The world of nature makes us healthier 12/12/25 Sunday

Yesterday I read an e-mail item that said spending just 20 minutes a day outdoors in nature can make a significant impact on our health both physical and emotional. I believe this. Fortunately, my dog assures me of 30 minutes a day outdoors and we frequent a lovely little park called Martin's Lake off Johnson Blvd. in Glouceter City, NJ.

For many years during my teaching career at Mary Ethel Costello School, in Gloucester City, the computer teacher, the librarian and I used our combined prep periods and lunc periods to walk around the jogging trail on Johnson Blvd. My guess would be that it is about 2/3 of a mile. We generally ent around twice and it really helped us to get through the day.

All of my life, I have been an avid walker and a passionate lover of the outdoors. My love affair began when my family moved from the concrete and brick canyons of South Philadelphia to the green and leafy suburb of Maple Shade with a corn field on the north, a wild meadown on the east, the Pennsauken Creek on the south, and a small post world war 2 housing development on the west.

Our street in Philadelphia had one tree in a small 3 foot by 3 foot square of dirt in the cement sidewalk. I feel sorry for that tree. I feel sorry for the children, who like me are raised in concrete and brick and never know the feeling of fresh new grass on their feet, or the knee high creackle and smoky fragrance of thick fallen leaves.

Every thing in the nature I discovered when we moved to New Jersey amazed me. The giant hard bulb of the thick elephant eared swamp pants that grew alongside the thick gravy like Pennsauken Creek, the thick fog that enveloped the road we drove to Ocean City to visit my Grandmother on Sundays, the forests we drove through that are now gone, turned into shopping malls and housing developments.

But I am not going to spoil this ramble through nature by dwelling on what is gone because so much is still here - the red gems of the cranberry bogs fenced in by the white sand roads at Whitesbog! You have got to go there before the harvest and see the cranberries floating atop the flooded bogs against an impossibly blue sky! Go now in October befoe it is too late!

And go to my great love, Pakim Pond. Pakim Pond was once a part of a cranberry bog operation but is now part of the Brandan T. Byrne State Forest. You will be richly rewarded EVERY season by wonders, pitcher plants on the banks of the pond, mushrooms galore in early fall, falling leaves in autumn and the fragrance of sunshine on the pine needles as your foot presses down on the ehm on the Cranberry trail.

Back in my long ago youth, you could swim at Pakim Pond. You can't swim there any longer but it is a joy to walk the trail around the edge of the pond, and to imagine living in the cabins (they can be rented and winter is best!) that you pass as your complete the circuit around the pond and back to the parking lot.

There are so many wonderful trails and woods to hike in South Jersey, and even small places nearby like Saddler's Woods which will be lovely right now. Soon I think they have their pumpkin hike. Check out the Saddler's Woods Conservation website for more info. on that.

If you are less woodsy and more asphalt path oriented, you may want to walk around Cooper River - 4 miles. Or you may like the Audubon Lake Haddon Park series of ponds, about a mile each pond adn a total of 3 to 4 miles around from Station Ave. in Haddon Heights around to Audubon. And there is Newton Creek in Collingswood and thelovely Knight's Park as well, a great assortment of beautiful trees there and a wonderful picnic shelter where you can enjoy a quiet lunch and a meditation on the seasons.

Happy Trails, my friends, where ever your trails may be - Get Outside - this is the perfect weather for it! Find a buddy, human or canine, and get going! By the way, the picture on my blog is Whitesbog in September.

wrightj45@yahoo.com