Two fine Princeton institutions have donated interesting objects to Herrontown Woods. Thanks to the Princeton Recreation Department for delivering a bike rack to the Herrontown Woods parking lot. It's always great to see people reaching Herrontown Woods by bike, and now they have a place to put them. There's also a bike rack at Autumn Hill Reservation, Herrontown's companion preserve just up Herrontown Road.
Take a close look at the photo and you'll see a curious object just beyond the bike rack.
It's a dugout canoe donated by Princeton High School. We'll tell a fuller story in the future, once we get enough people together to drag it up into the botanical garden for display, perhaps next to the yurt. Suffice it to say that some high school freshmen built it as part of their Odyssey project for english class. Once the class project was successfully completed and the english class moved on to other topics, the very heavy boat sat behind the school, reportedly for years. Overcome by inertia, it's real and fictional journeys seemed to be over.
But FOHW board member Peter Thompson had the idea for another odyssey for the vessel, to Herrontown Woods. The school principal and english teacher got on board, so to speak, the students had long since abandoned their remarkable creation, and so we assembled a hearty crew of Kurt, Andrew and Steve to set sail eastward to Herrontown Woods' botanical garden, where the boat will either grow wildflowers or grow imaginations.
