Blyss Blog

In February 2003, we had an opportunity to buy a borzoi. We knew someone who owned a lovely one, and the breeder had its littermate for sale our mutual friend recommended us to the breeder. We owe our friend an enormous debt for introducing us to this breeder. From him, we acquired our first borzoi, “Casanova”. We thank him for entrusting this beautiful dog to us.

By then, the two dogs were young adults. We thought, how wonderful it would be to have a borzoi! He would be reunited with his littermate, and we could have play-dates together in the park! So it began our life with borzoi.
When this exquisite creature joined our household, we realized things would not be so easy. He had lived most of his life as a kennel dog. His job was to be a show dog, not as a housedog or a pet. He had had limited socialization. To compound problems, our little home, so perfect for us, was all wrong for him. Not having a fenced yard only complicated the situation, since that was what he was accustomed to. A month of confusion reigned. We worked our waythrough it with him, and it led to the realization that we had to make some changes. We decided to vend a more suitable home for us to live in with him, and for the other borzoi that would soon join him. We could not have only one. Although he was always sweet and loving, he seemed nervous and easily frightened with new experiences for some time to come. We strove to teach him that the world was a good place to be and that it could be fun, too. It took a lot of hard work, consistency, and the passage of time. Eventually, he rewarded us with his unconditional trust and came to understand that the world with us was a safe place.

After a brief search, we found a spacious house located on a high hill, in an area formerly known as Blue Mountain. This naturally wooded area bordered a beautiful and expansive preserve of forest parkland known as the Watchung Reservation. There, we established what would become our kennel. We bought a van and began to travel with our dogs to visit friends and relatives, and take our borzoi to shows.

When we began to show another dog, a breeder told us to pick a kennel name. “But, we are not breeders!”, I said, “No matter”, she said! After much thought and consideration, I knew I wanted a word that connoted a mental state, then, one that was very positive, and then, the best word I could think of was “Bliss” because that was the emotion I experienced with my dogs. I made the word special, my own, and named the kennel, “Blyss Kennels”. It is more than a name, it is a goal and a purpose, first and foremost, for our dogs. It was there that we came to learn about Watchung Reservation and appreciate the role it would play in our lives.

The Watchung Reservation is a county park consisting of 2000 acres of a preserved, natural forest. It runs along the first ridge of the Watchung Mountains, part of a range of mountains, one behind the other, that runs parallel to the coast. They are clearly visible from high points along the East coast, such as atop the Empire State Building, where the ridges can be clearly seen cascading into the western horizon. In our town, this area is a county park that contains woods, hills, lakes and streams, with hiking trails and bridal paths that run throughout it. We may not call it our own, but its proximity to our home beckons to our dogs daily. There, we walk them at dawn and again at dusk. What a way that is for borzoi to begin and end a day, with so many different trails from which to choose! Certain borzoi are even allowed to run off-leash to “hunt” on the trails, when we are deep in the forest, and far from any roads.

Perhaps most exciting of all, if not most unexpected and mysterious, when you venture deeply into the forest, is what you find tucked away in the most unexpected place, where all the trails seem to lead. Walking west into the park on almost any trail you take, you will eventually come upon a place, or a narrow, paved road. If you turn left down this road into the forest, this road strangely named Cataract Hollow Road, it will lead you to an old and almost completely abandoned town called “The Deserted Village”. It was formerly known as “Feltville”, named after its founder in the 19th century, David Felt. He established it in 1845, and for a time, it was a grand, industrious, Utopian community. However, today it consists of a dozen abandoned but still handsome cottages. Upon entering the town, the appearance is such that one thinks its inhabitants are simply gone for the day.

Immediately upon entering the vicinity of the town, the air feels pristine and cool. There, towering old forest trees surround the houses. The borzoi always want to stop and rest there for a while when they arrive to breathe in the especially refreshing, restorative atmosphere for a time. As they linger, one wonders, are they visiting old friends, perhaps?

Behind the houses on Cataract Hollow Road is another road with a second row of remaining houses. These are completely boarded up and in a greater condition of disrepair than those along the main road are. However, behind them, the land drops suddenly in a dramatic precipice with another high cliff rising up on the other side. This dramatic decline creates a small canyon below, Blue Brook Valley, where the creek, known as Blue Brook, runs. Blue Brook is the main water source for the forest here, and it runs along the bottom. During the time that Feltville was in existence, two great paper mills stood on its banks, providing the essential manufacturing jobs for the community. It succeeded for a time as a self-contained community, as the land above was flat and, when cleared for fields, proved arable.

Blue Brook played a role in the other enterprises that came after Feltville was sold. It provided the steady source of water that supported the pristine beauty of the valley making the clarity of its pure forest air possible. A businessman purchased the site and turned Feltville into an elegant summer resort called Glenside Park, using the lovely cottages remaining from Feltville for guesthouses through the early twentieth century. He then purchased the water rights for the largest city nearby, Plainfield. No enterprise worked for long, however. Over time, none of the subsequent entrepreneurs who tried to run it as an enterprise were successful.

In the 1920s, the County purchased the site. By then, the mills were long gone, the residents had moved away, and most of the lovely houses had been torn down, leaving only several cottages, the town’s central building, its General Store and Post-Office, and the great barn remaining. No one had the will to tear them down, it seemed. Or maybe it would have been too much work and expense, since they were so large. Today, they remain where they were built, a reminder of the vitality of what had been. However, the remaining cottages were shuttered closed in the condition as they were. There they remained until relatively recently. During the 1980s, the archeology department of a nearby state college, Montclair University, took an interest in the site and secured the funds required to make it an archeological site. Today, the town is called, sadly, “The Deserted Village”, a name it acquired after Glenside Village failed and it became part of the local myth and lore.

However, interest in this ghostly place appeared to grow on its own, reaching a success its former investors could have only imagined. For, as it appealed to our borzoi as a destination, it was “discovered” by the many hikers and equestrians who came upon it along the seemingly endless web of trails that run throughout the Watchung Reservation . Moreover, its proximity to the Sierra Trail, that also runs through the Watchung Reservation at the South West point, generated interest, and The Deserted Village appears on many hiking and tourist maps in the region for that purpose. More than anyone could have imagined, in 1980, the County and its residents were honored to learn that The Deserted Village was added to the National Register of Historic, thereby securing its status, study and preservation. Like our borzoi, it seems that modern people like old places.
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Life, as it was once lived in the Watchung Mountain ranges, has all but disappeared. . The ecology and archeology of these ranges has not been set aside for preservation. With the exception of some parkland surrounding George Washington’s encampment along the Watchung ridge in Morristown, most of the land has been developed for real estate. For it was the designation of the first ridge of the Watchung Mountain range as a county park, and Feltville’s location within its boundary, that allowed The Deserted Village to be preserved. Ironically, yet sadly for those for whom it was home, it achieved its accolades for the quality of its recreational value and not its industry.

I believe the successes of Watchung Reservation reaches far beyond the accomplishments or intended purposes of Feltville, Glenside Park’s planners, or that envisioned by the County when it created The Watchung Reservation on the first ridge and unknowingly preserved “The Deserted Village”. Its true success comes on the personal level, and it surpasses all of that if we can unleash our sensitivity sufficiently to see beneath the surface of all that we find there. For, the past has given us today this beautiful place as a gift over time, when it would be impossible to do so now, due to the value of the land and population pressures surrounding it. Its worth is immeasurable today for its rare gift of beauty and respite it affords, so close to home to so many.

Even more so, if we can see beyond ourselves amidst the currently bare banks of Blue Brook, and the boarded up cottages that comprise The Deserted Village today, and envision those lives that went before, lives spent living in the cottages and walking along the trails, we would understand the past better through their being there, their humanity. For even though their structures are now boarded shut and decrepit, teetering over the precipe on crumbling retaining walls, or they consist of houses that are completely vanished from remnants of stone foundations, we know we are not alone today because they were there before us! As we trace our way – in their steps – along that ancient valley floor, or on the trails along the highest ridges, from where we can easily keep the borzoi wildly racing around in sight – this vision imparts to one who lingers there a sense of shelter and serenity that nothing can take away. It is a gift that only the continuity from the past can impart. For this place was both special and unique, and vital, too, known to be a sheltering valley whose high rising boulders and precipices barred the wintry blasts just enough to keep the fires burning and the water flow all winter long, making survival possible. Over the years, although they are rare to see today, small wooden structures could be found throughout the woods, no more than 6’x 8’ large, enough for one person, perhaps containing a small stove, with room for one or two animals, assuring basic survival through the winter! Yes, I do not doubt it. They were there before me, right here, as I walk along a trail with my dogs. When I am there, I know I enter a dimension of an ancient place and I am never alone!

I see them as fellow citizens like us, broken and empty inside. We are wondering souls lost in time and going forth as we do, struggling to survive. They were afraid, like us, of what will happen next when we venture out into the unsheltered spaces of our respective modern worlds. As the reflection we see in our rear-view mirror as we drive away from Cataract Hollow Road in our van, the borzoi safely crated inside, it is nothing more than the mirror image of the new world that lies ahead that comes into view beyond the windshield. I am keenly aware that the tree canopy cover above our heads is not as dense as I would like it to be anymore. Its shelter is inadequate. I feel so vulnerable to the threats of the everyday world to both our serenity and safety. In the Watchung Reservation, I realize how much I love the forest for I believe in the special shelter it provides me from my modern world, as it did for others, so long ago. For shelter outside of the forest, being what it is, is nothing. I long to be where I am safe, but is safety found only in the past and in the dark of woods? I look up and peer at the tree covering canopy above me, and see how much of the light breaks through. I wonder, am I really safe? Or, I wonder, do I take these lessons I have learned from the forest as I leave it, only to forget them as I leave it behind? And if so, why, what is the purpose, I ask myself? I cannot lose this gift I have struggled so hard to obtain!

This is where we find ourselves today passing many hours of our free time with our dogs. For the future, we hope for a life that will afford more freedom and space for all of our dogs and ourselves. For now, we have been blessed to have been able to welcome “Tresor”, the son of our own beautiful “Mikhailya”. Yet wherever we go, we shall always look back on this time with our borzoi in the Watchung Reservation as a time of firsts and beginnings, an enchanting time. On an impulse, we bought our first borzoi and brought him home. Then others followed, all special in their own way.

Once, we had a very special borzoi. She was called away unexpectedly. Although she has been gone for a long time now, in my musings, I still see her about, on the trails, or outside the kitchen window in the yard. She is looking back at me as she always did, in her happy way that haunts me, her way that I can never forget. Perhaps that is because there is even more to Watchung Reservation than I have already told, that is already known, consisting of perhaps another dimension altogether. I have failed to mention it previously with all that I have described. I cannot fully explain it, but I know that it is there. It hangs over the mountains – over me – like the canopy itself. It allows the holding in of many memories and myths, the holding in of the past, tenaciously! Now, it holds my hound and me! There, the pain of her loss dissipates into the atmosphere of the mountain as I turn inward and turn back. There I have found the hidden and mysterious dimensions that grow in an ancient place with the passing of time, and are visited unbeknownst by its passers by: memory, mystery, love and legend. I have found them t here alive, in Watchung Reservation, in the old Blue Mountain, on the first ridge, that rises up from the sea.

The dimensions where light through ancient prisms is refracted
The dimensions of dimmed memories revealed and reenacted
The dimensions of romance most dear in reverie within
The dimensions where woven leaves above reveal a canopy!

The dimensions where dappled light leads the deluded wanderer
The dimensions where truth melds with legend for eternity to ponder
The dimensions of the sheltering valley’s solace to defend
The dimensions of forest silence for listeners to comprehend.

The dimensions of loving what was lost in time for eternity
The dimensions of sublime friendship, infinitely
The dimension where the peripatetic searcher seeks wisdom without fear
The dimension where one seeks and finds that which is most dear.
Lorene Connolly
Blyss Kennels
April 2, 2010