1/14-1/15/12 Long Pine Pond to White Lake with Jillane Becker
I hadn't written up anything on this one because I didn't even want to chance putting it on here and getting in any trouble.
What started out as just a simple walk through park land, and trying to help out a bit, turned into an impromptu fifteen plus mile hike.
This one really highlights some of the problems associated with trying to do any good.
We had hiked through more of the Delaware Water Gap region probably than any other group. I had been through so much of the back woods of the region that there are few swaths of woods I have not yet touched.
This camp was an absolutely beautiful location, and I found myself going there a lot, whether it was with friends or just with Jillane. We were living at White Lake Natural Resource Area, at a beautiful location anyway, but we always liked exploring other places.
The problem with the old camp, set up as a Boy Scout Camp in the 1930s, and then later a YMCA camp, was that it was abandoned and the national park service was not doing anything with it. It was getting broken into and stuff was getting wrecked. We would go out in the Summer, and AT through hikers were just using the buildings, which had the doors kicked in, as shelters. There was literally no presence.
The previous Summer, I went up and came across a fire pit that had been built up against a building, as if someone was trying to burn it down. I broke it up and put it out. Other friends had told me they were hiding and spotted rangers back at the buildings, and one burned down shortly after.
There's a lot of questionable stuff that had happened like this, and none of us who love that place were happy about it.
One night, Cupcake came out and we went up to the camp with the idea that we were going to secure some of the buildings.
We had already done some of this before. It was absolutely no secret that we were up there all the time, and it wasn't trespassing. It's all within the park. In fact, I was in the process of working out a deal with then Superintendent John Donahue to get some of the chairs from the camp for use on a state park project at Waterloo Village, since they were just getting messed up up there.
When I found a building broken into, I would call or e mail Mr. Donahue to let him know what I'd found. He never told me anything I was doing was bad, and in fact thanked me for bringing it to his attention.
Still, when I was directed to another department for volunteering at the camp, I was shut down. Whatever Ranger I talked to at the time told me that the "only volunteer opportunities currently were in Childs Park". That was a boardwalk area up by Dingman's Ferry that needed some rehabilitation.
Not satisfied with that, we decided to do stealth volunteer work on our own. Cupcake had his own power tools and such to try to fix some of the issues up there.
We found some "no trespassing" signs laying around, and had been putting them on the buildings. The official NPS signs were depleted soon, so Cupcake bought his own "no trespassing" signs, and we put those up. Someone actually defaced one of the signs with my name on it reading "Ha Ha Mike, we found a way in".
There were people walking around the camp, as there usually are, walking dogs or whatever. I guess they make it sort of a nightly routine. In the Summer, huge dog walker groups would come in and let them swim in the lake, Long Pine Pond.
Cupcake picked up our friend Corrin and her friend Stevie to go with us to the camp before coming by.
We went up this night, took a walk around, and found a window in one of the garage bays. One of the front buildings had had a window recently bashed out, and this one measured to be the right size, so we brought it back and installed it on the broken window.
We relaxed for a bit as it got dark in the first building in the place, which had power. At some point, I thought I saw lights coming in to the place.
Jillane did first, and she was out of there, out behind the building. She knocked on the back of the building to signal us. We knew we had to get out of there.
I saw lights coming, and so I hurried out the front door and into the the woods around the left of the building. Cupcake and the girls stayed inside.
I hurried off into the woods, and there were lights I could see pretty obviously soon. I found Jillane pretty quickly out there.
The two of us continued to hike down slope through the trees from there.
We could hear stuff, but no obvious words. I figured it would really be nothing, because we were fixing, not damaging anything at all.
We hit a wetland area below, and then skirted a hillside heading to the west from there.
As we came to a low area where the access road to the camp was visible, there was a huge line of cars, one after the other, all driving down it. It was like an army of them. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
We continued walking to the southwest for a bit, and eventually to where we could make our way back up to the camp road. There is an informal trail from that road that goes up through the woods and connects to the Appalachian Trail. Jillane's car was parked at the bottom of Flatbrook-Stillwater Road, which used to be a through road over the ridge, but was closed down because of steep grade and lack of maintenance years ago.
We hiked the AT southbound for a bit, and came to the second trail to the camp, which only goes a short distance down to the access road to the camp. There, there was actually a sign that told people to go to shelters in the camp. I'd gotten photos of these signs which specifically encouraged people to stay in the buildings. They clearly would not have stayed in where the official AT shelters were, because they were broken down and partially in the waters of Long Pine Pond. These photos definitely helped us out in the long run.
The AT took us from there a very short distance to the Flatbrook-Stillwater Road. We stood for a moment where we'd have to walk down to her car, and I had a feeling we shouldn't try to go down there yet.
I said "Let's just walk across to the knoll on the other side".
I figured I was probably being paranoid, and it was probably nothing, but we did what my gut told me. No sooner did we get over that way, a car went by the trail crossing. They opened the gate to the old road, and then took it very slowly downhill to where we were parked.
Watching that car go from above was one of the creepiest things imaginable at the time. Why they were so clearly after us seemed insane.
Mind you, at this time I was already Chairman of the Warren County Board of Recreation Commission. I was living in an equally beautiful place on a beautiful natural lake, so there was nothing underhanded that I needed to be doing at Ken Etiwa Pec.
We talked it over briefly, and I figured we'd better just continue walking the AT southbound. I actually wanted to walk through it anyway because I had considered adopting that section of it through NYNJ Trail Conference at the time. I called Jillane's sister to see if she could come pick us up at the next trail head.
No one was answering. I also tried my mom and my brothers to no avail. We were stuck walking, when I thought for sure we could get a ride.
We just continued on the AT all the way out to Millbrook-Blairstown Road, still with no call back. My phone was just about to die, so there was no hope for that.
I considered where we were going, and figured we might as well walk home. It was a long way, but we could avoid a lot of the roads by taking some of the Ridge and Valley Trail route and other back roads.
Sand Pond Road turned off of Millbrook-Blairstown Road a little bit down the hill. This one is officially closed to traffic, although I've been through it in small cars.
Some of the road is briefly Ridge and Valley Trail route.
We followed the road to the bottom then turned right on Shannon Road. These were good lightly traveled roads.
Shannon took us back to Millbrook-Blairstown. I wanted to follow Ridge and Valley Trail through, but it was freezing cold, and it would have been difficult.
We followed Millbrook Blairstown Road for a bit, and I got another bad feeling. No cars were coming by, but we could see when they were not far away because of the lights. When the first head lights started coming by, we jumped into the weeds and ducked down.
This was unbelievable. It was a police car with a spot light on the top, cruising slowly and scanning the woods.
At this point, I was freaking out. Why would they be searching for us so seriously? Both our phones were dead, so they wouldn't find out locations.
We continued walking, and hid when most cars went by. We missed probably two of them and let them drive by us, and got lucky.
Further on down, a car was coming around the corner, and again it was a police cruiser, coming from the same direction, looking for us slowly.
This was just too crazy.
When some cars went by, we were near to houses with decorative plantings in front, and we were able to hide behind those.
Adrenaline must have been keeping us just warm enough to get through this one.
We got to where Millbrook turned to the right and Spring Valley Road went straight downhill further. We continued here, and had far less traffic than we'd had before with the Millbrook Road.
We continued past the Hardwick Municipal Building, then soon reached the intersection with Stillwater Road at the corner of White Lake Natural Resource Area. We hurried across the street to the stewardship barn, and then got on the blue trail to head east parallel with Stillwater Road.
I developed part of the blue trail when we first moved in up there, so it was clear and easy to follow even where it wasn't mowed.
We went across the main parking lot, and then through the woods on the other side, which came out on our own driveway to the county house we were living in.
We walked up the road and got to the house, where we immediately needed to shower to warm up. Jillane was nearly completely blue and flushed.
We had just done over fifteen miles...in the freezing cold, running and hiding. When I got my phone turned on, I had voicemails from the national park police. Someone had said we were there, and I called them back to explain. I admitted fully to being up there, and said we were at home. Their initial message to me was to be sure that Jillane and I were not hypothermic.
The first guy who called said something about having to come in, or we'll be arrested and they'll come and get us. The guy I actually talked to was much more cordial, and I was very forthcoming about everything exactly that we were doing.
Cupcake refused to give them our names, but they figured it we think based on what Stevie had said. Corrin says she didn't say it was us.
The thing turned into a big mess with Cupcake getting charged for felony vandalism of government property, it went to court, and they basically said don't ever bring anything this stupid to our court again.
I had a hike planned for the morning on the Appalachian Trail and more way out in Dauphin County PA, through St. Anthony's Wilderness. We got back to the house with probably less than two hours to spare before Matt Davis was picking me up to go. I did not sleep at all.
Jillane decided not to do that hike, and stayed home to sleep off what had just happened.
I went out to St. Anthony's Wilderness and got another rather threatening message about this then. I told them what I was doing, and I said I can come out whenever I get home. They said I had like an hour or something, and I responded "Well, I'm over 2 hours away, and still have over 2 hours to hike out of here. I can come in when I get out."
I called my close friend and lawyer Conrad R. Blease, and he called them up right away to see what the problem was. That apparently changed their tune a lot. He's quite slick. I think they were a bit surprised that someone would respond with an attorney so fast.
The guy was not happy about this, but he was going to have to get over it. That was the beginning of my annoyance with this.
We got home, and with no rest, Jillane and I went to the park office, way over in Dingman's Ferry PA, probably an hour from us, and got there some time after midnight.
We were both questioned, and I felt at best insulted by it. I outright admitted I was in the building. I told them what we were doing. They tried asking what we were doing with the younger girls there. I told them I was obviously there with my girlfriend, and that I don't care how old they are. I hang out with people in their 80s. The two officers, a man and a woman, were asking about me going out the back door. I said "I didn't".
The woman said "Well what if we told you we saw you going out the back door?"
I responded "Well then you're a liar, because there IS NO BACK DOOR."
I was of course correct. The building we were inside had no back door. But it didn't stop there.
"Back window then..." the woman said.
I responded no, that I couldn't get out a back window these were little windows higher up. That still wasn't good enough for them, and still asserted that they saw me going out the back door.
"Well then, if you saw me going out the back door, YOU SAW SOMEONE ELSE" I said.
They continued accusing by saying that we clearly knew we were trespassing because of the signs hanging up on every building.
I responded that not a single one of those signs had been there until we hung them ourselves, and that the yellow ones were purchased by Cupcake.
I then went on to tell them that they are not questioning me, they are in fact harassing me.
I continued to tell them that I was Chairman of the Board of Recreation, I work for the state, and I live in a beautiful county house as caretaker. They asked why I would be back there doing what we were doing, and I responded "because it's beautiful".
I found out later that Cupcake and I had both given that exact same response.
After all of the questioning was done, the male ranging looked up at me over his glasses and made a sort of funny face.
"Well....we don't believe your story..." he said.
I was beyond annoyed with them at this point. I think it was that second that I knew nothing was going to come of this. I felt a confidence come over me, and I started dropping names. I told them about John Donahue, who was the boss of these two, and how he knew I was in those buildings. I told them I could produce the e mails about it, and how I was not only never told that anything I was doing was wrong, Mr. Donahue actually THANKED me for what I was doing and reported it. I told the Rangers that had I not been sitting there now, they probably would have gotten a call or e mail from me Monday morning about it.
I was feeling like I was having a mic drop moment.
I was still a bit concerned, but I did really feel like it was a scare tactic after that.
Things did get a little crazier after that with regard to the park rangers up there. They were contacting my facebook friends and questioning them about me. They stopped another guy I'm friends with who was hiking in Van Campen Glen, and creepily said "I see you're facebook friends with M'ke Helbing...he's a person of interest to us.."
I heard that term from a few people. "Person of interest" in this case sounded like they were going to try to come after me.
A few days later, I spoke to Stevie's mom about the incident. Corrin was okay with everything, and she and Stevie had charges dropped. Stevies mom was livid though, and I tried talking her down. She then called me back again a few days later digging for more info.
As we talked, there were a couple of beeps. Then she put the phone down for a moment, laughed, and picked back up. The NPS Rangers were recording me trying to get more information.
She went through a round of questioning with awkward pauses between, and the conversation nearly came to an end when I again stated that the NPS rangers were not questioning me, but rather harassing me. I reiterated what I had to them before, and encouraged her to do the same when it came to her dealings with them.
I found out talking to my coworkers at Worthington that there were NPS rangers that went to school with some of the guys up there, and that they harassed him on a daily basis, making them get out of the water while fishing to show a license that he knew he possessed.
There were already so many issues there. Working in the Northern Regional Office, I took phone calls from people thinking that state and federal parks were one, and they would complain about the federal rangers and harassment issues.
There was an old couple that were accused of stealing a ranger's keys, claiming the ranger was "foaming at the mouth" angry, and another guy had told me that a ranger tripped him, tried to make it look like an accident, and plant a bag of weed on him.
Through talking about this issue, the stories just kept seeming crazier, and there are so many more.
In the next few years, I stopped hosting hikes around Delaware Water Gap because I knew they had it in for me.
I finally started going back up there when I joined a Community Roundtable on the preservation of historic structures within the properties. I met some really great people who worked for the NPS, and discussed the issues I'd had in the past. John Donahue and I met and spoke many times after this, including at the one hundredth anniversary of the national park service. I got some great input and insight from him, and I understand there has been a change in leadership with regard to some of the enforcement aspects of the park as well.
At this point, so many years later, everything seems to be fine, and I've had no problems with anyone up there. All interactions have been completely positive, and and my name is pretty well known as someone who has a very deep love for the history and ecology of the park. Maybe there might be someone from then that might harbor some animosity, but I don't know for what reason.
The park has been more overrun in recent years than it ever had been in the past, so I've been avoiding it more than some of the other places we go, but I'll pass through here and there, and still love it as much as ever.
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