Ed, Great report. It sounds like it was a great event. I had my own great events to go to this past weekend. I have more this coming weekend and the weekend after that. As most know by now, my interests in forests go way beyond just big trees. I was at Weymouth on Saturday, mainly to eat lunch. But I got there and found that the bridge over the Great Egg Harbor River at that spot is closed indefinitely, pending repairs or replacement, or whatever they decide. The bridge is a 1920 Warren Pony Truss bridge, if memory serves. It's badly deteriorated and is unsafe for vehicular travel. Anyway, I decided to shoot some video of the bridge, of the ruins in the park there, and of some big trees there (briefly). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZrTkjs5Pgo After shooting the video I was out taking pictures and a bus showed up in the park. Then someone I know got off the bus. It was a geologist friend of mine who was leading a tour of ethnic settlements in the Pine Barrens, for honors students at a nearby college. He invited me on the tour. At one stop we made (it was on the property of a farm) I found that the front yard of the farm was full of Shagbark Hickories and a few Black Walnuts. That was a great day. Then on Sunday I attended the Pinelands Discovery Festival, which is always held at Whitesbog, which is the birthplace of the cultivated blueberry. It's a large, but laid back, festival, and I spent most of it talking with friends that included a naturalist/historian, a director/owner of a private wildlife refuge, a State Park Service naturalist from Wharton State Forest, and the owner of a great pine barrens website, pineypower.com. I also spent time talking with the man in charge of land aquisitions for a great preservation organization here called New Jersey Conservation Foundation. I also spent time with the owner/director of an old historic cemetery which was just recently cleaned up and restored. It includes nature trails through the surrounding forest. Actually, there was something cool on Friday as well. I was out hiking, and the return leg of my hike was on a road. Someone pulled over on the side of the road to ask if I needed help, and he turned out to be someone I had previously wanted to meet, someone with my own last name, which is extremely rare. Neither of us had ever met anyone with our own last name before.
--- On Tue, 10/6/09, Edward Frank <[email protected]> wrote: From: Edward Frank <[email protected]> Subject: [ENTS] ENTS October 2009 Rendezvous To: "ENTS Google" <[email protected]> Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2009, 2:03 PM ENTS, The Big Tree Extravaganza/ ENTS Rendezvous at Cook Forest State Park this last weekend is over and it was another big success. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
