PA Welsh Mountain - Forest Bathing at the (Ancient) Beach

Welsh Mountain, Lancaster County, PA

After a busy weekend on Long Island with my sister for Birthday Weekend, I needed a quiet forest walk to decompress. We spent two wonderful days at Sagamore Hill NHS, Youngs Memorial Cemetery (TR's burial place), and Walt Whitman's Birthplace State Historic Site. The noise and commotion of the four hour drive up and back, however, and the infamously loud horn-honking habits of Long Island drivers left me craving a quiet day for reflection. I thought - why not a day at the beach?

Just completed!

Welsh Mountain is the Lancaster County Conservancy's latest completed public access property and was just what I needed. The beach of six hundred million years ago was quiet, forested, and amazingly quiet at 8am on Sunday morning. Only birdsong and the clip-clop of carriage horses on the over-mountain road could be heard. No crashing surf - just a tufted titmouse and a Carolina wren echoed through the woods. This is an important site. Lancaster County, one of the most cleared counties in Pennsylvania is working hard to protect what forests it has. There are the old growth forests of the river hills along the Susquehanna, but few sites such as this - in the midst of intensive farming land and developing home sites - that can claim to protect a large and connected woodland to make the length of Welsh Mountain a continuous ridge line of protected forest.

Fossilized Skolithos tubeworm burrows,

The rough-grade sandstones that lie on the low summit of Welsh Mountain have been quarried elsewhere near here. Money Rocks, a county park that shares a common boundary and two trails with Welsh Mountain, is near a sand quarry. There are numerous old sandstone pits along the north ridge. These old quarries supplied a good quality grey sandstone for the area's German barns, churches, farm houses, and mill at White Horse. Along  the blue-blazed trail there are ample weathered sandstone blocks and boulders to observe. A careful eye may pick out stripes of alternating dark and light sand crystals on some of the exposed rock. These are the fossilized remains of the burrows of saltwater tube worms, Skolithos. These fossils serve as indicators of the ancient shoreline of the Iapetus Sea where, at low tide, the tubeworms would burrow deep into the  exposed beach.

Half-mile packed gravel accessible path.

Excellent accessibility!

It took me a few minutes to adsorb the sounds around me. My head was saturated with the previous two-days worth of noise and crazy driving. I decided to check out the newly laid crusher run accessible path. Perfect for strollers, folks using walkers or canes, and for wheelchairs and scooters, this beautiful path circles around for about a half-mile through a red oak woods. I noticed plenty of American chestnut stump sprouts, some quite large. Indian cucumber and pokeberry held out their bright green berries to catch the sun, while mushrooms erupted from the forest floor. It was a nice slow stroll to get my head in the right place.

Blue-blazed loop trail, 2.5 miles.

I moved on to the blue-blazed trail that makes a two-and-a-half mile loop along the ridge shoulder. The Green and Orange-blazed Trails link through to Money Rocks County Park to the northeast. I kept to the blue trail with a short extension walk out on a pale tan blazed trail (easy to miss if you don't have a map - available at the main kiosk) to check out the northward view. I met three other folks on the trail. One was a really nice gentleman who said "Nice day for a little forest bathing!" He was right. The cool morning temperatures in the mid-50s and a brisk breeze sweeping through the woods was refreshing.

Lion's Mane fungus, Hericium erinaecius

Forest bathing is a revered Japanese tradition associated with Shinto nature worship. I once gave a summer camp for middle school kids in Shinto nature tradition. It was a real treat to hike a creek to its source, forest bathe in meditation, and practice nature art sitting quietly hidden as the woods came alive. I decided step off the trail and sit beneath a large red oak. The sounds of the breeze and a doe calling her fawn were magic.  An old red oak opposite my sit-spot was sporting white beard of Lion's Mane while at my feet an orange mushroom stood glowing in a patch of sun.

The essence of forest bathing or forest meditation is two-fold. There is a symbolic cleansing of walking through the woods slowly and deliberately, with measured steps and breaths. All the noise and commotion of every day life is exhaled and the cool, cleansed forest air refills the lungs. Walking slowly, we take deeper breaths. The frantic self-imposed distractive energy of modern life is replaced with the quiet, reserved energy of the peaceful stroll. Hearing improves. Small sounds lift from the leafy forest floor. A hawk wheels overhead and his shadow crosses the path. 

Sparkling quartzite sands from a long-ago beach.

The forest bath is also a unifying practice that brings us closer to nature as a member of a community rather than a temporary visitor. Shinto practitioners claim that they become other creatures, see through the eyes of deer or owls, and feel the forest at different scales - from a field mouse to a mighty oak. Sitting still or walking, the sense of being "just a human on a hike" fades away and - as happened during my half-hour at the base of the red oak - other creatures of the forest do not perceive you to be a threat. The doe called to her fawn, hidden in the brush. I sat quietly and moved only my eyes. With my peripheral vision I saw the fawn stand up and shake off just a few yards away. He walked right past me to join his mother on the ridge.

Blue Mountain in the far distance.

The hawk shadow reminded me that the seasons have turned. Autumn has come to the high arctic and soon we will be seeing shorebirds flowing south to our national wildlife refuges and wilder shorelines. Hawk Mountain, the East's most famous hawk observatory just a half hour from here, sits on the Blue Mountain ridge within view from Welsh Mountain. Official hawk watchers are preparing now for the start of the fall hawk watch that begins there on August 15.

I'll be back for a more rigorous trail hike of the combined parks, but for now, a slow 2.5 mile stroll was just what I needed. More on Birthday Weekend later, as the sounds of a quiet oak forest and a cool northerly breeze is all there is.

Notes:

2017 Fall Hawk Watch starts in a few weeks at Hawk Mountain! http://www.hawkmountain.org/events/autumn-hawk-watch/page.aspx?id=6554

Lancaster County Conservancy, Welsh Mountain - http://www.lancasterconservancy.org/preserve/welsh-mountain/

Forest Bathing and Ecotherapy - https://qz.com/804022/health-benefits-japanese-forest-bathing/