Issue link: http://trailridermagazine.uberflip.com/i/1534827
April 2025 19 is the final concession authority will seek? Give someone an inch in hopes of cooler heads prevailing, but they somehow always find a way to take a mile. To save yourself some headache, it's not unheard of these days to only run in organized events. The logic: you get to ride the best bits of single track and other private land goodies out in the Pines where there's zero chance of run- ning afoul of recently-closed paths that you thought were OK, but the park ranger is now yelling otherwise and to please shut the bike off for a moment. Seth Carpenter is a Gloucester County, New Jersey na ve whose "View Jersey" video series on YouTube explores those off-the- beaten-path treks to derelicts across the Garden State. He offered me a motorsport outsider's perspec ve on what Wharton means to him when he's busy "hun ng down some old founda on ed to a bit of macabre folklore" as part of his project to "share how special New Jersey can be if you know where to look." In short, his passion for natural history strikes an equal balance with not le ng the place be taken for grant- ed. Sandy Lane unfolded on one of the region's first warm days and when a barely discernible breeze blows through the withered old trees, an all-consuming sheer silence becomes u erly immersive. It's in these mo- ments when staked claims to common ground really res- onate. When it comes to traversing via "wheels, boots or hooves," Carpenter sees how slippery of a slope things can be in the gray granules of sugar sand. "I'm equally as passionate about gran ng access to anyone who loves and cares about the place as much as I do. There's room for everyone if we're conscious of main- taining a balance with nature and each other." Reset to 100.00 Woodie Guthrie sang in 1940 about this land, our land, being made for you and me. That very same year, Pete Epley piloted a Harley-Davidson RL 45 – a 400-pound, 18-horse, 6-volt, un-sprung American V-twin, to victory in the seventh-annual running. Sandy Lane's roll chart has truly seen it all, from Carranza to Quaker Bridge and back down the Washington Turnpike to Route 563 as an- other chapter of observed results scrawled into back-up books joins the volumes of Meteor history. Wally Palmer Wally Palmer