Encounter nature by a stroll through the marsh.
By: Carolyn Foote Edelmann
Sometimes winter gifts us with a day beautiful as the apples of the Hesperides golden warmth, benevolent skies. Its bounty must be celebrated at some worthy nature site. Such a haven exists, within a half hour of Princeton.
In warmth, it spreads a banquet of water lilies and swans more Monet than Giverny. In autumn, vivid vines, rarest migratory birds clamor for your attention. Winter bears subtle blessings: buffs and beige, teal. Charcoal and olive tones murmur of Cézanne.
Explore this rich enclave the Hamilton/Bordentown/Trenton Marsh.
For directions to the marsh, see below. Once there, check the site map for location and history stretching back 10,000 years to the Lenni Lenapes, a few hundred years to controversial Trenton archaeologists. More than 700 species of plants and 234 species of birds have been catalogued in the 1,250 acres somewhat preserved as John A. Roebling Memorial Park and as Abbott Farm.
A year-old group, Friends for the Marsh, has formed under the temporary umbrella of Delaware & Raritan Greenway. The Friends’ purpose is education and protection. Check their rich Web site, below, for information and events especially frequent walks and kayak/canoe excursions with marsh experts and advocates. On Saturday at 9:30 a.m., Washington Crossing Audubon will be sponsoring a free marsh walk at the Roebling Park/Spring Lake site.
On the late December day of my most recent marsh exploration, we were welcomed by mute swans drifting with proprietary air across Spring Lake, ignoring hordes of muttery gulls. Guests found it hard to believe that the marsh is freshwater tidal wetland to the tune of eight-foot surges.
A lone fisherman cast into that lake named for a sacred Indian spring. Asked what he might capture, he answered, "There’s bass in here. And sunnies. Pike." I queried him, knowing that this feisty prey is a specialty of Great Lakes states. He had caught them here.
At a rudimentary footbridge, visitors re-enacted coming upon the largest beaver of their lives. On hind legs, it dared a leashed German Shepherd which it nearly matched in heft. I haven’t been there sufficiently late or early to catch beavers at their frenzied sculpture. It is to be found on all sides intriguing, evocative.
If you walk with "Godfathers of the Marsh" Clyde Quin and Warren Liebensperger, you will be shown souvenirs of "nature raw in tooth and claw." These two grew up nearby, hunting and trapping in season, and stumbling upon Lenape artifacts now gracing Trenton museums. Walking antennae, Clyde and Warren notice every change alongside the trails. They’ll spy and identify bones of mouse and mole and vole. They’ll show you the scruffed-out sandy fox den, with its crafty multiplicity of exits and entrances.
You’ll discover that early Indians did not actually live in "this ancient meander of the Delaware River." Rather, Natives gathered here, in spring, in fall.
American versions of fairs at Provence’s Tarascon and Beaucaire in Provence, these "conventions" meant catching up on lives and deaths; hearing of and arranging marriages; trading foods and crafts. The Lenapes convened here for thanksgiving and blessing. Their time of hunting had ended; the time of gathering (lobsters and crabs, mussels and scallops, every sort of fish) was about to begin. When you circle down from Route 295 to Route 195, give a thought to what the watery landscape used to mean to its original natives.
Walking with Mary and Charles Leck (Rider botanist, Rutgers ornithologist), you’ll have the benefit of decades of scientific exploration, by canoe and on foot. Mary knows everything that blooms and grows there. She catalogues, writes and lectures on the marsh’s unique plant species. A new form of duckweed was her most recent discovery. Charlie not only recognizes everything that flies, but also who built what nests. The couple brings encyclopedic knowledge coupled with wry humor to marsh treks.
There is nothing more thrilling than kayaking/canoeing these liquid reaches. Use Paint Island Canoe and Kayak in Bordentown (Web site below). The staff will explain marsh tides (paddle with them, not against trust me). Your rented craft will be transported down to "Bordentown Beach," where our Delaware & Raritan Canal begins or ends, depending on your perspective. Crosswicks Creek and Watson Creek will transport you deep into a shimmer of wilderness.
You’ll have spent a good bit of your journey under the bluffs where Joseph Bonaparte followed his brother Napoleon’s instructions to settle between New York and Philadelphia. In a mansion of purest Empire style, Joseph welcomed the world’s most educated, cultured, and powerful.
Voyages from Europe to either vital city (Philadelphia was far more important in the 1800s than many realize) were long. The age of sail rendered their journeys to the once-dashing king of Spain and Naples simpler than today’s drive to Bordentown from Princeton. Here Joseph’s nephew and son-in-law, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, evolved into "the Father of Descriptive Ornithology." Charles Lucien named the Cooper’s hawk for his houseguest friend. Some of the most stellar art in the post-Napoleonic universe graced the walls of Point Breeze.
After completing intriguing yellow- and green-blazed loop trails, set out around Spring Lake. In this stretch, in spring, I photographed the female swan on her nest, cob proudly defensive in water at her side. They were so close, I couldn’t use my long lens. At the end of this circuit, you’ll pass remains of a concrete slide. Here summer visitors shot down a steep incline, right into Spring Lake. The white marble-like staircase once led down from fashionable White City Amusement Park.
On our late December afternoon, the thousand gulls abruptly lifted off as one. Sky was scissored by sharp-elbowed wings, sun-dazzle reflections painful to our eyes. One co-hikers urged the other, "Quick! Get the picture! It’s like ‘Winged Migration’" (a memorable movie of bird voyages, art and science). It’s probably out on video now but you can experience the real thing in the Hamilton/Trenton/Bordentown Marsh.
Directions: Take Route 1 South to the Broad Street exit, by the Sovereign Bank Arena. Turn left onto South Broad Street, past the single church spire. Turn right on Sewell Avenue, which T’s at the Marsh, leading you to the left entry into Roebling Park’s Spring Lake parking lot. Park and lock. Set off on flat, dry trails leading due west.
For more information about Friends of the Marsh, visit www.marsh-friends.org. For more information on kayaking the Marsh, visit www.paintisland.com/directions.shtml.