Nut Swamp: Where My Running Story Started

Bernie Daus – Middletown BOE Candidate

My 26.2-mile run through the Nut Swamp area was more than another community run. In many ways, it brought me back to where my running story started. Freshman year at Middletown High School South, I joined the cross-country team. I can still vividly remember some of those first training runs. We would leave High School South, run through Brasch Farms, over toward and through Four Winds... make a right onto Dwight Road, transition onto Nut Swamp Road, and eventually work our way back to the school, running that long driveway to the finish.  These were my first 5Ks! At the time, I was probably more focused on keeping up with the upperclassmen runners than appreciating my surroundings. More than three decades later, I found myself running those same roads again, only this time, I was paying much closer attention to my surroundings and running my own pace.

My recent 26.2-mile journey started in Normandy Park, then headed towards Nut Swamp Elementary School and Thompson Middle School. I returned to the track at Middletown South, where I spotted a juvenile Cooper’s hawk hunting near the athletic fields. It was a pretty good reminder that even in one of Middletown’s busiest school corridors, nature is never very far away. I passed through Brasch Farms, Four Winds, and the Oak Hill area (Pelican and Borden). I ran by Applebrook Park off Iler Drive, and on the opposite end... back to Ueland Road and a lot of streets in between.  I passed the Little Red Schoolhouse and Garden Club, one of the area’s most recognizable historic landmarks. That one-room schoolhouse is a reminder that education has been at the center of this community for generations.

I ran by Poricy's fossil beds, one of Middletown’s most unique natural resources. It is easy to drive past Poricy Park without realizing that children and families can step into the brook and find fossils from the late Cretaceous period—remnants of a time when this entire area was beneath the sea.

After completing my 26.2 miles, I returned to the fossil beds with my family. We spent some time walking the brook, turning over rocks and searching through the gravel. We had a few good finds, including fossils and a tooth that had been waiting there for millions of years. That was probably the best way to finish the day!

My Nut Swamp run connected a lot of things that matter to me—family, schools, local history, nature and running. It also brought me back to those first cross-country practices at High School South.

I have now run eight marathons, and I am training for another. But before the races, finish lines and marathon medals, there were those freshman-year runs through Brasch Farms, Four Winds, Dwight Road and Nut Swamp – this is where I became a runner!

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  Bernie Daus Running

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  Bernie Daus Running

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  Bernie Daus Running

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  Bernie Daus Running

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  Bernie Daus Running

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  Bernie Daus Running