The Mystery of Alexauken Woods

The Loft

I have a simple chair, desk and window in my upstairs writer’s loft, from where I can see and hear the world.

When my mom was dying of cancer decades ago in the bedroom behind me, I sat in that chair into the night, sweet mother-daughter memories numbed by liquid morphine. Life and death hung in the shadows, with truths about love, loss and survival. New ice cubes fell somewhere like small explosions, waiting to be crushed into chips for parched lips. 

Years later as the sunrise spilled across that desk, I spotted a raccoon climbing into the crook of an oak tree in our side yard. I had become a nocturnal creature, banging out business articles on deadline while my infant son slept. Chair. Desk. Window. Productivity. Motherhood. Exhaustion.

Sixteen more years and this upstairs place holds purpose. The history is healing after trauma, and wisdom dwells within the solitude and reflection. Writing is my refuge. Two ravens call to each other, one croaking just outside the window, the other rasping a distant reply. Each exchange draws me into the conversation from my loft in the trees — listening, waiting. I know enough now to ask: What am I meant to learn from these masters of spiritual awakening?

Perhaps it is what it has always been up here: loss and struggle sear pathways to self-discovery. Search for those trails; follow them. Don’t just see and hear the world, experience it. Set out on explorations that might reconnect you with the lost pieces of yourself.

Tempting My Story

Unexplored woods. Is any adventure greater?

Nothing holds more promise than melting into a thicket of multiflora rose three miles from my front door in New Jersey. I spot that shabby nature preserve sign coming into view around the final bend of Indigo Lane or Poor Farm Road, and I am both lost and found, certain and seeking. What is adventure, if not that? As the trail stretches before me in dappled sunlight, I surrender to places unknown. It’s pure discovery, covered in moss and tempting narration. 

After a morning of writing and revising in the loft, I plan my escape to Pryde’s Point in Hunterdon County. Late Princeton photographer Pryde Brown, once married to essayist John McPhee, lived on 45 acres of land around this Alexauken Creek Trail in the 1970s, and later preserved it before dying in 2024. Her daughter Martha McPhee published a memoir about growing up there with her blended family on the bohemian Omega Farm.

Artists, writers, a commune — these woods have a story — and the potential to spin more. I pull on my favorite hiking boots, known for snagging buttercups, and head out the door to the foothills of the Sourland Mountains.

Once there, a mowed path cuts through the explosion of June overgrowth. White trumpet blooms of Foxglove Beardtongue backdrop the meadow’s vibrance. A red-and-black Milkweed Beetle clings to Artemesia, buckling in the breeze, while a Spicebush Swallowtail flits by in a flash of teal and orange. An Ebony Jewelwing taps down on a nearby leaf. Dragonfly enchantment — already, I am taken. Chimney swallows, two, then four, wing across the field in blissful insect abundance. Where, I wonder, is their chimney?

Curiosity pulls me deeper into the creek’s canopy. 

Abandonment and Ambush

In high school my daughter Julia started JVines, a website for her photography and poetry, inspired by abandoned spaces. The wreckage took many forms. Warped homesteads barely visible beneath rambling Virginia Creeper. Shells of school buses parked eternally at the pasture’s edge. Forgotten industries on urban lots of shattered glass and dandelion-laced asphalt.

I would watch nearby as Julia stuck her lens through honeysuckle vines and fence gaps, snapping furiously in service to decline’s ambiguity. The allure of abandonment was intriguing, if not formidable. Lives trapped in time, succumbing to nature. The history invited us closer, while willing us to retreat. It was etched into the faces watching us from second-story dormers. Restless in the black bullet holes dotting the industrial steel sash windows. Dripping like amber tears from the rusted taillights of forgotten cars. We emerged from those years haunted and artistically moved.

“We are all connected at some point in our lives, with people we will never meet, never know. But they will touch us, change us…they will hold a little piece of us,” Julia wrote, after photographing a JVines scene on the edge of a Vermont field. That unplanned shoot was especially poignant. Beyond faded green shutters, we spotted a one-eyed teddy bear, stained red with rust and regret.

“Why would a child leave their stuffie?” Julia whispered, trembling with discovery. Walking away with more questions than truths was part of the appeal. We had become back-window archaeologists.

In the years since, JVines has not left me. My heart is drawn to neglected landscapes. If I haven’t time to linger, I find my way back, searching for clues through clouded windows and snapping random sprays of daffodils springing up from displaced gardens. My fingertips find the drafts above cellar doors. Who’s down there, I muse, eyeing openings just wide enough for foxes and troubled souls to slip into chilled darkness. Yet, I never dare to follow.

This is all to say, I am oddly prepared for the ambush at Alexauken Creek.

The grass path leads onto a rocky trail, and I am alone in the woods but for the spiraling song of a Veery in the creek’s underbrush. These birds migrate thousands of miles from South America and predict hurricanes with great accuracy. Following journeys and forecasts of disaster, it seems appropriate that one might dominate a damp New Jersey forest in June. I’m grateful for the Veery’s authority.

A swallow swoops overhead. I turn to watch it glide down a chimney rising out of dead branches and plantain lilies. The brick stack separates two hollow window frames, watching from peeled shingles like a child’s drawing of rectangle eyes. A cloud of graffiti spells out ZIPZ in yellow bubble letters, outlined in black. My 16-year-old son would have big respect for the urban wildstyle shocking this quiet enclave.  

An abandoned house in the woods of West Amwell. Who’s to say if the faces in the windows are real or imagined? As always, they call me in.

My First Best Friend

The White’s long gravel driveway of my childhood was a portal. When our car turned onto the stones, my anticipation grew with each tread toward enchantment. By the time my mom parked beneath the windmill — the very one I would scale on a flimsy ladder to glimpse a nest of barn owls — I was in another world.

“Hello, Diana!” Mr. White would bellow, charging across the lawn to greet me at the station wagon door, Lobo barking at his side.

I never knew what to expect when arriving at the White’s, nor did I care. I just ached to be included. My best friend Stephanie might have her nose buried in a Nancy Drew mystery by the back barn, or she and her younger sister Alexandra and brother Jason could be catapulting across the meadow on a willow branch hanging from the shed roof. Or maybe they were fighting, as siblings do. Chaos and spontaneity fueled the joy, even as we disappeared into our private clubhouse in an open thicket of pine trees. I wanted it all, laced with acceptance and freedom.  

Stephanie White was more than my best friend; she was my first best friend. We met at Burnt Hill Road School in the second grade, two freckle-faced 7-year-olds, earnest and ready. I fell in love with her immediately the way best friends do; her quick laugh and curly auburn hair. Her loose way of moving and gesturing, bordering on floppy, settling on gracefully engaged. Whenever she was lost in her favorite book, and that was often, she would idly rub the side of her pointer finger under her nose. In those moments, it would inevitably take me a few attempts to rouse her. Steph was easy to be with and wise beyond her years.

Sleepovers soon followed. I was obsessed with her family and that farm. Woods, fields, barns, sheds, dusty chicken coops, a paddock with a pony named Duke, and an old rented farmhouse. The property pulsed with romanticism. Anything could happen with a little purpose and ingenuity, and a best friend who looked past bucked teeth and ill-fitting corduroys to connect with a kind heart.

The history of that property vibrated each time I pushed through the screen door into the kitchen. It felt and smelled so different than our modern Colonial with wall-to-wall carpeting. A gas stove and cast-iron skillet loaded with butter grilled up delicious American cheese sandwiches and French toast on white bread. We watched Little House on the Prairie in the drafty living room, sitting beside an empty fireplace in streaks of dusty sunlight from oversized windows. A hallway staircase and pine banister led to second-floor bedrooms, where hidden closets stored 100 years of secrets. I longed for the bones of this place; sensed their abiding stories back there in the woods.

Blind Man’s Bluff was our sleepover game of choice. The four of us, Steph and her brother and sister, would turn out the upstairs lights and stumble around the farmhouse corners, terrified and giggling. Hours of tag sometimes ended in sibling battles. I can still hear Alexandra’s shrill protests: “Stephanie, you cheated!” Delicious bickering ensued.

“Why do you always have to come to our house,” Steph fussed to me one day on the bus. “I want to go to your house sometimes, too.”  

My house. My house, with uneasy silence erupting in volatility. My house, with rage not spoken of, only absorbed. Parents who drank dry martinis straight up with olives and smoked Tareytons and Virginia Slims and fought in a living-room office heavy with antiques and anxiety.

While I couldn’t explain, I had my reasons. The shame gnawed at me well before it had a name. It was less about Steph discovering these truths, since she was regularly an adored guest in our home. I longed to escape the dread, which kicked up like dust with each gust of anger, but never blew away. I wanted to live on a farm with a pony trotting casually into the kitchen. I wanted siblings who followed me into the thicket to watch deer at the salt lick, and parents who spoke French over late-night card games and laughed more than berated. I wanted the possibility of exotic barn owls on any given day.

The Swan

I am reminded of the White’s farmstead as I stand in the shadows of the broken house on Alexauken Creek Trail.

The likeness is in the essence, not the architecture. Both belong to another time that entices deeper connection, on land bordered by hand-stacked stone walls and fed by mossy wellsprings. These properties are tied to agricultural legacy and families who knew hard work and harvest, a history that feels familiar. Instinct draws me to their legends, buried in leftover patches of orange day lilies, like the blooms in my Grandmother Grace’s backyard garden.

A fellow hiker recently mentioned this “creepy place” to me (known locally as the historic Mantell Cottage), and yet I am unprepared for the spectacle of invasion. Years of rookie research into the deserted, and I have not witnessed anything quite like it. Another lifetime is brazenly exposed, beckoning from holes in the roof, a dozen splintered windows, gaping entries into the main house and cellar, and nothing demanding that I — nor anything else — Keep Out. Why then, would I? Mysteries long sought in the rubble are within reach.

I pause on a wobbly top step. The floor has caved in where someone would have looked down on the Alexauken from a breezy doorway — bygone days swallowed by decades of disrepair. With halting courage, I step over the hole into the main room. For the first time, I am part of the ruin, rather than a voyeur at the window. Damp and decay cling to my skin and nostrils. I’m tempted to Facetime Julia for this retro JVines immersion. And yet, inviting her in would disrupt the anonymity.

Oh, but to share the majesty of the fireplace, where any residual soul of this house still rests. Fieldstones frame a wide, open hearth, surrounded by a wall of decorative paneling in Colonial blue and creamy yellow. Though marred, the paint holds its colors, in contrast to the grey disorder consuming the room. Has someone retouched it?

A wood mantelpiece missing photos and rustic treasures runs the length of the stone. I imagine lead musket balls and gold uniform buttons collected on walks in the creek valley, a natural shelter for Continental Army troops during the Revolutionary War. The door to an adjoining cupboard hangs open, disturbed by a strong wind tearing through the vacancy, or perhaps another trespasser.  

The Mantell Cottage of 2026 is unsettling in a way that makes it hard to grasp its past charm. Piles of dried leaves and forest debris crowd the corners, beneath a collapsing ceiling stained with age and leakage. An old robin’s nest spills like scarecrow stuffing down the back door frame. A hallway of worn linoleum floor tile, one terracotta rosette still intact, leads toward certain kitchen despair. Why has this old house not been condemned?

There are signs of intrusion from trail opportunists like me: more ZIPZLOCK graffiti scrawled black across the foundation; a small chalkboard placed inside the fireplace with three cryptic diagrams. Symbols of the occult? Someone’s chalk drawing of a white swan on rippling water floats across worn plaster, where a winter scene framed in walnut might have hung.

A thud sends me leaping toward the yard of Yellow Archangel. Two vultures land on the roof, watching for me to leave so they can hop through the gap into their lair. It’s Violet and Vincent, I smile, recalling the names my children once gave to the vultures guarding a tired green barn near our home. I exhale. Not done yet I call to them, heading back inside. And then silently: not dead yet either, scavengers.  

While I can study most of the downstairs from my strip of solid floorboard, the upstairs is elusive. An enclosed staircase in the corner winds up toward obscurity. Do I dare? Testing the stability of the bottom step beneath my boots, I begin to climb.

Never Alone

My bravado stammers with each creak, giving way to full-blown distress at the top. Warped walls, moldy paneling, a floor runner littered with dried crickets and stink bugs. The disorder overflows into a nearby bedroom, where slender sunlight falls on piles of plaster and buckling floorboards. Wasps have built elaborate nests that accent the frantic décor. Still, the eery silence holds lingering heartbeats beneath wool blankets, safe from the perils of Alexauken woods. Violet and Vincent are surely perched in the far bedroom, though my spirit of exploration has reached its outer limits. I sit for a minute on the top step, absorbing the abandonment.  

“It reminds me of The Hidden Staircase, don’t you think? Music, thumps, and creaking noises at night. Or, maybe The Message in the Hollow Oak? We could spend hours looking for that tree in these woods.”

The voice is familiar. “Stephanie?”

“Yep, it’s me,” she giggles, appearing from around the corner, clutching a Nancy Drew mystery. “See, look at the cover,” she says, holding up the bright yellow book. “Nancy is slinking up a staircase like this one. She brought a flashlight. You forgot your flashlight, silly!”

I study Stephanie’s face. It is just as I remember, her smile exposing the inward curve of her front teeth.

“What are you doing here?”

“You need me.” She takes a step back and peers into the bedroom. “Yikes. Not the best for Blind Man’s Bluff. We’ll fall through one of those holes!”

“Good thing Jason and Alexandra aren’t here. You might send them in first,” I tease.

I am calm, even excited to see my old friend. “I need you?”

“Yes, us, when we rattled around that big house, and fun was all that mattered. It was better than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We made our own stories.”  

“I feel US all the time, Steph. Why is that? I’ve forgotten the names of girls I spent four years of high school with, and yet I still remember the smell of your barn after it rained and your 8th birthday party when I laughed until milk came out my nose.”

“Maybe you’re still mad about Skitters?” Stephanie grimaces, dropping to sit cross-legged among the paint chips.

I shake my head and giggle, recalling the vacation when my hamster disappeared forever down the White’s old well.

“I can still hear my dad screaming at me for taking him outside,” she cringes, covering her eyes. “I thought you wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore.”

“There were other beloved hamsters — so many,” I offer, willing her to come out of hiding. “Such wasted worry, Steph, when the magical moments are what I keep.”

“I still feel those, too. We were so close! I guess we were fledglings, like those owlets in the windmill basin. The wonder stayed with us, and we became part of each other.”

“I felt safe with you, Steph.” I’m back in the White’s living room, rubbing her temples to soothe a big headache.

“Well, I did have a bossy side. But that was all part of being the big sister in that house. Such a fun place to grow up! I couldn’t see it then, but I know now the farm also gave you something you needed.”

“Oxygen, space, LIGHT.”

Stephanie scoots back against the wall and pulls in her knees. “Remember my half-sister sunbathing topless?”

“How could I forget – actual boobs! And the time you squirted your dad in the shower with a water gun. He laughed and shooed you away, but you just kept shooting. I blushed for an hour.”

“Beety Red!” we shriek in unison, falling into giggles at the sound of the silly nickname.

“All I knew was uptight and serious.”

“I thought it was funny when you used to say, ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘Yes, sir’ to your parents, and answer the phone like an operator.”

“Hello, Diana Lasseter speaking,” I respond, on cue.

Stephanie fingers the bumpy wall paint, rippling like an impasto. “I sensed then -- in a way I couldn't really understand -- that your dad had a temper on the verge of erupting.”

“I was scared back then,” I admit, holding her gaze. “And then for a long time I felt unworthy. It’s crazy we never talked about this until now.”

“Time has its own demands. I’ve been reflecting a lot too. No wonder you find your way here, among the ghosts. Looking back is a way to move forward.” Stephanie pauses, stretching a distant smile. “You were also so fun back then when you let yourself be. Don’t forget that girl.”

“Both girls take my hand and lead me into these woods, up these stairs,” I say. “I’m chasing solitude and hope. Something special is always waiting on the other side of the barn.”

We sit in silence for a minute that holds 50 years — mine, hers, ours, theirs. Lives are all connected in this broken house.

“The Secret in the Old Attic. That’s the Nancy vibe I’m getting right now,” I suggest. We look up into the black void above our heads.

“A mystery for another day, dear Diana,” she smiles, rising and tucking her book under her arm.

“I’m going to hold you to that.” I stand up to say goodbye, but Stephanie is already gone, off searching the ancient trees somewhere in Alexauken Woods.

I hurry down the steps and outside toward the creek, expecting any minute to trip over a new tale. The Veery is still singing, and the trail is long. There is so much yet to know.

By Diana Lasseter Drake