A true reflection of the Garden State: The D&R Canal

The Delaware & Raritan Canal, accompanied by its sibling towpath, plods through the New Jersey hinterlands at a slow, determined pace that evokes its working-class origins. Carved into the landscape during the industrial boom of the nineteenth century, it has been converted from a means of mass transit into a state park to the benefit of runners and bikers from New Brunswick to Trenton. Placing nature alongside commerce, this tract of land mimics its mother state in both image and use.

In mid-December, the Canada geese huddle in large flocks up and down the towpath, their heads down to shield away the wind, their bodies clustered tightly together for warmth. For most of the year, they lazily waddle up and down the gravel trail, ignoring the multitudes of passers-by until someone steps too close to a fluffy youngster. Then the father's head begins to bob up and down, the hissing starts, and the frightened runner sidesteps out of the way.

Winter chill sends the geese south for a while and as they take flight, they form one of the most majestic scenes in nature. The "V" formation is perhaps one of the most clichéd natural phenomena in existence, but to see it in action — thirty good-sized birds flying together, working together in a manner so organic they could almost be individual cells of a larger being — is a treat.

Usually I keep to myself during my travels on the towpath, saving such observations for personal enjoyment. But today I decide stop and talk to two strangers as I cross the wooden bridge between Princeton and Kingston. What I discover is that Jim's hobby has taken him so far past Canada geese that he must not even notice them any more. Though you wouldn't be able to tell from simply looking at him, Jim is a birdwatcher who has seen 257 different species of birds, a life list well above 200 — which is his estimated threshold between a backyard birdwatcher and a true birder. With more than 700 different avian species on the continent, Jim seems to hope to reach the three to four hundred range, but he's not in any hurry.

Maybe he just follows normal practice, but to me he seems to be an aesthete in his hobby — while some people append birds to life lists by only hearing the calls, Jim insists on seeing them before he etches another mark on the wall.

While I feel lucky to see the gracefully slow lope of the occasional great blue heron or the squirrel's-nightmare ferocity of a red-tailed hawk, Jim nonchalantly points out two fluttering black specks on the brilliant blue sky.

"That's just a blue jay and a morning dove, nothing special," he remarks as I add birds five and six to my own life list. Passing him with only a quick glance from the corner of my eye, I never would have identified him as an amateur ornithologist. Jim and his wife Maureen — who has a substantial life list of her own — look like stereotypical Jersey denizens. They could be straight off the set of The Sopranos or the main characters of a Bruce Springsteen construction-worker song. Here they are with their mountain bikes on a flat gravel trail enjoying a beautiful autumn day, looking across the man-made expanse of Lake Carnegie.

They complete a scene an outdoor enthusiast might easily pass by, writing them off as just another pair of nature-deprived suburbanites who enjoy the towpath because they know nothing better. But they're not. Talk to them for five minutes and you find out they earned the mountain bikes by winning a drawing and chose this self-propelled transportation over a pair of diamond earrings; that Jim has been bird-watching for more than eight years; that their backyard birdfeeders consume fifty pounds of feed every two weeks; that the speck flying on the horizon is a cormorant. In a way, they resemble their home state, a place many people write off before they even step across the borderline.

For bleary-eyed plane passengers flying into Newark, the smoke stacks and smog are enough to turn away from the "armpit of America" for life. But give the state a second chance, dig deeper, look past the ugly gray fuzz and to the creeks of southern New Jersey's Pine Barrens, the rapids of the Delaware and the locks of the D&R Canal. You may not find a snow-white swan, but you will see turkey vultures, osprey, and snowy egrets.

The towpath is surprisingly close to ideal for Jim and Maureen. New Jersey is located smack-dab in the middle of a major migration path and the two intermediate seasons see thousands of birds passing through the area on their way to warmer or colder climates. The Institute Woods — acres of trees adjacent to both the canal and the Institute for Advanced Study — is well known for its melodious chirpings in the spring, when small songbirds make their annual New Jersey appearance.

The woods regularly draw two to three hundred birdwatchers into the early-morning sun, an occurrence that not only allows Jim to add to his list but also glean knowledge from fellow watchers. A little of what he has learned from them he passes on to me, spewing out machine-gun lists of passing birds that I can barely distinguish from the trees.

He does this — the true birder and true Jersey boy — in the middle of New Jersey, breaking stereotypes as his state could if travelers would give it a chance. "That's why this is great; we get a little exercise, see a little nature," he says at the edge of a man-made lake and next to the reincarnated remains of an industrial conduit — without a note of irony or sarcasm.