Saturday, June 14, 2003

A DAY OUT WITH THE "TOO MUCH FUN CLUB" It was supposed to rain here on Wednesday, but we managed to luck out on the weather. It was hazy and warm as I drove down back roads to a wilderness. Surprising as it may seem there is indeed an area in that suburban/industrial sprawl that lies between Philadelphia and New York City that, for large segments, is uninhabited. There’s over 1000 square miles of pine, oak and cedar forest that make up the heart of the Pine Barrens. I was going canoeing with an environmental group on a quiet and lazy piece of water known as the Wading River.     There’s no white water on any of these rivers. They do often move along at a rapid pace, especially since we’ve been having so much rainfall this spring. We met up at Pine Barrens Canoe Rental early in the morning for what was going to be a lazy paddle down river from Hawkins Bridge to Evans Bridge where our ride would be waiting to pick us up. We put in at Hawkins, which is a drive from the county road down a sandy path, where I was teamed up for part of the trip with a novice and his young daughter. Since she was going to be in the middle, and he wanted to keep an eye on her, I took the bow seat even though the more experienced canoer is usually put in the stern. I would be dropping them off at the first pull-out and then continuing on my own to Evans Bridge.     The day turned out to be beautiful beyond words. We paddled slowly down river and were soon out of sight of the next canoe following behind us. The river meandered underneath a canopy formed by the trees picking up and then losing speed. The water was the color of strong ice tea from all of the tannins and other waste from the cedar trees combining with the natural iron occurring in the soil. If you leaned over and lost your glasses you’d never see them again even though for the most part the river was only waste deep. They call this “cedar water.” There’s a lot of water in the Pine Barrens even in times of drought. A vast reservoir exists under the sandy soil and, according to our Fearless Leader, holds some 17 trillion gallons of clean fresh water. It’s been said that a pipe 2 inches in diameter driven 30 feet into the ground will yield about 55 gallons of water per minute.   We paddled along enjoying the quiet and serene trip until we came upon a nice little sandy beach where we could pull out and have some lunch. I never thought that just a couple of hours like this could wash away all of the tension from the work week, but it did. Another few members of our group now pulled up on the bank and we caught sight of a large old box turtle that had come to observe us. Since more canoes were coming in to this spot we decided to head back on down the river to the first pull-out. On the way we passed The Bickering Couple who had managed to tip over their canoe for the second time and had all of their gear draining on a stretch of the river bank while they tried to pull their still full of water canoe up on the land to pour the water out. We caught sight of a snake swimming across the river in front of us. It was probably between 2 and 2-1/2 feet long.   After dropping off my canoe mate and his daughter I continued on down the river alone, just enjoying the solitude. Tune in tomorrow for the rest of the story including the birth of the local chapter of “The Too Much Fun Club.”   File under The Great Outdoors. 3:44:20 PM    Go ahead, make my day  []