This five + mile hike was done over two days while I was visiting a family member who is in a physical rehab center nearby. Knowing that I must at all costs get in at least 3 miles a day, I snuck off during his PT time to walk the very muddy trails at Soldier's Delight Natural Environmental Area. Afterwards I snuck back in to to see how his PT went and to say goodbye and head home. The second day I was so muddy the reception desk lady almost made me shed my boots before going up to see Poppy but when I showed her how muddy my socks were she said "Oh, never mind!"
First day hike on the Serpentine Trail - wet, rainy, muddy.
The protected area encompasses several hundred acres and contains over 30 rare, threatened, and endangered plants. This is a little depressing considering that barrens ecosystems once occupied over 300,000 acres in Maryland and Pennsylvania. There's been a decades-long battle with developers and zoning to get as much of this eastern prairie conserved. Still - the developments are closing in.
Big 'ole hunk of serpentine, several hundred pounds of dense, heavy chromite ore.
Like the Nottingham Serpentine Barrens close to where I live in PA, the thin, nutrient-poor soils make living here tough unless you are a pitch pine, post oak, or a native grass like Big Bluestem. Being the middle of winter, however, not much was green or growing except the rugged little pines and blankets of moss and reindeer lichen (Cladonia), but without the tall cover of grasses it was easy to see surface mines, pit mines, and serpentine formations. From the mid-1800s valuable chromite was processed out of the serpentine and sent to the steel mills of Baltimore. At one time the mines of northwestern Baltimore County served as the world leaders in chromium production.
Thin soils barely cover outcrops of serpentine.
The trails were flooded by two days of steady rains. I gave up trying to avoid the pools and mud pits and just hiked right on through. The downhill trails flowed with water. At the bottom of the hills, the trails were indistinguishable from several busy little streams. Though not the right season to see them, many rare wildflowers have been found in these bottom wetlands where serpentine sands and clay wash off the hills and fill the streambeds with silt and fresh fragments of rock. It's a raw environment where water sheets off the exposed slopes.
Bottom-land stream
Human management of the land dates back to Native American hunting cultures when fires were set regularly to discourage the pitch pine and oak intrusions, keeping grasslands open and attractive to large herbivores. The burning continues under the direction of the state ecosystem restoration team but the only large herbivore left in this area, however, is the ubiquitous White-Tailed Deer, now forced onto shrinking ranges due to extensive housing developments that are closing in on the barrens. The State has opened up a bow hunting season here to cull the herds that threaten to eat the rare plant communities. I wore my hunter's orange cap today as bow season ends at the end of January.
White-tailed Deer tracks.
Choate Mine, last used 1917-1918.
Chromite from the Choate Mine was used to produce paint pigments and I fondly remember my oil painting classes at Maryland Institute College of Art when instructors warned us "Don't lick your brushes!" But the chromium colors were spectacular on canvas and I can't tell you how many tubes I bought for classes from the college's art supply store. Chromium reds, yellows, blues ...
Surface pit.
Cladonia macrophyllodes, Large-leafed Cladonia, showing off its little cups.
Minus all the green, growing things, my attention was turned to low-growing mosses and lichens. I really miss not using my macro lens and camera set up today. I guess one of my New Year's resolutions will have to be to get the old Canon cleaned and repaired and back in working order. The tiny cups of the Large-leafed Cladonia lichen made such a great show among the arched, withered grasses and I wished could have gotten some close-in shots.
Bracket fungi.
In some areas, the reindeer moss was so thick and wide it reminded me of the "grey meadows" of Prince Edward Island National Park. In other places I had to use my hiking poles to push apart the thick patches of Greenbrier in order to see the dark mossy ground below. Though DNR has done a great job ridding some of the natural area of this scourge with burning, Greenbriar overtakes much of the wooded landscape to the point it is impassable, closing in even on the trails.
Cladonia portentosa, Reindeer Moss, in a small "grey meadow"
After hiking through water-filled gullies that looked more like streams than trails, I finally did reach Red Run, a sweet little stream that meanders through a bottom valley. The woods are thick with White and Red Oak and the Sassafras actually has height and girth as compared to the "stick-Sass" on the serpentine bluffs. I watched as small minnows darted out from under ledges and congregated in pools below ribbed-rock riffles. Finally, the sun came out full force and the deep blue sky reflected in the stream.
Red Run
One of the greatest influences on my young naturalists life was Miss Jean Worthley who produced a public television show for kids called Hodge Podge Lodge. She grew up in this area and was fascinated in her youth by the prairie ecosystems of the barrens. Miss Jean was one of the leading advocates for the preservation of Soldiers Delight. I sang a little "thank you" song on my way up to the last great view across the Bluestem barrens prairie for having such a cool (though wet) place to explore.
The sun finally comes out!
Serpentine Trail (2.5 mi) and Choate Mine Loop (3.2 mi)
Just across the Mason Dixon Line in Harford County is Rocks State Park which is known mostly for massive outcrop cliffs and meandering Deer Creek. It is not unusual to see the parking areas for the King and Queen Seat and the picnic groves on the creek quite crowded in summer and fall. I wait until winter to visit, however. One of my favorite places to explore is a small wooded, boulder-strewn valley that sits a mile or more behind the cliffs. It's where springs seep into the hollow and becomes a tiny stream.
Mountain Laurel in the freeze-thaw talus boulder field
Anyone driving through the park can observe the freeze-thaw talus slopes. These moss and lichen covered tumbled-down boulder fields are found on the north facing shoulders of the big ridge. Relics of the Pleistocene, the boulder fields originated at a time when glaciers had reached their maximum sixty miles north and began their great melt. The environment was much colder and harsher than it is today and this form of freeze-thaw-shatter boulder making, a type of mechanical weathering, is a beautiful and biologically important habitat in the PA/MD Piedmont region for mosses, lichens, ferns, and amphibian life.
Black Walnut in the old farmstead.
The entrance to the hollow is on a small nature trail loop across the road from the Hills Grove Picnic Area. A farm once stood here and the ground was cleared for livestock pasture. A signature tree of the old farmstead are the Black Walnut and Tulip Poplar, overtaking the flats where a barn and house once stood. Higher up are the White Pines that today are shushing in the wind.
Tulip Poplar where a cattle shed once stood.
White Pine in the old cow pasture.
The trail climbs up into the hollow as boulders crowd the landscape. White Pine and oaks dominate the woods beyond the reach of the old farm's clearing and the elements of a wetland forest begin to take shape. Mountain Laurel thickets, twisted and old, grow boldly on the boulder field while Witch Hazel occupies the seepage that mark springs.
A very old Mountain Laurel.
Witch Hazel, the last (or first) flower of the year.
This is where I leave the trail and pick my way higher into the hollow, careful to weave through the mossy boulders and not lose my step and I am only partially successful at this and come down hard on both knees - thankfully on moss and not stone. It is a maze of frost-shattered rock.
Sphagnum Moss.
Plume Moss
Crustose lichen in a "dead bed"
Where boulder mosses have dried up or gone dormant and formed a "dead bed," crustose lichens find a niche. I poked my sketching pen into a dead bed on the top of a boulder and it went in several inches before hitting rock. This must have been hundreds of years of top growth sealing the rock beneath.
Hair Cap Moss.
Ground Pine Lycopodium.
The boulders are so tightly packed that there little space for a tree or shrub to put down roots. But there's plenty growing in between. Fallen leaves trapped in the angles and gaps between boulders make rich habitat for clubmosses and ferns. Matted leaves also make bowls to hold water that seeps up from the cavities. A Carolina Wren splashed and bathed in a leaf bowl just below me. Broader mats of leaves between boulders form steps of water that overflow into the crevices and begin to trickle downhill.
Seepage pools atop fallen leaves and begins to run downhill.
I sat in the upper reaches of the boulder field as the sun dipped behind the ridge and listened as water dripped and slipped under the mossy rocks into the fold of hillside that becomes a tiny stream in the valley. The micro-habitats of the boulder field are mostly dormant for the winter now. There's nothing left of the luxurious fern groves of summer, just stems of fronds and root clumps. And where the trees can grow, they push through the rocks in clumps of hangers-on where roots can penetrate. The freeze-thaw cycles of bitter arctic temperatures have long ago stopped working on the ridge and the boulders have been settled in place for millions of years, but on this afternoon - closing in on winter solstice - the low sun illuminates the violet-hued air breathed out from the buried springs and seeps, rich and cold and ageless.
Notes: Science Friday has this cool little video "This Field Rocks" about mechanical weathering and the creation of the Hickory Run Boulder Field about two hours north of Rocks State Park. Though the mechanics of freeze-thaw of seep water operated in the same way to make boulders, the Rocks talus slopes are older and well grown over. https://youtu.be/higFSvxyKRo
