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(the Catholic order that had owned the site for decades) through a partnership agreement between the City of Bordentown and the D&R Greenway Land Trust with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

The action secured the permanent preservation of the City of Bordentown’s last unprotected large open landscape, which is also an important place of state and even national history. Positive things are in store for the land, planned to be part of New Jersey’s state park system, with interpretative signs, audio tours and walking trails.

What a perfect time, then, to exhibit Darlington’s images, in a show hosted by the Friends for the Abbott Marshland, at the Tulpehaking Nature Center in Hamilton. Darlington’s first solo exhibit is on view through Friday, May 5.

Pat Coleman, naturalist and president of the FFAM, invited Darlington to put a solo show together after Coleman chaired 2022’s Voices for the Marsh 10th annual juried photography exhibition.

“There’s a whole series of black-andwhite images of the flowering trees at Point Breeze, where I used different lighting and angles, et cetera., and the other half of the photos are of the Abbott Marsh, 30 images in all,” Darlington says.

Darlington recently retired from the

State of New Jersey, where she had worked as a childcare licensing inspector since 2003. She first took up photography about 15 years ago, and was especially drawn to Point Breeze, finding herself walking the paths of the former king’s estate, camera in hand.

“Moving to Bordentown in 2003, I loved learning about the historical significance of the town,” she says. “While there are many stories, I especially loved hearing about and photographing King

Joseph Bonaparte’s Point Breeze. Until recently it was Divine Word and private property, and I gravitated there because it was a step back in time.

“The trees and pathways were so beautiful, and at the time it had been so well maintained,” she says. “There was an orchard with these big, flowering trees, which one of the priests took care of, according to the groundskeeper I spoke with. And of course, as soon as it snowed, I was there.”

The photographer has captured the property’s old growth trees in all seasons. The black-and-white images in particular have a certain mystical quality.

The Abbott Marshlands are named for the federally designated Abbott Farm National Historical Landmark. In the late 19th century, Charles Conrad Abbott, a writer, naturalist, and amateur archeologist, drew the attention of the world to the marshlands through collection of Middle Woodlands artifacts found on his walks there, and his writings speculating on the “antiquity of man” in the new world.

Abbott’s affection for and curiosity about the marshlands resonates with Darlington, who says she is so tuned into nature, “I go through a bit of withdrawal if I can’t hear the rustle of leaves or water flowing.”

Darlington is a native of the Boston suburbs. Her father was the building superintendent for Boston University’s

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Law School, and her mother worked for Putnam Investments. She says she’s had a love for the woods and nature as long as she can remember and recalls the family’s rural summer place on a lake in New Hampshire, with no frills, just lots of woods to run around in.

She graduated from Boston University with a B.S. degree in education. Upon moving to New Jersey with her husband, the couple and their two children lived in rural Millstone Township prior to her 2003 move to Bordentown.

Settling in Bordentown has suited Darlington very well. Her son and daughter and five grandchildren are flourishing in southern New Jersey: son Simon runs Darlington Design, a residential/ landscape design and building firm. Her daughter Katherine Mott is a clinician/ therapist within a group practice.

Darlington took up photography once her children were out on their own. It was 2008 when she purchased her first digital camera, choosing the technology over film and dark room work since digital made photography easy and affordable to experiment with, she says.

She got involved with the Cranbury Digital Camera Club, the South Jersey Camera Club, as well as the Princeton Camera Club, where she garnered some enlightening critiques and encouragement. Between attending lectures and clubs and just going out and taking pictures, Darlington soon found she had a decent body of work and began to exhibit.

As far as influences, Darlington names Ansel Adams, but says, “I was also inspired by talented local photographers from my camera clubs.”

The D&R Greenway, Friends of the Abbott Marsh, Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie, Farnsworth Gallery, and Pinelands Preservation Alliance in Southamp- ton have all shown Darlington’s work. In fact, she has a piece in a juried show at the PPA, which opened on March 27.

Darlington has granted permission to several organizations, including the Forsythe Refuge and the PPA, to use her landscape images to promote their projects.

The common thread within all of these associations is highlighting the awareness of our physical surroundings and celebrating these natural gifts, which fits precisely with Darlington’s artistic aesthetic.

She is especially moved by the words of John O’Donohue, the late Irish poet, philosopher, scholar, and native Gaelic speaker, and his reflections on the human experience of nature. In his book “Beauty: The Invisible Embrace,” O’Donohue wrote:

“When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace. Beauty is mysterious, a slow presence who waits for the ready, expectant heart.”

“These are the words that inspired my solo show about the (splendor) of the Abbott Marshlands and Point Breeze, the idea of capturing this beauty and conveying it,” Darlington says. “It’s just a stone’s throw away from where we live, so I want other people to see it, too, and to have that take-your-breath-away experience.”

Photographs by Ann Darlington, Tulpehaking Nature Center, 157 Westcott Ave., Hamilton. On view through Friday, May 5, Wednesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m. 609888-3218 or abbottmarshlands.org.

All images in the exhibit are for sale, matted and framed as shown, or as 11” by 16.5” prints on high quality archival paper. A portion of all sales benefits the Friends for the Abbott Marshlands.

Web: annedarlington.myportfolio.com.

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JUDGE continued from Page 1 physical and sexual abuse.

“The data now shows that when you have a traumatic history, particularly when it’s ongoing, my odds of developing a substance abuse disorder were four to six times the national average,” O’Connor said.

Living in such an environment, O’Connor even developed techniques to lessen her odds of being abused at home: “I taught my sister that when we emptied the dishwasher we should put the dishes away one dish at a time so they didn’t clack.”

These volatile conditions led O’Connor to become first addicted to alcohol at age 12, then cannabis, and finally methamphetamine by her senior year at Bordentown High.

After moving away for college at the University of California at Los Angeles (later transferring to University of California at Berkeley) to study history, O’Connor described her first few years at college as much better than her senior year of high school. However, she was thrown back into serious use of methamphetamine by another traumatic event.

“I had a really life-threatening, multiassailent rape in college, and then I moved in with a violent boyfriend, and I just could not hang on anymore.” said O’Connor. “And so in January of my senior year of college, I started using meth again, and I used until I was 32 years old.”

Due to the addiction spiraling out of control and the continued presence of trauma in her life, O’Connor was unable to continue onto graduate school or keep a job. After realizing how emotionally exhausted she was, O’Connor decided to go to rehab.

“When I was 32, I went to a long-term inpatient program and it was a 90-day minimum commitment and I ended up staying for five months,” she said.

However, O’Connor’s program was a 12-step program, similar to Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

“That was not a good fit for me, and so it was a real struggle when I went to rehab,” she said. “They told me in rehab that the 12-step model was the only way.”

O’Connor ended up reading all of the books on addiction rehabilitation available to her, and came up with her own recovery plan based on principles from both the 12-step program she was in and secular options she’d discovered in her own research, particularly stressing “the right next step” short-term goals as opposed to long-term intimidating goals.

Once she finished her rehab program, O’Connor set herself on the path to law school, first getting a part-time job. Eventually, she would move from being promoted to enrolling at law school at six and a half years sober.

“I’d always been told when I was younger that I was argumentative and verbal, although my family was very blue collar,” O’Connor said when asked to elaborate on her choice to go to law school. “For me, throughout my life, school had been the one place where I got a lot of positive attention, and I always did very well.”

O’Connor self-studied for the law school admission test while working and received a score in the 99th percentile. She was first admitted to UC Hastings Law School (now the University of California College of the Law at San Francisco), spending her first year of law school there and rising to third in a class of 400.

After transferring to UC Berkeley Law School, she graduated and received a job offer from a large law firm working mainly with class action lawsuits.

Then after gaining considerable experience, O’Connor finally rose to become an administrative federal law judge, where she mainly dealt with disability cases.

Today, O’Connor continues to inspire as the director, founding investor, and secretary for She Recovers Foundation, as well as the director for LifeRing Secular Recovery. As an integral part of these organizations, O’Connor continues to regularly speak about her journey to recovery.

Her memoir, which traces her early life to drug use to recovery, was published by HCI Books in January. In it, O’Connor stresses awareness of intravenous drug addiction and alternative routes to sobriety: her book, in fact, contains a checklist to assist in the process of overcoming addiction. She will discuss the book and her life experiences on Saturday, April 8 from 3 to 4 p.m. when she visits the Bordentown Library, 18 E. Union St., Bordentown, NJ 08505.

O’Connor further elaborated on her experience: “Being a former judge and a former IV meth addict, I came out to try and reduce the stigma around substance abuse, but especially around drugs that aren’t alcohol and also to talk about multiple paths to recovery,” she said.