One of my best days in the pines occurred as I guided two neophytes up the narrow sandy trail to Martha.

They gasped at the deep sugar sand and the pitch pines that threatened to graze the car along the way, but we arrived at the site of Martha without mishap. Clutching the "Martha Diary and Journal" penned by several clerks of the furnace in the second decade of the 19th Century, we climbed out of the car to investigate. Taking the track towards the Oswego River, we spotted some grapevines, turks-cap lilies and catalpa trees, reminders of a settlement once inhabited by some 400 people.

Threading our way through the pines, we located a sizable cellar hole, mostly collapsed but with some crumbling sections of wall remaining. Perhaps this was the remnant of the large mansion that once stood so proudly here.  On the other side of the track loomed a steel fence, which protects the ruins of Martha Furnace. After excavting the site, the state buried the ruins under a huge pile of dirt to protect it from vandalism.

Creeping carefull along the edge of the fence with the former millrace yawning perilously behind our feet, we spotted a pair of red foxes sitting on the top of the mound in front of their den! They were apparently as curious about us as we were about them. Returning to the road, we dipped into the Martha Dairy to read about drunken workers, dead cows and fighting school children. It was hard to imagine a noisy, thriving village amid this quiet forest, but we tried to picture sweating men laboring around a roaring furnace on a hot and humid New Jersey summer day, women scraping gardens out of the sandy soil, wth children and dogs racing around under foot.

As we turned away my friends agreed that they had  enjoyed a surprising and unique adventure, while I treasured the glimpse the clever foxes who knew that the fence kept them safe from curious humans.