No, it's not an especially crazy episode of the locally-despised series The Jersey Shore, it's a new book chronicling author David Wheeler's travels through-out New Jersey's varied natural habitats.
Wheeler's New Jersey is a place where the fastest animal on earth dive-bombs him from the skies. A young black bear bounds up a mountain trail a few yards away. Poisonous snakes swirl at his feet. A thousand bats careen past his head in a pitch-black roost. Pods of dolphins swim right past him by the scores. Where? You may ask, in Wild New Jersey, of course.
Wheeler traversed mountains, valleys, beaches, forests, caves, rivers and marshlands via kayaks, pontoon boats, dogsleds, canoes and his own feet. Among his non-human companions were porcupines, bobcats, snapping turtles, beavers, Atlantic puffins and peregrine falcons...through-out the region's diverse wildlife and terrain - possibly the best kept secret in a state known for malls and diners, not nature.
The book looks at the different geographic regions of New Jersey: the Rugged Northwest, the Urban Northeast, the Jersey Shore, the Cape and Pines, and the Heartland, and includes maps and images taken by a variety of photographers.
Among the state's attractions Wheeler lists are "world-class" bird migrations along The Jersey Shore, scenic marshes around Trenton and Hamilton, and "rugged and dramatic wilderness" in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.
The area known as the Pine Barrens is particularly intriguing to Wheeler, who calls the region "the last true wilderness on the eastern seaboard" and lived for a time in Toms River, just outside of the 1.1 million-acre tract of forest.
Wild New Jersey invites readers along Wheeler's whirlwind year-long tour of the most ecologically diverse state for its size in America. Along with the expert guidance of charismatic wildlife biologists and local conservationists, he explores mountains, valleys, beaches, pine barrens, caves, rivers, marshlands, and more-breathtaking landscapes and the state's Noah's Ark of fascinating creatures.
This isn't your ordinary ride on the Jersey Turnpike. Fasten your seat-belts and join Wheeler as he, kayaks through the Meadowlands under the watchful eye of the Empire State Building, pans for cretaceous fossils in a hidden brook once home to mastodons and giant sloths, rides a fishing boat in the frigid snows of winter on a high-seas quest for Atlantic puffins, trudges through the eerie darkness of a bog on a mysterious night hike, dogsleds across the windswept alpine slopes in the haunts of the porcupine and bobcat.
With Wheeler's compelling narrative, in-depth background details, and eye for revealing the offbeat, you can count this as the first nature book to paint the extraordinary picture of New Jersey's unlikely wilderness in all its glory. Come along for all the adventure and insight in Wild New Jersey!
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