Exploring the Van Wie Property
by Peter Borgemeister

Ray Van Wie was a most amazing person. "He was absolutely fascinating!" recalls Joan Berdick, who, as president of the Branford Land Trust in 1978, discussed with him gifts of land he wished to make.

Joan and Ray talked together frequently. Ray described his fascination with the natural world and his desire that the land he owned be protected as open space forever. "He never looked back," Joan remembers. "He always thought about the future." He wanted to live to see Haley's Comet for the second time. Unfortunately he didn't make it, but Haley's Comet was a disappointment, too.

Ray's wife, Rose, shared his deep interest in gardens and wildflowers, and they did much planting together. Later, his son, Bill Van Wie, was to share that interest; they spent many hours seeking woodland flowers and working in the woods together.

In 1978, Ray Van Wie dedicated the first of two gifts he made to the Land Trust to Rose, and a granite monument marks the Rose Van Wie Wildflower Preserve. It is located where the property faces Flat Rock Road.

This parcel of 27.3 acres set the precedent of people of modest means giving significant tracts to the Land Trust. A year later, Ray gave an abutting parcel of 19.6 acres, thus creating a major tract of protected land.

Just as the trees were budding out, Ray's son, Bill, and I walked on a trail that weaves through the land his father had given to the Land Trust. The trail leads through deep woods of mature oaks, maples, tulips and elms. To provide a glimpse at contrasting habitat, the trail runs along an open field both Ray and Bill have allowed Jay Medlyn to use for haying. Later, the trail skirts an inland wetland in which bright yellow marsh marigolds were blooming among the large leaves of skink cabbages. Then it clambers over a granite rock outcropping on which several large rocks were left by the receding glacier. "Perched Boulders," Bill calls them.

It's great fun to walk in the woods with Bill. He deftly flicks small branches out of the trail with a cane, and he identifies wildflowers even after their blooms have gone by. As if that isn't enough, he tells you their scientific names! Bill and his dad loved working in the woods together. Bill proudly showed me a stone wall the two had built around a spring many years ago, and he pointed to native bushes they had planted and an area where they had thinned out young cedar trees.

As I reflect on the beauty of the land Ray Van Wie gave the Land Trust, Joan Berdick's concluding description of him returns: "He was the Ultimate Humanitarian; I was privileged to know him."