Somehow we find them. Places, landscapes, resting spots where just being there makes us feel different. These are called thin places, where the border between here and there, and now and then, gets dissolved.

One little jewel of a place is hiding right in the Village of Warwick. Lewis Woodlands is off Robin Brae Ave., which is off Rt. 94/Maple Ave. on the way to Florida. It used to be part of one of the big estates that’s been split up in the last century. These 14 acres hold beauty, mystery and wide history in the easy half mile loop of an old carriage path. Enter across a small field and a footbridge over Witch’s Brook, a clear, narrow finger of the Wawayanda creek. (Actually, all the small water bodies in the region were once just called the Wandering River. They all made their way to the Wallkill. This was confusing to the more literal-minded settlers, so they named and re-named each little branch as it if were distinct. Well, this is Witch’s Brook. The mayor of Warwick told me that when he was a boy playing in these woodlands there was an old woman living in a small house further up, and that’s really why it was Witch’s Brook.)

But that’s only the beginning. I took Tom Brannan, a local surveyor and archeologist, there a few years ago and he excitedly found what looked to me like just a pile of stones. He verified that this was a pile of stones created before the American Revolution by a British survey team mapping the colonies. But there’s more! Someone keeps making small cairns – balanced rock sculptures – along the path. Regulars in the woodlands claim to have never seen who it is, yet always the cairns are fixed and altered. Finally, there’s a craggy area with big boulders that features chert, that black mineral used to make primitive points and tools. This is a small but easy-to-visit quarry. Go see, feel for yourself.

And, any and every time you can, find the intersection of Brady Road and Bowen Road on the Warwick-New Jersey border. Oh, the stone walls, the dipping roads and views!

Daniel Mack, Warwick

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