Towns must preserve what woods remain

My father grew up in a borough of New York while most of my childhood was spent in Hazlet. Maybe it was because he was from Brooklyn that my father - when gazing out of our kitchen window on Gibson Drive - took pleasure in seeing the trees swaying in the breeze above the houses across the street. While we didn't have "the woods" immediately behind our home, they were there bordering the neighborhood.

The woods provided a buffer between the Raritan/Hidden Hills subdivisions and Raritan Township High School. It was a playground for us. I walked my dog through them every day. Recently my sister told me that the woods were gone, replaced by yet another subdivision.

I left Hazlet 35 years ago. Over the last five years since I was last there, I have felt rather rootless, so I've maintained my knowledge of what's happening in my hometown by reading the online version of local newspapers, including the Independent, and based on what I recently found out about the woods, I read the guest column by Judith Stanley Coleman ("Developers campaigning for hearts and minds," Feb. 28) with great interest.

In another online source, I read that Hazlet is attempting to preserve a little of its remaining "open space" near Poole Avenue and Route 36. I realize that with progress comes development, but for Hazlet where will it end? When I was a kid we could take a trail on the other side of the high school through the forest to Natco Lake. The Raritan cross country teams used the woods as their race course, and it was a hard run. It seems that one can't take a walk now anywhere in Hazlet except through a subdivision.

When I first relocated to the Chicago area, I was confused by what are called forest preserves, but apparently it was all part of a well-thought-out plan for preserving open space long before Cook County became a metropolis. I can literally walk in the woods for miles not far from my home.

I don't know how much open space is left in Hazlet, but perhaps the administration should get together with other municipalities to create a forest preserve through that part of Monmouth County, giving the residents a hint of what I enjoyed growing up there. But, it already seems to be too late.

Chris Donovan

Oak Park, Ill.