May 22, 2022

Ringwood State Park
Five Ponds Trail
PLUS
Jungle Habitat

mountain biking, hiking

This was such a fun day! After a long and cold winter, I felt positively jubilant watching the earth shake off the grip of winter and turn green and full of life. The trail was fine, but it was the things that I saw and the way that I felt that made it so special. The tadpoles, the mud covered turtle, squirrels and chipmunks busy at work, the deer off in the distance that was reluctant to leave it’s food source while I travelled by, the strange artifacts of a bygone time… and the newness of the trail… these days where I feel so high without doing anything but stepping out into the wilderness… and that feeling? that is why I hike.

If you’re a big fan of my entries, you might remember that 11 days earlier I had hiked the Five Ponds Connector and had a similar experience enjoying uncommon nature sightings with the owls overhead in the trees and a touch of the unusual ruin in GLasmere gate and the Mille White house. Seems like the Five Ponds trails are kind of magical for me! That’s pretty cool and unusual.

Five Ponds is a trail that connects Gatun, Brushwood, Weyble, Glasmere and Swan ponds in Ramapo State Park. I’ve hiked by Gatun Pond so many times I can’t count the times I’ve seen in on two hands so heading past Gatun into new territory was very interesting. The trails back here are a web of crossings: woods roads, marked and unmarked trails diverge throughout the Five Ponds trail. You can choose any path you like to make the journey shorter or longer. Since I had already completed parts of this trail I decided to head back to the parking lot via the white Crossover trail, and then headed over to Jungle Habitat with the intent to complete the Tapawingo connector.

Unfortunately, that trail was not finished. WAH WAH. I followed it, quite earnestly, until the trail died. I was lost a few times, since the mid-section of the trail is not marked as well as it one day will be. In late 2022 I went to the Trail Conference headquarters and asked about this… the trail was originally slated to be complete by spring of 2022 but there were some minor delays and I was told that it is now slated to be complete no later than spring of 2023. Could it be done now? It could be. Will I be going out there to find out? Ummmm… maybe. We’ll see.

I had an odd encounter while I was at Jungle Habitat. A young couple came into the parking lot after me. They had dogs that were really disrupted and anxious by my presence. I was getting my pack sorted and tried to leave as quickly as I could so as not to cause further upset but the woman in the car was clearly agitated by all of this. No one else, that I am aware of, came into the lot while I was hiking. I didn’t pass anyone, I didn’t see anyone, and when I came back to my car the lot was empty. Yet - someone had vandalized the mirrors of my car. I’d never had that happen before parked at a trail head. I don’t know why this vandalism was instigated. I don’t quite understand what would possess a person to do something like this. But here the circumstances where. Luckily, it wasn’t that someone had scratched the mirror with a key, but something. I was able to get both mirrors clean with a little elbow grease and some cleaner, but I have no idea what it was or why anyone thought it was necessary to do such a thing. So just… be aware. Weird things can happen to an unattended vehicle at any time. Even when unprovoked or when you think you’re totally alone.

But I didn’t let that bother me. What can I do? Pick up and move on and choose to remember the joy of my day earlier as I whisked along the magical Five Ponds as it spring to life under the late May sun. I decided to choose joy.