NH: June 22 Trip Log: Lovern's Mill Natural Area, NH

The North Branch of the Contoocook River is loud, frothy, and crystal clear.

On a morning when I didn't need to rush in to my grad school class, I took a few hours and revisited a favorite place of mine I used to visit frequently when I lived nearby. Surrounded by forest reserves and easements is the Nature Conservancy's Loverns Mill Cedar Swamp Preserve Natural Area just ten miles from the Eppig place.

Atlantic White Cedar.

An old woods road follows the North Branch of the Contoocook River for a short while, past tumbling falls and drops. A very busy barrel and cable reel mill  (powered by an overshot waterwheel) once stood where the gradient is steepest, but now only the remains of a blown out stone dam stands off the east bank. The original 1798 Revolutionary-era  mill long gone from this site was the first industry built on this wild, whitewater river by Sam Dinsmore, a Revolutionary war veteran from County Antrim, Ireland. Nothing of any of the several mills that followed it are found here now.  All of it has reverted to wildlands. All of it protected by both the Nature Conservancy and for miles around by private land owners.

Bunchberry in flower.

The road soon intersects with the three mile loop Lovern's Mill Trail. This trail begged to be walked slowly to listen to birdsong, explore along the boardwalk, and to sit on the river bluff that overlooks the freshwater marshes. I'm glad I took the time because I did not get another opportunity for the rest of the week before or after class to take some time to myself. 

Cinnamon Fern. 

Northeasterners have a special relationship with their forests and private forest owners especially are critically important to conservation planning of the region. New England was once fully engaged in agriculture and when the great forests had been logged and the land cleared, hill farms spanned the landscape in a patchwork of walled-off pastures and fields.  Farm abandonment began after the Civil War and slowly the forests began to return. So did the forest industries. By the 1990s land owners recognized the economic as well as the natural value of their properties and they consulted with land trusts to balance stewardship of working landscapes. Most of the forest preserve lands of NH today are privately held.

A living wall of granite. 

All along the trail huge rounded boulders towered over me and the trail wove in and out of dark passages through them. In the half light, lichens and mosses covered their flanks in thick carpets of green, grey, and dusty blue, living walls of granite. A recent study of lichen biodiversity revealed that here on the rim of the cold bowl of high altitude swamplands, these living boulders hold thousands of years of growth. Pollen studies of the swamp core soils at the center of the bowl indicate that this environment has been intact for over 4,000 years and that the northern white cedar have been growing here at least as long. The oldest trees are known be about 150. It's a rare environment, however, and less that 500 acres of northern white cedar swamp remain in the whole state. This protected area is only about 50 acres in size, protected all around by private lands under easement, logging company reserves, and Nature Conservancy ownership. The complex arrangement of protection between state, private, and non-profit easements is impressive.

As I made my way down the boardwalk practically sunk in the high water that collected after a day of heavy rain, I watched clouds of damselflies in their mating flights. The males floated like ebony- blue fairies over the grass beds where the females laid their eggs on stems. A yellow warbler sang from a tamarack overhead and the northern white cedar trunks glowed in the low morning sun. Mosquitoes rose from the moss like mist. Dragonflies darted crazily around scooping them up as they flew slowly, still cold from the dawn hours.

The boardwalk in.

 I can imagine the superstition and fear of the early settlers who dared explore the dark, buggy world of the swamps. It is a strange relationship some people continue to have with the dark, wet, woods and find no solace in a world where insects claim dominion. In this world of bugs. I founnd it a bit like time travel looking back into the Devonian. I leaned against a young cedar tree and it tilted slightly with my weight pressing into it, anchored as it was to the boggy bottom and not the rocky rim. Butterflies, flies, midges, mayflies, beetles, bees, wasps, floating spiders on wisps of web, and a large lazy cranefly filled the air space around me.

The male damselflies were as curious about me as I was about them landing eyes front.

Northern white cedar grow thick on the interior of the swamp, evenly interspersed with tamarack and on hummocks, black spruce. Not very tall, these old trees practically sang for themselves bedecked with white-throated sparrows  darting from limb to limb declaring territory and chipping alarm calls at my presence. They were joined by red-eyed vireos, black-capped chickadees, flycatchers, wood thush, ovenbirds, towhees, a peewee, and a chorus of warblers so numerous I couldn't keep up with birding by ear. The music abruptly ended however as a feather grey missile burst through the swamp: a sharp-shinned hawk.  

On the rim of the swamp, looking in.

Thoreau wrote about the northern cedar swamps as providing indigenous canoe builders with all the wooden thwarts, gunwales, and paddles they could use for their bark-skinned boats that long ago plied the river highways and crossed thousands of lakes and ponds of this region. Confronted with heavy white water (like I can planinly hear  a quarter mile distant) these boats were light enough for one man to hoist upon to his shoulders and walk  well-worn portage trails around. The rivers and lakes are connected by networks of these trails that you can still find hundreds of years later. The Northern Forest Canoe Trail is one such water trail that has been restored by modern paddlers and in many places the old Indian, fur trader, and explorer portage trails are again in use.   

Indian Cucumber in blossom.

I find dark forests not the least bit frightening and I don't carry the unnecessary baggage of superstition, but I did put into context the good possibility of bumping into wildlife in this low light, hushed environment. The dramatic hilly  terrain of the rim, the shadowy depths of the sun-starved forest floor, and a fresh pile of bear scat in the trail gave me a little pause. It was still steaming. I think I caught a glimpse of the bear browsing far ahead along the edge of the swamp where dappled sun helped a large patch of berries to grow luxuriantly. But if it was just a shadow or the real thing, I never found out.  I stood a long time and watched, but was unable to hear anything over the roar of birdsong and scolding red squirrels. 

Maybe the bear was browsing this nice patch of partridge berries at the edge of the swamp.

The path got quite muddy in low spots and hoof prints of a moose filled with water as if she'd just passed this way in the early morning hours. My love of northern woods wildlife overcame any concerns and I continued along the trail a bit faster and a lot quieter hoping to spot the bear or catch up to the moose. It hard to blend in, though, with the constant chucking and alarm calls of a very upset red squirrel who, for some reason, followed me rather than going about her business. I noticed another large patch of partridge berry nearby and wondered if the bear and the squirrel weren't feeling a little protective of it! I certainly would! 

Sphagnum Moss in its element.

I came to an absolutely beautiful spot along the edge of the swamp and sat transfixed by the color, the sound, the juxtaposition of water, granite, moss, and trees.  The night before I had done a thorough reading of the Pope's encyclical Laudato Si, Praise Be.  I wondered, looking around at the blending of living and non-living material - cells of sphagnum and grains of glacially-ground sand, fern fronds higher than I could reach, and boulders draped in tapestries of lichen - if we've come to some sort of balance in the Northwoods - some kind of making-peace with landscapes that require our stewardship and care as opposed to landscapes of extreme exploitation a century and more ago.

Red Squirrel.

Conserving whole landscapes is a little like making peace with ourselves, dropping irrational fears and unrestrained greed, to allow wild nature to simply be within us too, I think. I recalled the recent release of a video in which an entangled dolphin swam trusting, maybe even in friendship, up to a group of marine biologists to ask for help. Understanding relationships and community is the foundation of ecology, and the divers - being ecologists and biologists - knew that their role was no longer as scientific observers but willing participants in responding to this simple act of asking for help. They became part of the story, connecting in the most intimate way with a most vulnerable creature who had sought them out. Ecology, from the Greek oikos meaning home, the study of home - the study of our place, our landscape, and our neighbors who share home with us.

A beautiful rest.

I moved from that beautiful rest and walked further along, considering what it meant to be at home, to be so comfortable in a particular place that it is seamlessly part of you. Laudato Si, the title of the Pope's letter was borrowed from St. Francis of Assisi's Canticle of the Sun, seemed a good sentence starter for a poem I wrote in my journal  to Little Sister Red Squirrel still following along.  I sat down next to a tiny creature shining like a fiery star in the dark universe of the forest floor and sketched Little Brother Red Eft.

Fiery star of the dark forest floor. 

The trail  reached into a wild and birdy marsh and I sat here too, a beautiful place for a writing break. The winds were just high enough to deter clouds of flies and mosquitoes, which come as part of the landscape. You must accept the messy, biting, buzzing annoyances and the downright danger that comes with the reality of wildness. I laugh sometimes, mostly at myself, but other writers too, when the romanticism of place runs roughshod over the realities of what it means to be physically in nature. 

A boreal refuge.

Things have claws, fangs, teeth, four legs or six legs or eight. I trip and fall and I get hurt. It's painfully cold or frighteningly hot. Storms rage or floods rise and wash life from the land.  That moose I was following and calmly calling "she" could well have been a large grumpy bull. That bear could have had a cub or two. So we need to not only learn to appreciate our place but understand our place in it.  We are powerful guardians and yet we are as vulnerable as an entangled or tiny wild thing at the mercy of it all. 

Fresh water marsh, West Mountain rising in the north.

This is the landscape where I go to learn more about what it means to be a steward. As Pope Francis says in Laudato Si we need more of these places, communally protected, shepherded, cared for, where the conservation of wild land "takes us to the heart of what it means to be human."

Rosebud Azalea.

Notes:

Though the Northern Forest Canoe Trail passes far to the north of Lovern's Mill Natural Area above the White Mountains in NH.  The modern trail now logs 72 miles through the state and uses the Connecticut River, Upper Ammonoosuc, and the Androscoggin as the main route (as it did 300 years ago!) - but it's important to remember that hundreds of linked water and portage trails spanned all of New England and northern cedar swamps were important sources of raw materials for the building of lightweight bark canoes. I have no doubt some of the Lovern's Mill Trail around the swift water of the North Branch served as an old route into and out of this swamp.

www.northernforestcanoetrail.org

Break!

PhD desk.

I'll be taking a  break from the blog for a few weeks to finish another dissertation chapter and attend my last PhD seminar week in New Hampshire. My time for total focus has arrived, but I'll be back in July with more adventures on the Mason Dixon Trail and some snaps from my lunch hikes in New England. Onward!

PA Mason Dixon Trail - Map 4: Apollo Park to Kline's Run Park with Bad Language

Saturday May 30, 2015: Boyd's Run Lot (Apollo County Park) to Kline's Park, Long Level, PA
10 miles had we stayed on trail/ 9 miles because we didn't. [140/200]

If you have no doubt that we are anything other than intrepid, serious hikers, then continue reading. If you have a problem with inferences of  foul language and real pain then avert your eyes and look elsewhere for pleasantries on the Mason Dixon Trail.

Wilson's Run. Cuff's Run. Fishing Creek. We knew going in we'd have three steep descents and three equally steep ascents in order to cross three ravine then traverse three high sections of bluff and cliff edge. We knew we had ten miles to cover. Not a bad day, since we've already had several days of 12 - 13 miles. But by the time we limped to the car at Kline's Run Park at the northern edge of Long Level almost ten hours later, we thought back to the fit man who met us that morning. "He was an omen," I moaned to my hiking partner Kim.

Ugh.

The descent into Wilson's Run was just a warm-up, literally. The famously hated Pennsylvania humidity had returned. Carefully picking our way through a boulder field of frost heaved rock the size of small cars, crossing the stream, and climbing steeply up to the river bluff high above was slow going. We met a woman at the stream crossing, in her mid-50s, who was literally jogging along the jagged path. She was an ultra-trail racer. She happily told us about the 100k race that starts in Havre de Grace, MD, and ends at Shanks Mare at Long Level, PA, and takes 24 hours to run (in August - are they nuts?!). She happily told us about the MDT meeting she was scheduled to attend at the Safe Harbor hut building site - five miles to the south. She happily told us about how we should join an ultra race! She was so very nice. But I hated her the minute we said our goodbyes and she happily continued bouncing along her way up the steep switchbacks. Mile 1.

Trying not to fall down 100' to the river below.

Along the first bluff edge we could see the river far below through thick forest canopy. It was beautiful but hard to admire. It was tricky to keep an eye on the rough and pitched footing with every step and not go careening down the cliff.  A young man came trudging along, in his mid-20s, he seemed grateful to have an excuse to stop and chat. "I'm doing this section everyday to get in shape," he said , "I'm carrying 20 pounds of water. But - shit - this is too hard when its humid like this. I'm calling it early." I started to get a little nervous. We came across a nice place to take our first break and grab a snack. A nesting pair of eagles chatted above us from a nearby nest. I wished I had wings to fly back to the car and sit in the AC. I wished for winter...

Cuff's Run.

As I've mentioned in this blog before, the Susquehanna River Hills are known for their steep creek ravines that carry water down from the Piedmont Plateau above, dropping a hundred of feet of grade to the river below. Nowhere along the MDT so far have the ravines been as steep as on this section.The next descent into Cuff's Run was a tortuous knee buster. By the time I got to the bottom my legs were shaking and my head was pounding. I took a full head and shoulders bath in the cold water and awaited Kim, who was being very cautious with her down-steps so as not to aggravate an old ligament injury. "Obnoxious," she said, over and over again. Three miles out of ten so far and it had taken us five solid hours. Mile 3. But there were butterflies...

Spring azures and Tiger swallowtails muddling for minerals Pic by Kim.

The second bluff section was straight across a sharply defined bow of cliff high above the water. I was hanging on to trees to stay centered on the trail. I said "F--K!" a lot. No, really, a lot. I had reached my F-point. My half gallon of water was running low and I began to ration. The sounds of people boating and swimming below put me in a foul mood. "Oh shut up!" I cursed as I wedged myself between two towers of stone. Another hour passed. Then another. I lost count. I started playing music in my head again. "Music for a Darkened Theater" from the soundtrack of Edward Scissorhands. Go figure. I tried to tell myself a joke. I forgot what the punch line was...

Any tree to lean on, grab hold on to, or hug was welcomed. Pic by Kim.

Four teenagers came frolicking up and over giant blocks of stone stacked like books on their sides. "Hello!" they called as they bobbled happily by. I hated them too. "Where are you headed?" ask Kim. One of the pink sneaker clad teens chirped happily back "To the top!" The other  pink tank top clad girl stopped huffing in her tracks and stared at us. Two old women with backpacks and hiking poles. No pink to be seen. Maybe some blood, though. "Wait," she said, "How do we get down from here?"  One of the two boys cheerfully proclaimed "Easy! The way we came up!"  Kim, having reached her F-point some time ago, said not so happily, "Good luck with that!"  The foursome looked somewhat somber and skittered away. "Did you hear what that lady said?" But the good news was that somewhere nearby was a parking area where these kids must have started from not to long ago. "Stop being so bubbly," I muttered. A six foot blacksnake slithered over the cliff...

Stone steps like books on end. Pic by Kim/

Mile five at the height of land overlooked the river and we found a tree stump to sit on. Seven hours.  By this time we were F-bombing every ankle twisting step and trying not to just sit down and cry. So we just sat. I did, at one point however, sit right in the trail against a tree and begged Kim to go ahead while I stewed in my own sweat. Nursing an almost empty half gallon water bottle I fought back the pounding headache that comes with too much heat. I talked myself out of throwing up a few times. But soon we were down into another creek ravine where people were hurling themselves off a cliff...

Cliff climbing box turtle relocated down slope towards Cuff's Run. Pic by Kim.

We should have taken a clue as to what we were up against when as we were strapping on our packs at the Boyd's Road parking area in Apollo County Park, that fit man in his early 50s, came cruising into the gravel lot from the trail we were about to climb. His face was pained and red. We asked where he'd started. "I started at High Point and had this bizarre vision that I'd make it to Otter Creek Campground today. I just called my wife to come pick me up. I cant go another quarter mile. This section kicked my butt!"  He muttered something about rocks.  Climbing and crawling through and around and over and between lots of rocks. He collapsed on the side of the lot to await his wife. "Maybe I can get a nap in before she gets here." That was eight hours ago. I stopped to think about him coming this way hours earlier.

Through a slot to a steep descent (again) to Fishing Creek. Pic by Kim.

Finally we stepped off the mountain and on to an old road. Fishing Creek ran deep and cold next to the road. We met a cabin dweller who was wiring shut a gate that the four bubbly teens had opened to access a short cut to the ridge climb through his property. It was hung in three or four places with No Trespassing signs. He overcame his anger to chat with us a few minutes, then we hobbled on towards the ice cream shop in Long Level another mile further. And of course it was closed. Closed!

At five o'clock on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, the riverside park crowded with picnics and kids and what we most desired that very minute was Closed!

A kind outfitter pulled in to park his trip trailer and offered us a few bottles of water. We decided not to delay or lengthen our walk any further and started out on the road straight for Kline's Park, rather than returning to the twisty up and down trail behind the outfitters. I walked at a fast pace, swerving off the narrow shoulder for wide boat trailers and wincing as loud motorcycles yowled by. The sun was setting. Mile 9.

I almost cried when we saw this. Good food, friendly service, and ice cream to go with lo mein.

We made our escape up out of the river valley, AC roaring. We were disappointed, muttering unsavory things in our exhaustion. Approaching a little crossroads we almost missed a new place to eat! We cheered! I backed up in the travel lane and drifted down into the parking lot.  A Chinese/Asian food eatery with a Hershey's ice cream shop and Hawaiian shaved ice. Oh delish! Saved! With our meals of Lo Mein, General Tso's chicken with pork fried rice, egg roll, milkshake, Coke, and ice cream cone one of two fortune cookies had this inside...

Thanks to Kim for most of the pictures for this post since my trusty SLR decided the humidity was to much and threw error codes with abandon. Thank you, most of all, to the MDT Trail Crew who again impressed us (even in their absence) with the all the work to clear blow-downs all along the way. We can't imagine the work involved in hauling chain saws and other important tools to these remote and rugged parts.

PA Mason Dixon Trail -Maps 5 to 4: Sawmill Branch and Otter Creek

Saturday, May 24, 2015:  Airville, York Furnace, Shenks Ferry, PA, 13 miles

Be forewarned. I am terribly biased when it comes to this, the previous, and next section of the MDT. I tend to think these landscapes are the most divine of any of the sections on this 200 mile long trail that connects Chadds Ford to Whiskey Springs. I am biased I suppose because I can go here anytime and hike for an hour or a day and be only a few miles from my home. I am biased too because I have many friends in these hills, some who play violins and some who fish for the wild trout. I can walk a mile on the trail anywhere from Peach Bottom to Shenk's Ferry and know at least one landowner on who's farm or woodlot the trail  passes through. It can be tough going in some spots, but it is such beautiful landscape that for all the huffing and puffing the journey  through here is well worth it. 

Along Posey Road in Airville, York County.

Charles and Jeremiah on their 1767 trek through these parts remarked in their journals that the fiddle music, emanating from taverns and barns, sometimes got ugly. The land was contested ground and sometimes all it took for a fight to break out was for a Englishman to make a mockery of a Scot's tune. In fact, the land had been long fought over by settler families of the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland, waging war against each other to settle boundary disputes and to lay claim for one royal governor or the other. It took Mason and Dixon some years to make that line, but when it was done and the deeds were settled and the blood finally sunk into the earth, the music remained. It is no coincidence that today the York County Fiddlers  and Deer Creek Fiddlers groups have a long tradition of summer 'conventions' in these hills.

Kim makes the first crossing of today's section.

So here we were, Kim and I, starting the second summer of our challenge to walk the entire Mason Dixon Trail. We met on Memorial Day Saturday 2015 in the parking lot of the State Gamelands along Blain Road where we ended our 2014 hike in the fall.  A little bit of road walking along Posey Road overlooking beautiful farm country to reach the field edges and woods above Sawmill Creek, then we were in the thick of it.We quickly regained our old pace and caught up on all the news of the long winter.

Storm damage was at times massive and in places along the trail, almost impassable.

Skirting across the heights of land then dipping into the steep ravines that characterize the river hills of the Susquehanna, we came across many areas that have been ravaged by recent and intense local weather events. Whether these events represent an increase in the frequency of wild weather that signals a shift in regional climate patterns or not, one thing was clear: the steepness of the land and the forests that cling by shallow roots to the outcrops and bluffs cannot long hold up against hurricane force winds, powerful down drafts of straight line storm systems, and torrential rains. Several of the trail's bridges have been replaced over the past ten years and in many places creeks are choked with logs and toppled trees. In one place we picked our way carefully through the mangled tops of ancient hemlocks that had (by my estimation) been toppled over the winter months. 

When nature alters the landscape so much that even a good GPS doesn't help.

Recent trail crew activity was a sign of ongoing efforts to keep the trail in safe order, but it seemed to me an almost impossible job. As soon as one storm's fury is cleaned up and repaired, another section of trail received a new dose of damage. Near the sight of an almost fatal landslide (for one poor old man out fishing on a rainy day several years ago) we met a fellow hiker on a geocache quest. The landscape had been so altered in a familiar area where he'd found an ammo box stashed  a few years before that he could not even recognize the bend in the creek.

Northern Watersnake.

The challenges of navigating some parts of the trail were more than made up for by frequent wildlife sightings including a wood duck performing her broken-wing display to distract us from her family of ten babies along Sawmill Branch. A fat and beautiful northern watersnake crossed the trail to force a stop to our progress along a very steep section. We waited patiently for the snake to find her hidey-hole under a trailside outcrop before we could move ahead. Two deer came crashing down in front of us, bounding down the nearly vertical hillside and vanishing in just a few leaps across the creek and into the thick hemlocks beyond.

Metagraywacke schist glimmers inside and out.

Me against a cliff of metagraywacke. Pic by Kim.

With occasional views of the wide Susquehanna from the river bluffs, we could see the general slant and tilt of uplifted rock that makes up the sharply defined shores and outcrops. This is metagraywacke schist, layered like sedimentary rock, but really a highly morphosed igneous rock from the depths of a proto-Atlantic seafloor. It weathers roughly, not like the smooth sandstones of the northern river valley that can be found in the cobble along the beaches at low water. This is sharp stuff, the kind of rock that tears the hull of an expensive kayak or the sole of your foot and palm of your hand.

Campground map at Otter Creek.

Without too much tumbling and tripping, we powered up a steep schisty hill to the Otter Creek Campground, owned and operated by PPL. Since it was Memorial Day weekend the campground was predictably full, but remarkably quiet and serene. Families have come here for generations since the building of the dams in the 1920s when workers were given caravans for summer outings and leased lots for building vacation cabins. As we walked through children were playing everywhere while parents and grandparents enjoyed each other's company. We discovered the camp store had what we craved after each hike - ice cream! After a quick lunch down by the river, we continued on with the second leg of the hike up and around the scenic valley of Otter Creek.

View north from Urey's Overlook.

We are far north of the Mason Dixon Line now, long removed from the east-to-west path of the Mason and Dixon survey party. It is documented that Mason did visit York City to reprovision for his crew working their way across the south county. There is debate, however, about how he traveled - whether by rough river road or by inland  pike.  Either way, the roads were rough and in some places dangerous, watched over by suspicious settlers armed with guns, knives , and mean dogs.

Otter Creek, a trout fisher's paradise.

The creek valley was humid, sun dappled in green and yellow light, and filled with carpets of woodland wildflowers. I was a little worried, however, about Sawbranch and Otter Creek, two of my favorite places that, along with Muddy Creek to our south, are some of the best wild trout creeks in south central PA. For over twenty years I have fly fished these beautiful rock-studded streams that are full of deep fishey holes that hide the craftiest of trout royalty. On our way down Sawbranch and up Otter, I remarked to Kim how silted over they were. The ledges and boulders, important habitat for all manner of aquatic life, were covered in inches of fine yellow-orange silt so that you could hardly make out the bottom features.

Silt fills in the important nooks and crannies stream animals require.

Narrow path along Otter Creek. Pic by Kim.

 Not far from here, just across the river, is the renowned Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve that, like the Otter Creek valley, shelters a vast ravine of woodland plants and old growth forest, but it has much better exposure to early spring sunshine that this deep shaded valley does not. But Otter Creek still boasts a lot of wildflowers! We were a little late to the trillium party and the mayapples were nearing the end of their bloom period, but jack-in-the-pulpit and carpets of mayflower bloomed all around.

Indian Cucumber, tho' not really a 'cuke.

Carpets of Mayflower.

Among the profusely blooming wild raspberry patches along the more open dappled sun-splashed trail, we caught sight of false solomon's seal, mounds of hay-scented and sensitive fern, and further up the dry hillsides, thickets of mountain laurel in full bloom.  We sniffed and coughed in the continuing rain of pollen making this season one of the more memorable for those who suffer from spring allergies. But the sight of a gentle downpour of yellow and orange tulip poplar petals made us forget our itchy eyes and throats.

Mountain Laurel blossoms.

A freshly grown polypore!

Husk of last year's blossoms over a bed of fresh leaves, Rattlesnake Plantain Orchid.

Winding in and out of the creek valley, we finally topped the highest bluff over the river for this stretch at Urey's Overlook (see earlier pic). At this viewpoint we are just downstream by a mile (as the crow flies, not as we hiked!) from the third of the great dams that harness the flow of the river at Safe Harbor. After a short rest at the overlook we followed a broad mowed trail out to the the hilliest section of Rt. 425 and a new parking lot (!!) designating a new management unit for Susquehannock State Park. 

Brand new!

We crossed Rt. 425 for the third or fifth or sixth time  and trudged down into what seemed to be a lost valley. This was the rough final third of today's hike, when our muscles ached and feet pounded inside our boots. Nothing a little ibuprofen later won't help, but for now it was all a head game. I imagined the fiddlers that our English surveyors heard dueling in the local taverns (two of those taverns still stand in these parts) and of the spirit of backwoods music that still permeates the area. In my head I played my mandolin again and again a tune I'd long ago forgotten the name of, but have heard the past two years at the local fiddler's gatherings. It helped to imagine the chords,  one chorus to the next, accompanying a group of fiddlers and strummers. Kim checked her Fit-Bit and saw that we were approaching the twelve mile mark. A few more refrains and a mile more, and we'd be looking down at the big dam!

Safe Harbor Dam on the Susquehanna.

For our first long hike of the season, I think we did okay but I sure can't remember the final stretch into the woods following our view over Safe Harbor. I do remember my arms pumping up and down on my hiking poles pushing up hills in time to the imaginary sound of fiddle music in my head. But if there had been a rare bird or a beautiful snake right in front of me, I well might have missed it, so focused I was on that double scoop of strawberry ice cream waiting for me at the camp store!



This was the song in my head played here by some neighbors and friends at our York County fiddler's convention.  You can be sure I came home and pulled out the madolin while waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in! 

Notes:

A nice new map is now available from the Camp Store at Otter Creek Campground (PPL) that shows the many area trails including the MDT:  http://www.campottercreek.com/

You can make a full day of looping around the ravines and woods based from your tent or camper site with great boat access to explore the river for kayaking and canoeing. Just down the road are several small parks, historic buildings, and the remarkable Indian Steps Museum, open some weekends and for special events: http://www.indiansteps.org/


PS Notes:  51 weeks to go till graduation and a long walk across Spain! Please consider donating to my trip by clicking the Go Fund Me link at the top of my blog!

MD: The Countdown Begins - A Walk At Governor Bridge Natural Area

Yesterday marked graduation weekend at my graduate school in New Hampshire. I am behind by a year because of an advisor fail over three years ago. I almost quit. I was so angry I can still feel bitterness. That I should have walked that stage yesterday blurs into  resignation of adding the extra expense and year to what has become a six year odyssey, a journey that has vacillated between what I love to do in writing and research and what I most despise about academe. But despite the highs and lows, I have been committed all along to environmental, agriculture, and conservation history which involves a tremendous amount of reading and writing, drafts and rewrites, reviews and proofing. These are the things I thought about while on a lunch walk following a meeting in southern Maryland. There's something freeing about the idea of acceptance when I can just wander to clear my mind.

Broad-headed skink.

Someone at the meeting yesterday asked me if I hate it - the disruptions, the grueling pace of the work, and rearrangement of life as I knew it. I had to answer honestly that somedays I do - that I am always exhausted, I've lost a few good friends, and I always feel guilty for going for a walk instead of writing another page. The worst part is trying to balance a full time job on top of the demands of this dissertation. Then there are the marathon writing weekends or holidays when I can write for 72 hours and not look up and be in the zone, when everything clicks and flows together and blossoms into good writing and a good story. I love that. But I miss  the weekend hikes, the overnights in the mountains, the long canoe and kayak expeditions, weeks and weeks of wandering and exploring.  So the countdown starts for next year - 52 weeks from now - when finally I'll walk across that stage.

My lunch walk destination after a meeting near Washington D.C.

I wandered the network of trails at Governor Bridge Natural Area trying to come up with metaphors for what I've already endured and what this next year promises to bring. The site is an old quarry area that came into the hands of conservationists and land planners when the sand and gravel company sold the land. But it's also a haven for people trying to escape the crowded highways and dense residential and shopping areas that have consumed everything around it. I met a few fishermen, one slightly drunk or high or both who had to tell me why he thinks parks are closed. Blame gays! Blame Obama! Blame the Pope! I walked very quickly away from him! My metaphor exercise wasn't working. 

Yellow pond lily.

The reptiles were out in force. It was a hot day for birds, but a nice day if you were cold blooded. I counted two black rat snakes, three broad-headed skinks, one five-lined skink, two garters, and a fat northern water snake. The spring migrant warblers have passed through I think, some staying to nest, but at the time of day I walked, early afternoon after the meeting, the birdsong had quieted down. I picked up red and white-eyed vireo by call, several common yellow throats, and orioles all around the ponds. The trails of old truck roads were perfectly tropical-looking draped in the greenery of high spring time, but it was the quarry ponds that really were beautiful. After almost 60 years an industrial area, the wooded swamps, open ponds, and vast meadows seemed like a miracle.

An old sand quarry pit now serves as a lily-filled pond.

This is sand and gravel country where for centuries people have mined the outwash of distant glaciers and the deposits of seas coming and going over millions of years. It's not uncommon to see abandoned mines and quarries like this throughout the southern Maryland peninsula, but it is a treat to see such a quarry site fully transformed into a park and valuable natural area. I circled all the ponds on the Red, Blue, Orange, and Yellow trails.  A canoe and kayak launch trail gives paddlers access to the Patuxent River Trail. 

Female Prothonotary Warbler.

The deep woods seemed older than they were, and if I closed my eyes and listened to the flycatchers and vireos punctuating the forest with their calls, I could imagine a wild, untouched place before the quarries were clawed from the sandy soils. But the fact is that in order to reclaim this property for conservation purposes, some serious work had to be done. Wetland soils just don't happen. Forest soils have to be replaced. In the field of reclamation, ecologists and biologists work with heavy equipment operators to create the base layer of what will be a restored habitat, whether terrestrial or aquatic. It's hard tedious work - the unglamorous side of conservation. And it takes time to see results. 

A forested wetland - and a family of geese.

As I walked along the trails I observed hints of the construction work that took place here to maintain the swamps, ponds, and water flow. Pipes, large and small, culverts and dikes seemed to criss-cross every boundary between woods and open water. Another bit of engineering has recently come to the scene: beavers building lodges against the flow of water, thwarting the work of two-legged water engineers. The humans dig out the dams, the beavers put them back. In the big picture however, stream management doesn't mean a lot if the laws designed to make these places possible and to protect them are themselves weak or unenforced. Congress continues to wage war against the EPA and Clean Water Act. Development in and around areas like this continue to have real and devastating impacts on streams and rivers.

Eastern Phoebe feeds her young under the bridge I was crossing.

A blogger named Kirk who I follow (http://blog.rivermudoutdoors.com/p/conservation.html) can explain more about the impact and consequences of poor policy and political wrangling on our waterways and wetlands. He's a 'mud engineer' and works some of that heavy  equipment to make and manage places like this. But as an environmental historian, the story of policy and restoration ecology is an important one that helps us to see the 'before and after' of a place. Laws and conservation policies that are enforced or not have very real, sometimes ugly, results on our ever-shrinking wild resources.

A friendly black rat snake.

My failed metaphor hike came to an end an hour later, when back at my car I took a few minutes to glance back down the trail. This visit had been pleasant enough - but I could have done without the talkative fisherman. And, I felt guilty for not having found a library somewhere to do a little more reading or writing instead of wandering around an old sand quarry. I had to head home - through hours of congested highways as it turned out. Hours in the driver's seat, frustrated and impatient, something like this PhD program - not enough time to do good work, and the time I have is spent in traffic between offices, meetings, schools, and events. But I must thank those who, for the past five years, have recommended the places I've visited for my lunch walks - my own tranquil hours to decompress. 

Dark and handsome Orchard Oriole.

So the countdown begins. Fifty-two weeks till I walk that stage and then venture off across the Big Pond - a graduation gift to myself of the 440 mile Camino de Santiago. I'm praying I can stay on schedule with my writing timeline and have a first draft ready by fall. And I know, through experience, to expect the failed metaphors and the frustrating starts and stops. But the birds are always singing somewhere. I'll hang on to that for the next year. There are many stories to be told...