Green and Serene

As you descend a forested valley on Pryde’s Point-Alexauken Creek trail, the riffling water appears suddenly, almost magically. You hear the creek before you see it. Once you discover it, this hidden treasure will become a springtime pleasure: a hike along an exuberant, rocky stream, sheltered in a tranquil forest.

 

The trail connects adjoining preserves, one private and one public, with entrances on opposite sides of the creek in West Amwell, near aptly named Rocktown. “Alexauken” may come from the Lenape word Alahakink, meaning “barren land”—similar to “Sourlands,” the surrounding mountainous region, perhaps named for its unsuitability for farming.

 

The forty-four-acre Pryde’s Point Preserve is private land formerly owned by the late photographer Pryde Brown, who granted a permanent conservation easement on it to the D&R Greenway Land Trust. (Brown’s daughter, Martha McPhee, wrote a memoir of the property, Omega Farm, published by Scribner in 2023.) D&R Greenway manages the trails, which are open to the public.

 

Adjacent to the western and southern borders of the preserve are 587 acres of the state-owned Alexauken Creek Wildlife Management Area. New Jersey’s 122 wildlife management areas, totaling 358,000 acres, protect fish and wildlife and provide public recreational opportunities, including hunting. Like many areas that are managed to reduce deer presence, this WMA has a relatively thick understory of shrubs and young trees, which creates wildlife habitat and protects the creek from pollution.

 

Alexauken Creek flows west through four Hunterdon County municipalities, emptying into the Delaware River in Lambertville. Because of its water quality and capability to support trout, New Jersey law protects it from degradation. But it is the spiritual quality of Alexauken Creek and its forest that makes this an entrancing hike.

 

Parking for the Pryde’s Point Preserve, on the north side of the creek, is a pullout along a private drive off Gulick Road, with room for two cars. There’s a kiosk with a trail map. Walk up the long drive past fields, following the well-marked blue trail. As you approach a cluster of buildings, the trail descends along a field edge to woods.

 

Tall trees—oak, hickory, black walnut, beech, maple, and tuliptree—anchor the hillside. A remarkable quiet pervades the forest, broken only by birdsong, a quiet that’s all the more notable given the proximity to busy county roads.

 

In early spring the forest floor is bathed with light for ephemeral wildflowers to soak up. Look for white bloodroot, pink spring-beauties, yellow trout lilies, and purplish jack-in-the-pulpits. Tiny yellow flowers adorn the ubiquitous spicebush, a native shrub with fragrant bark. As spring progresses, trees leaf out, tinting the air light green. You’ll see more shade-tolerant plants such as tall meadow rue, mayapple, and lady ferns.

 

The blue trail continues downhill, branching into an optional hillside loop and ending at a stone dam. Although it once held a pond, the dam has been breached, and today the creek flows through its remnants. Follow the yellow trail markers to pick your way along creekside rocks and stone steps, then across stepping stones to the south bank of the creek, next to the abandoned Mantel Cottage, where the white trail begins.

 

If you start on the south side of the creek from the entrance to the wildlife management area on Rocktown-Lambertville Road, you’ll get to this same point (and more quickly). There is parking for a half dozen or more vehicles, but no kiosk or map. Take the unmarked trail through the middle of the meadow. Yellow markers appear after a hundred yards, when it enters the woods. The yellow trail dips downhill for another few hundred feet, passing the cottage and meeting the white trail.

 

Follow the white trail downstream. The creek is a shallow, narrow rill as it leaves the dam, speckled with small mossy rocks. It gradually widens and fills with larger boulders. The forest’s hush is now underlain with the shushing sound of the stream spinning and turning its way through rocks, a hodge-podge of squarish dark diabase and flattish gray sandstone and siltstone.

 

The geology of the creek here is dramatic, as water has carved a ravine below a long arm of volcanic rock sandwiched between sedimentary rock layers on the hillsides. Rocks of both types, fractured and weathered over eons, litter the hillside and congest the creek, forming ledges, riffles, and waterfalls.

 

After about one-third of a mile, at an intersection with the red trail, the white trail crosses the creek on stepping stones. Uphill a short distance it meets blue, to return to the dam. Or don’t cross on white; instead continue on red, which itself crosses after another half-mile and doubles back.

 

There are many options for a shorter or longer hike through these beautiful woods. A trail map is useful (download from njtrails.org).

 

Although the paths are rocky, no scrambling is needed. The hike is family-friendly and leashed pets are welcome. Still, a few safety notes are in order. In times of high water, the creek crossings may be impractical. Creekside rocks may be slippery. Take care walking through high grass to avoid ticks. Hunting is permitted throughout the wildlife management area, so wear orange during hunting season. Black bears are occasionally encountered. Make a little noise to give them a heads-up.

 

Susan Charkes, a regular contributor to River Towns, has an affinity for rocks, woods, and water. She wrote about the Milford Bluffs in the Winter issue.