a weekend of parks and recreation

...not the tv show but the 'real' thing...

perhaps hearkening back to my time living abroad last year, i'm finding myself being able to act like a tourist where i live. it's a blessed feeling to be able to unabashedly, non-ironically explore my own backyard and it seems that having monmouth county as my backyard [until february 2011] is an especial blessing.

within 20 mins. drive i have my choice of excellent parks, county and otherwise: hartshorne woods, huber woods, deep-cut gardens, tatum park...this weekend i've made it to all of them in glorious, cool, clear november weather, plus an unexpected bonus i spied while driving by...

i finally found the back [rocky point] entrance to hartshorne woods, a sprawling enough park to get lost in! luckily the weather cooperated, i had my camera and good hiking shoes---off i disappeared into a rambling, scenic 3-mi loop trail. before that, i came to an unexpected old military concrete bunker sporting this neat graffiti:

back to the trail---i hoofed it in front of a large, loud gang of about 25 kids...who never managed to catch up to me, even with my stops to soak in the scenery, like...this unexpected and mysterious concrete shaft vent in the middle of the woods:

where did it go to? what was it used for?

 the trail bent around the south side of a rocky hill, complete with views of the navesink river, to which it eventually led:

the scenery celebrated itself as if it were an old dutch etching or an expressive hudson river school painting! reeds swayed, wavelets lapped...and i felt myself [like i do] reverting to an edenic state, as if seeing the scene for the first time after coming upon it at the end of a thousand-mile migration with my tribe; but, alas, i have no tribe...and i did want to jump into the navesink like a black lab...but i did not.