Though I admire the enthusiastic hikers and walkers who posted their First Day Hikes on a rainy, windy, cold January 1, 2021, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So I waited for the sunny dawning of January 2 to take my First Day Hike at the Pinnacle on the Susquehanna River. It's nearby, beautiful, and in the mornings mostly empty. This morning I met a few deer hunters who waved from their blind and tree stand. (Always wear blaze orange when hiking in PA during hunting season.)
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Pileated Woodpeckers squawked back and forth as I followed an old farm road around the height of land. The hill is ringed with stone pasture fences and wagon roads are held to the slopes by stone-built abutment walls. Further on there are beautifully built walls that may have surrounded a yard or home. Then I came to the tumbled foundation wall of a barn and a large cleared flat area where water trickled into a spring box. Looking around, it is amazing to me that during the Civil War (1860-1865) this land was completely clear of trees. The river hills were bare save for the scrub meadows and grasslands that cattle, sheep, and horses grazed across on these knolls.
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| Greenshield, sp. |
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| Turkey-Tail, Trametes versicolor |
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| Trametes ochracea |
I'm not one for making New Year's Resolutions because I always have so much unfinished or ongoing business from my writing projects and everything else in life so why add to it? But important to this year's ongoing projects are to further research the Pilgrims Pathway, a route of the Underground Railroad that crosses the river south of here. I want to focus on black abolitionists - free black and former slaves - who lived and farmed here. I hope to lead another three-day Pilgrims Pathway pilgrimage again this summer so I hope this pandemic is over and so we can walk safely side-by-side together.
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| Clouds rolling in to obscure the sun, to finish near where I started. |
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