PA Wolf's Hollow County Park

January's wolf moon is waxing, so this week I'll devote some day hikes for exploring local wolf lore in South Central PA, starting with Wolf's Hollow County Park in Pennsylvania's Chester County (west of Philadelphia). This land was first granted title for ownership in 1733 and since has changed hands so many times it's hard to keep track. The parcel is now owned by Chester County Parks was opened in 2010, so it's a new addition to a stellar local park system.

With 8 miles of trails, this is a great day hike area with plenty of places to rest, picnic, explore, and generally just dawdle around. The trails are a combination of well-preserved early 19th century roads, wagon trails, and foot paths that run through a young-ish oak woods. There's lots of evidence of the charcoal industry, especially on the Charcoal Trail and Octoraro Ridge Trail. Octoraro Creek runs through the rugged valley below and on this very cold leafless day, I caught glimpses of it through the woods from high up on the ridge.

Young oak woods (under 100 years old) are the predominant forest type.

Settled very early by German farmers, evidence of a stone foundation farmhouse, hand dug well, and livestock exclosures remain on the creek's floodplain.  At the time of the Revolution, the War of Independence against England, these hills and plains would have been smoky with colliers working in the charcoal pits. Charcoal was necessary for the iron industry and remains of many major iron forges are not far from here. 

Charcoal pit still black with carbon soils.

The classic footprint of the collier's pit.

When early German settlers began to farm these rugged hills there certainly were grey wolves (Canis lupis) to contend with but we don't have an idea of what the population would have been nor the number of packs supported by this region's rough terrain in the early 1700s.  German wolf lore was intact, however, and mythologies and fears drove men to clear land around their homes and barns, eliminating habitat for predators as well as the resources relied upon by Pennsylvania's indigenous people. Bounties on wolves persisted through the early 1900s and even with modern understandings of wolf biology and ecology, scientists say that the landscape has been so fragmented and human fears still so keen, that they doubt wild wolves will ever roam Pennsylvania's forests again (1).

Headwaters of the 22-mile-long Octoraro Creek.

The only evidence of canines Bug found was this pile of fox scat which she studied thoroughly.

But never say never. Wolf biologists are tracking the southward range expansion of grey wolves from Canada into the New England States. Maine has recently confirmed a viable population (200 or more animals). As landscapes recover from deforestation and intensive farming, the re-greening of the Northeast has certainly made the reintroduction of other predators like the fisher and marten successful. Coyotes fill the ecological niche created by recovering habitat and the absence of the wolf. They are found in every county of Pennsylvania and are bigger than their western cousins, a cross-breed some suggest, between the grey wolf of the north and the western coyote. Try as we might, however, neither my trusty tracking hound nor I was able to find any evidence of coyote or any other wild dog other than some fox scat along the trail.

Winterberry

 

 

Speckled Alder cones - stripped of seeds (Chickadees love these!)

Red Osier Dogwood.

As we searched for wild canines, we found other really beautiful winter sights: the flush of red through wetland woods of Winterberry and Red Osier Dogwood. We spied on winter flocks from thickets of Speckled Alder and Spicebush. I counted twelve different species feeding on bark insects and seeds from a bench rest at the edge of a tiny rivulet. Brown Creeper, White-breasted Nuthatches, Junco, Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers, Cardinals. Chickadees, White-Throated Sparrow, Carolina Wrens (so many wrens on this Wren Day, the Feast of St. Stephen!) - among others. A Bald Eagle soared overhead and an American Kestrel balanced on an old fence wire watching a field for prey.

Well-preserved early 19th century roads are the pathway for many trails.

Field stone walls were built to keep livestock out of areas where crops were growing.

Field stone walls are testament to the labors of many early farmers who cleared land of stones in order to grow crops, orchards, and hay. In the manure economy of the early German settlements, cow and horse manure was a valuable commodity and bedding from stables and barns would have built up many farm gardens. The remains of a farm garden wall surround the foundation of a German-built stone farm house, with a hand-dug stone-lined well out back. The wall surrounds the homestead completely in a U-shape starting and ending at the creek, while the remains of a bank barn foundation are just a short way up the old road outside the wall.

Remains of a German-built stone farmhouse foundation. The upper section would have been log.

Hand-dug fieldstone-lined well.

German wolf lore is still at work in South Central Pennsylvania and you need not go too far afield to hear a German story of the Black Death, the plagues of the Middle Ages, that eliminated half the German population. As land was abandoned by the death or migration of tenant farmers unable to pay rents, the forests returned and according to one Amish farmer near where I live, the idea of "wilderness wastelands" was conceived to mean "full of wolves." Aberth (2013) explains how the terrors of the plague branded the wolf an evil actor in story and song forever in the minds of Germanic, Iberian, and English country folk. (2) Never mind the wolf was the first animal to be domesticated by man, represented now by a hundred or more individual breeds of domestic dog. The hunting dogs like my coonhound Bug are known for their wolf-like ability to track and stalk. She let me know she was on the trail of something worth chasing as we left the Charcoal Trail for an open meadow. Will I find a wolf tree here?

A tree with sharp teeth! Sweet Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos)

Wolf trees can be of any species that has grown spread out, hefty, and strong without competition in a pasture or edge-of-field. These are usually oaks in PA, but today we found a wolf tree with fangs! Bug nearly began to climb a Sweet Locust in pursuit of something living in a limb hollow when I realized she would impale herself on its seven-inch-long spikes! Ouch! Aberth (pg. 184-185) explains how farmers and game managers of the Late Middle Ages used locust spikes hidden in carcasses that, when consumed by a wolf, would puncture its throat, stomach or intestines. I wondered if German settlers employed such predator eradication methods here?

I quickly pulled her off the trail but not before she let out a series of LOUD bays and yelps letting the whole valley know that she was doing her job. We stepped way back from the Sweet Locust and I admired its dangling seed pods that rattled in the wind. The German farmer's cattle would have loved the sweet pods as they fell into the pasture below and the cow plops would have planted many more. The wood is tough stuff, however, and farmers readily harvested trees big enough to supply tool handles, door and window lintels, and insect-proof floor joists. Leaving a mature "nurse tree" to provide more trees in the pasture was a sound practice of ensuring a future of good, hard wood.

Young oaks suffering from an attack of cankers.

We followed the Fenceline Trail around groomed pastures and fields. Looking into the woods I spotted some young oaks struggling with a plague of disfiguring oak canker. These fungal infections look as if the bark has exploded outward like hit by a bullet or flying shrapnel. The trees won't survive, but are struggling, misshapen for now.  I found a few old Hickories that I would maybe consider wolf trees, but an old White Oak took the prize for growing one-sided toward the sunny field. I tried to give it the should-height hug but needed another person to complete the ring, so I figured this tree was at or just over a hundred years old.

Half a wolf tree. White Oak.

Skim ice forming on a catchment pond.

It was getting pretty cold by mile 7 so we decided to skip the final mile and cut down an access trail to the small parking lot. Even with her "coat" on, Bug was shivering. Coonhounds are slim by nature and have very little fat to insulate them. Without the luxurious pelt of her wolf ancestors, Bug really does need the extra care in winter. As she shivered, I knew it was time to call it a day and warm up the car!

The old Schoff dam was breached many years ago.

We wound around the old Schoff dam and did a quick sniff-about in the wetland below. Some more fox scat and a quick splash in the tiny stream and Bug was ready to pull me up the hill to the car where she knew heat and chicken jerky awaited! We finished our day hike at 7 miles not having completed a one-mile loop trail south of the old dam, but we'll leave that to start with on our next venture out to Wolf's Hollow.

Notes:

(1) Jared Beerman's study and survey on Pennsylvania habitat for grey wolf survival paints a dim picture of any future wolves living in PA, but if it were a perfect world, the Commonwealth could support up to a dozen packs.  http://www.gis.smumn.edu/GradProjects/BeermanJ.pdf

(2) John Aberth. An Environmental History of the Middle Ages: The Crucible of Nature (New York, Routledge Publishers, 2013). 

Wolf's Hollow County Park (Chester County, PA) website contains some background history and a great trail map to print out, but I found the map box well stocked with copies on the back of the parking lot kiosk. http://chesco.org/1748/Wolfs-Hollow-Park