Our first trip to Penn State Forest, not far from Chatsworth NJ was to follow a hike we had read about in our Fifty Hikes in NJ book (by Bruce Scofield, Stella J. Green, H. Neil Zimmerman. 1988. Woodstock VT: Backcountry Publications).
We were attracted to the hike, in part because of the promise of seeing a dwarf pine forest where the pines are about four to six feet high. We had seen dwarf pines, also known as the pine plains, along Rte 539 in Burlington County near Warren Grove. This was a chance to see the dwarf or pigmy pines as they are sometimes known up close and personal. At least more up close and personal then is possible in a car.
Thanks to Google Earth, I have posted an image of what I hope is Penn State Forest and Oswego Lake at the top of this post. We parked in a parking lot near the Lake and walked north on the sand road. It was late August, and it was hot. Sometimes sand roads in the pine barrens are firmly packed and easy to walk on and sometimes the sand is not packed, making walking a little more difficult. Sinking an inch or so into the sand as you walk along these roads on a hot day is not always a easy walk. I think that we got about half-way into our five mile hike before we turned around. To be honest, I'm not sure if the reason we turned back was because we were hot and tired or if we were under a time constraint. We may have made it to the outskirts of the pine plains in Penn State Forest, I don't recall. But I did enjoy the pine forest. For me there is a simplicity and elegance in these pine forests.
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