, mostly on foot and with his camera.

   The mountain, once called Kuser Mountain, was preserved in 1998 for $11.4 million. Hopewell Township provided $1 million; Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space (FoHVOS), $500,000; and the state, $1.5 million. Mercer County provided the remaining funds with a Green Acres grant of $975,000, a loan of $2,925,000 and funds from the county open space tax. Mercer acquired the mountain from Trap Rock Industries, which purchased the property from the Kuser family in 1986.

   In late April, Mercer County Executive Brian M. Hughes, township Mayor Vanessa Sandom and representatives of FoHVOS gathered to break ground for improvements to the county park at Baldpate Mountain. The tract is composed of about 1,000 acres and features the highest point above sea level in Mercer County.

   Recognized at that groundbreaking were the efforts of the late Ted Stiles, an environmentalist, longtime president of FoHVOS and one of those who worked to preserve the mountain, located in northwestern Hopewell Township. Mr. Hughes announced that Baldpate Mountain would henceforth officially be called "The Ted Stiles Preserve at Baldpate Mountain."

   Dr. Stiles’ widow, Michele Byers, recently learned that the first memorial hike in Dr. Stiles’ honor is planned for Sept. 16. She noted that FoHVOS has created a hike planning committee.
   Using an iPod here would have been a mistake. No recorded music could have topped the sound the wind was making in the many tens of thousands of big pine needles just to my right.
   It was at the top of Baldpate Mountain. At the eastern end of the big field at the top is a long row of very big pine trees. I saw the pines first, then heard them. They caught my eye right away because it had been all deciduous trees on the way up the mountain — oaks, maples and many others. No conifers, though.
   Like the trees on the way up the mountain, these pine trees were of great size for this part of the country. You won’t see many trees as big as Baldpate’s around here.
   There was a long row of these big pine trees, and they looked exceedingly healthy. Their needles were a strong green, moist and resilient. They were very long needles, too, and came in big bunches. In each bunch, all the needles grew from a central point, so each needle touched many other needles. Each of these trees was covered with more of these bunches of needles than anyone could count.
   A brisk, gusty wind had these needles all stirred up. They were blowing around like things possessed, throwing all kinds of light, and the whistling, moaning sounds they made against one another made me quiet my breathing so I could hear them better. The sound was as ominous as it was lovely. Perfect for the soundtrack of a really scary movie.
   Baldpate Mountain’s name fits it. It’s bald. The ascent is thickly wooded all the way, but a grassy field at the top is as big as several football fields placed next to one another. The field is just above a big old rambling house no one lives in anymore. There are several accessory buildings grouped near the house. One of the smaller buildings, an old hunting lodge, is being renovated into a rest area for visitors, for Baldpate is a county park now. A carpenter working on the porch was the only person I saw anywhere on Baldpate that day. We exchanged brief hellos. He went back to the big rotary saw and I kept walking, toward the bald mountain top.
   I entered the field on its high side, near the pine trees. Looking west, tree tops obscured all but faint glimpses of the Delaware River, but from here I could see many miles into Pennsylvania. Distant ridges disappeared in the gray mist of a humid, though sunny, afternoon.
   Circling the middle of the field was a hawk as big as any I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if he was a red tail or not – you had to look into the sun to see him and there was a lot of glare – but he was big, all right. I’ll assume it was a he.
   As I walked toward a solitary tree near the middle of the field, the hawk dropped toward the ground, quickly, still circling. He went from a height of maybe 100 feet to about 15 feet. His circles got a lot smaller, and he slowed down. And his circles were moving gradually toward me. I changed direction. He did too, still gradually getting closer to the ground and still slowing down. His wings were huge. They looked about as wide as I am high. There’s a tendency to think of birds as little critters. Not this time!
   I reached the solitary tree and stopped under it. A bird’s nest, no sign of life in it – I wondered if the hawk had anything to do with that – was on the ground. It looked like it had been there only a very short time. I took a picture of it and stepped out from under the tree. I doubted it was a hawk’s nest. Too small.
   I stepped out from under the tree on its northern side. The hawk was circling me and the tree now. He was about 11 or 12 feet off the ground. When he went around the far side of the tree, he went very slowly and was right up against the tree. I could just see him through the leaves. It got a little unnerving waiting for him to show up again. I stood rooted to the ground. Each time he flew around my side of tree, he was closer to me than the last. On the closest pass, he was maybe feet 12 away. I could see his left eye. I wouldn’t want to depend on the amount of mercy in that eye, brothers and sisters, and his beak was pure tough snarl.
   "All right, bud," I said to him, "then I’m going to take your picture." But I couldn’t get him. He was in and out of the viewfinder in a flash and then took off down the mountain, heading straight for the river. He was riding the wind, just dipping his wings steeply one way, then the other. He didn’t flap his wings at all. He soared over the high tree tops at great speed. He was hundreds of yards away in a matter of a few seconds. He disappeared from view. He went right into the sun. Then there was nothing but trees to see.
   I started back down the mountain. "I can take a hint," I said out loud. On the lower edge of the field, a very dead tree of unknown species loomed into view. All its leaves and twigs were long gone, but the main limbs and big branches still pointed defiantly straight toward the zenith of the sky, massive roots clawed profoundly into the ground like high-grade, expertly-engineered steel.
   Yes, leave your iPod home if you walk up this mountain. Lot of birds singing, some of them really high up into the trees. That height gives their songs a mythic quality. What woody echoes and overtones! The densely forested views on the way up Baldpate could be from thousands of years ago, and from thousands of miles away. The sounds of cars and trucks grow faint as the birds take over the airwaves.
   The road up Baldpate starts from Fiddlers Creek Road, just east of Route 29. There’s a temporary parking lot just inside the entrance. It’s not a path to the top, it’s a road. But there are trails everywhere on Baldpate, 12 miles of them. You can walk around up there all day.
   You can walk to the top in under an hour. You’ll need strong legs and good lungs and decent shoes and some water and maybe a little snack. It’s pretty steep. There were a lot of gnats near the bottom, but only near the bottom, last Thursday. And I started seeing chipmunks right away. There must be a million chipmunks up there. They just sit there and look at you as walk by, then jump out of sight, then reappear to stare at you some more. Nothing is cuter than a chipmunk.
   Are you a tree hugger? Then this is a good place for you. There are a lot of big ones here. You stare at them in awe, jaws agape, looking at their tops so far, far overhead. Trunks 4 feet or more in diameter at the base. Huge, long splits in some trees, like scarred wounds of sickening size, apparently from lightning. These are trees that make utility poles look like little sticks, trees whose lowest leaves are many scores of feet above the ground The power of vitality and endurance exuded by these trees is incredible. It strikes you like a force, muted, but of great magnitude.
   Near the top, a section of the road that is hundreds of feet long runs along a sheer, long drop. Guarding the road is a 3-foot-high wall of fieldstones and mortar, very old, covered with moss and lichens. The feel of everything man-made near the top – house, well, pump — is early 20th century.
   Even now, you feel very far away from everything up here. To have lived here alone with your family all those years ago must have imparted quite a sense of remoteness from the human race. It seems a little mad, actually. But I can dig it, I could try it, mad or not. The peace and quiet and sights and sounds are superb.
   On the way back down, along the stretch of road with the protective wall, I saw the old telephone poles. I had missed them altogether on the way up. Like soldiers from another era, the early era of mass communications, these poles ascended through deep woods up the mountain side, bound for the house near the top. The poles looked very old. There were bells on the wires at the cross trees, which looked pre-World War II vintage to me. I haven’t seen poles with cross trees and bells like that in quite a while. It must have been some job to get them up that mountain. That must have been a pretty serious connection fee for telephone service. Once they had it, good bye privacy!
   Now, these old telephone poles have changed to the same hues and textures as the trees that are engulfing them. That’s why it’s so easy to miss the poles. They’re getting back to their roots, like some people do, they say.