March 16, 2022
Seeing the Sourlands
James Amon
Author, Ecologist
Scott McVay, Introducer, and James Amon
Minutes of the 24th Meeting of the 80th Year
Stephen Schreiber opened the meeting on Zoom and welcomed the 13 guests. Rob Coghan read the minutes from the preceding week’s presentation. There were 124 viewers of the Old Guard.
Scott McVay introduced the speaker, Jim Amon. Jim was founding director of the D&R Canal Commission, leading it for 30 years. He is also one of the four founders of the D&R Greenway Land Trust and steward of these important and popular trails and preserves. He is author of the beautiful book of his photographs, Seeing the Sourlands.
For orientation, the Sourland Mountain Region is 90 square miles of critical forest, wetland, and grassland habitat locked in west central New Jersey within the counties of Hunterdon, Mercer, and Somerset. It includes many acres of marked trails and forests, meadows, paved and unpaved roads.
Jim’s talk, accompanied by 40 or so slides of the flora and fauna of the Sourlands, gave all of us listening and watching new eyes with which to see the miracles of nature. Jim Amon opened his talk with “I go to the natural world to seek beauty and solace; I find them both there.” With an arresting fall picture of trees in the Sourlands, he explained that the etymology of the Sourlands is ambiguous—maybe from a farmer’s name, but more likely from the “sour” or acidic soil.
It would be an injustice to Jim’s slides to try to describe them to you; each one was its own artistic essay on a part of the trail. Instead, I will mention a few of my favorite slides from last Wednesday’s talk.
1. In the first set, images included plants like the Christmas cacti and skunk cabbage (plants that like community), trees in the winter because there is no down period in the forest, and the American beech whose smooth bark invites “love tattoos” (initials of lovers etched into the wood) with Jim’s reminder that trees invite no hate tattoos.
2. Then a series of spectacular flower slides each photographed by Jim, made visually dramatic by a black tee shirt that Jim puts behind the flowers to avoid outside reflection. And a shot of the flowering dogwood that we are just enjoying now with Jim’s query—the most beautiful sight in spring? I loved the praying mantis with its five eyes to give it a 360-degree panoramic view, all the easier to eat its prey with its spiky legs. We learned how to distinguish the damsel from the dragon fly.
3. Slides of various woodland birds included the great blue heron, the song sparrow, white throated sparrow, Canadian geese, and the mourning dove with the blue ring around its eye and its Art Deco body design.
4. The animals! The box turtle, rabbits, toads, and the beaver (the only animal that continues to grow throughout its life).
During the question-and-answer period Jim talked about the popular towpaths we have access to and reminded us all to respect the natural world by staying on the trails.
At the end of the question period Jim was asked his favorite trail to hike and he cited the Ecosystem Preserve Trails off Mountain Road in in East Amwell and the Woosamonsa Ridge Preserve Trails in Hopewell and referred to the website, njtrails.org. As helpful as these tips for hiking were, by far the most important part of Jim Amon’s slide talk was his emphasis on “seeing, really seeing” our natural world, and this requires some basic knowledge, but mostly an appreciation of the natural beauty around us. He left us feeling grateful for abundant trails that allow us to “seek beauty and solace.”
Respectfully submitted,
Anne Seltzer
Scott McVay introduced the speaker, Jim Amon. Jim was founding director of the D&R Canal Commission, leading it for 30 years. He is also one of the four founders of the D&R Greenway Land Trust and steward of these important and popular trails and preserves. He is author of the beautiful book of his photographs, Seeing the Sourlands.
For orientation, the Sourland Mountain Region is 90 square miles of critical forest, wetland, and grassland habitat locked in west central New Jersey within the counties of Hunterdon, Mercer, and Somerset. It includes many acres of marked trails and forests, meadows, paved and unpaved roads.
Jim’s talk, accompanied by 40 or so slides of the flora and fauna of the Sourlands, gave all of us listening and watching new eyes with which to see the miracles of nature. Jim Amon opened his talk with “I go to the natural world to seek beauty and solace; I find them both there.” With an arresting fall picture of trees in the Sourlands, he explained that the etymology of the Sourlands is ambiguous—maybe from a farmer’s name, but more likely from the “sour” or acidic soil.
It would be an injustice to Jim’s slides to try to describe them to you; each one was its own artistic essay on a part of the trail. Instead, I will mention a few of my favorite slides from last Wednesday’s talk.
1. In the first set, images included plants like the Christmas cacti and skunk cabbage (plants that like community), trees in the winter because there is no down period in the forest, and the American beech whose smooth bark invites “love tattoos” (initials of lovers etched into the wood) with Jim’s reminder that trees invite no hate tattoos.
2. Then a series of spectacular flower slides each photographed by Jim, made visually dramatic by a black tee shirt that Jim puts behind the flowers to avoid outside reflection. And a shot of the flowering dogwood that we are just enjoying now with Jim’s query—the most beautiful sight in spring? I loved the praying mantis with its five eyes to give it a 360-degree panoramic view, all the easier to eat its prey with its spiky legs. We learned how to distinguish the damsel from the dragon fly.
3. Slides of various woodland birds included the great blue heron, the song sparrow, white throated sparrow, Canadian geese, and the mourning dove with the blue ring around its eye and its Art Deco body design.
4. The animals! The box turtle, rabbits, toads, and the beaver (the only animal that continues to grow throughout its life).
During the question-and-answer period Jim talked about the popular towpaths we have access to and reminded us all to respect the natural world by staying on the trails.
At the end of the question period Jim was asked his favorite trail to hike and he cited the Ecosystem Preserve Trails off Mountain Road in in East Amwell and the Woosamonsa Ridge Preserve Trails in Hopewell and referred to the website, njtrails.org. As helpful as these tips for hiking were, by far the most important part of Jim Amon’s slide talk was his emphasis on “seeing, really seeing” our natural world, and this requires some basic knowledge, but mostly an appreciation of the natural beauty around us. He left us feeling grateful for abundant trails that allow us to “seek beauty and solace.”
Respectfully submitted,
Anne Seltzer