Walking carefully across the wrack line down at the Bay I had the opportunity to watch a pair of coots working across soft muck in search of yummies. I've always admired their patience and persistence on cold winter days as they forage in places most other creatures avoid. They can do this because they have enormous feet. Not webbed feet, mind you - enormous lobed feet.
Coots in boots!
This pair have been calling the cove at Swan Harbor in Havre de Grace, Maryland, home all winter and may be the same pair I've watched in winter's past. They don't seem interested at all in the larger rafts of coots that occasionally come through. Their little conversational chuckles and whines remind me of my Rhode Island Reds at home. They are always commenting on this and that. But when an eagle flies over they'll quickly move into woody cover and float semi-submerged until the hunter has passed.
A continuous conversation between them.
In order to take off from water, the coot has to get a running start. A long running start. That's an easy target for an eagle! Better to sink out of sight or hide in the marsh or against a woody shore. To forage in muck or across lotus and lily pads, the coot steps out with feet almost as broad as her underside, lobes spread flat like snowshoes. She looks totally out of scale with her tiny head, plump little body, and enormous feet!
Coots in a spring raft.
This weekend is the Great Backyard Bird Count and since I spend more time at Swan Harbor than I seem to spend at home, I'll do a Monday backyard count here as well as at home. I hope this pair of coots-in-big-boots are around to make the list!
The Great Backyard Bird Count!
Join in the fun this weekend! Will a Coot-in-Big-Boots make your list?
I've often heard that the Mid-Atlantic might as well be considered one long crowded corridor of interstates, beltways, industrial lots, suburban sprawl, cities, and degraded scenery. I suppose such perceptions might be correct if based on limited experiences visiting just the daisy-chain of East Coast cities. But there is a remarkable re-wilding happening here and it surprises people who venture beyond the highways how quickly things get rowdy, unkempt, and even a little toothy. But is it the same nature we originally bludgeoned out of the way to make room for human ventures? Is what returns the same as what was lost? And what was lost that can never return?
Old generator building at North Point State Park.
This week I did some birdwatching with my old friend Mike at North Point State Park just south of the old industrial center and ports of Baltimore. The land formerly held an amusement park, a waterfowl hunting club, a dump, and a busy waterfront ferry terminal. The general area known as North Point saw action during the War of 1812 and has served as an important agricultural area for 350 years. And now, like many of the places I visit and describe on this blog, it seems to be infilling with a new wildness- almost but not quite back-to-nature.
Circa 1940. Photo Credit : Baltimore County Historical Society
Ruins of the Ferry Grove Pier, 2014.
The birding was light this morning, too cold and windy to offer us much but there were some mallards and gadwalls in the forested wetland, pied-billed grebes, chickadees, white-throated sparrows, a hermit thrush, robins, and a very curious titmouse. The woods, typical of the coastal plain forest of American holly, sweet gum, white oak, and pine is in a mid-succession phase with lots of edges draped in vines and crowded with other sun-seeking plant competitors. The wind and the rough-shod look of the woods had me missing what might have been there before the days of steel mills, market hunting, amusement parks, and wartime manufacturing. What I saw was a simplified ecological system, a natural world that seemed somehow impoverished. This land has been through so much for so long, it seems to have lost its ecological identity. But in small ways it was trying to re-establish itself with help from conservation management.
Carolina Chickadee.
What is coming back, however, looks nothing like what was here at the time Europeans first set foot on these shores hundreds of years ago. It looks nothing like the landscape of our native peoples, who at the time of discovery, had already been decimated by European viruses that preceded settlers by a century. What is here now does not instill fear of predators or disease. These things have come and gone. What remains has been lost and recovered repeatedly, with each cycle of landscape change throwing off another handful of species, some gone for good, some slowly edging their way back. Like the cement shell of the trolley generator building that sits hollow and decaying in the woods, this is more like nature in ruin clawing its way back. I'm always a little sad to visit places like this. Though I enjoy watching people come out and enjoy their connections with the outdoors, this semi-wild environment is like an echo. It's as though we've forgotten what really wild may have been like, and we don't know how to identify the signals of recovery. Maybe, since humans were on the menu thousands of years ago, we don't want to remember!
Forested wetland along the trolley track berm.
It's true that people come to parks to enjoy nature, but what they see now is just what they expect to see: a safe, quiet, recreational area that offers the harried, modern soul a place to unwind. People hike, birdwatch (like us), fish, wade, ride bikes, walk dogs (on leashes), without realizing that the baseline of ecological function has shifted into a mere shadow of its former self, devoid of all fang and claw. When a fox or coyote is observed, we speak and act from ancient fear-based emotion, wild tales and fables, gazing through woods for a predator lurking there, hand on gun with traps and poison at the ready.
Female Northern Cardinal in open edge.
What we see now is a barely functional landscape, a severe reduction of a complex ecosystem that once included higher level predators. No bears, bobcats, cougars, wolves. No trophic cascades of predator-prey relationships and all the visible and invisible implications these relationships have for a landscape free of human interference. Of course that interference was well underway over 10,000 years ago and landscapes change dramatically through climatic and geological events as well. But my point here is not to advocate for the intentional human facilitated reintroduction of big predators into a long-settled landscape, but that when they do wander in, and they do (as in the case of bears and big cats and wild dogs in Maryland), we not go ape-crazy about it.
Tufted Titmouse.
A landscape in recovery requires its predators to bring a system into dynamic balance. First studied by Aldo Leopold and his contemporaries in wildlife management, the science of trophic cascades has grown steadily within the context of conservation biology and ecological restoration. When only a few decades ago policy dictated that the purposeful removal of predators would make for a healthier prey-based environment (to benefit the human hunter), we are now realizing the weakness and bias this line of thinking entailed.
Hermit thrush in thorny edge by the marsh.
I can't help but feel a little sad walking through such a beautiful place. It's a sadness I am coming to feel more and more the older I get, knowing my grandchildren will live in one of two worlds: one made richer for our understanding of the wild, or one impoverished by our ignorance of it. I watched a video (linked in Notes below) this weekend from one of my favorite trans-disciplinary science websites Edge.org where Dr. Jennifer Jacquet describes how extinction can be viewed in several different ways to include economic and ecological extinction. She tells of the decline of Florida fisheries, the loss of the Stellar's seacow, and of Old George the Pinta Island tortoise - the last of his kind. She said something that caught my ear, "I stay up at night lamenting about the loss of species..." I think I do too and walking in the absence of creatures and plants sometimes follows me like a shadow. I think about elk a lot and must plan a trip to central Pennsylvania to see them - get my elk fix.
Successional Coastal Plain forest at North Point State Park.
As Mike and I walked along we stopped at a road berm to look over at the soybean field where earlier in the morning I'd watched a large white-tailed deer buck. In full rut the buck chased two does through a vine-covered finger of woods that divided two fields. He stopped breathless when he realized I had been there for some time. On full alert he stretch his swollen neck, sniffing the wind, looking in my direction. He shook his massive rack of antlers, pawing, snorting. Then he turned and looked through the woods to the opposite field to check for another threat to emerge. Another buck maybe? A long breathless wait, a pause silent and edgy. I imagined a panther on a limb, a wolf circling wide around the field. Today it could well be the crack of a poacher's rifle. How many kinds of predators has the deer learned to watch for over tens of thousands of years? Millions of years? What predators are imprinted on his genetic memory we can only guess may have hunted his kind in the time before settlement?
In full rut but still cautious.
So does this re-wilding resemble in any way the ecological communities that were here before human interference? No, sadly not at all. It is fascinating to see, however, how persistent nature is, how quickly it fills a vacuum with interconnected living networks of air, water, and land plants and animals. Sturgeon are making a comeback thanks to ambitious long term reintroduction and management programs. But are they the same genetically? Has captive fisheries breeding changed them or altered their behavior? Bald eagles are everywhere, when only fifty years ago they were completely absent, thanks to environmental laws and protections. How must they re-learn their landscapes of industrial and military claim? The coyote has a presence in our suburbs, edging into the city no doubt feasting on some of the tens of thousands of large rats that occupy Baltimore. She is coming back all on her own - but she is not like her ancestors either, transformed by her time in exile in the north country, having cross-bred with Canadian wolves. I doubt we will ever see elk migrating to their ancestral wintering grounds on Chesapeake shores, even though reintroduced herds are growing in north central Pennsylvania. They don't know the old routes. The old routes are fragmented by interstates and sprawl.
Bay Shore Amusement Park opened in 1906 and closed in 1947.
Mike informed me that deer are relatively new to the park, having come in over the past two decades. He saw not even one in the 90s when assigned here for many years. That jarred me. I am so used to seeing whitetails everywhere I go when in Pennsylvania and northern Maryland. The idea that they are new to North Point after almost a hundred and fifty years of intense development pressure - well, it warmed this naturalist's heart! Can a natural predator be far behind? Would we even allow it?
White-throated Sparrow.
As I was leaving the park to head home, I was happy to watch a family observing the two does that had returned to the soybean field. I stopped and put down the window: "Nice to see, eh?" Mom turned and said "My boys have never seen real deer before! This is so exciting!" In what once was the huge parking lot for the Bay Shore Amusement Park now turned agricultural fields and woods, the big buck re-emerged and continued the chase.
One
of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a
world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite
invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make
believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he
must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that
believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.
- Aldo Leopold
Notes:
Trophic cascade theory is a powerful way to think about and envision a rewilding landscape. Trophic Cascades: Predator, Prey, and the Changing Dynamics of Nature is a great read for the naturalist and landscape ecologist alike. Peter Terborgh and James Estes, editors.
An amazingly beautiful video of the trophic cascade events that occurred when wolves returned to the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks in Wyoming. Titled "How Wolves Change Rivers" this case study reveals the many ways ecological communities are released from the constraints of too many elk (called 'deer' by the Brit narrator) and how predation pressure of wolves releases cascades for other predators and scavengers, increasing biodiversity at multiple levels and scales.
The Barrens, an increasingly rare habitat-type found in our region, reminds us that life started and evolved in a heavy metal environment. To appreciate these unique geoecological communities you have to start with the chemical composition of the serpentine belt that cuts an arc across the Mid-Atlantic. The presence of serpentine, a hydrothermally formed rock that once oozed as magma from canyons deep in the ocean floor, signals a hostile growing environment when it is found at the surface. Known for its seafoam green color when polished (i.e. foot traffic, vehicle tires, buffing), the ore chromite was important in steel and iron-making and was heavily mined from the 1830s through the early 1900s. Road and place names still carry the heritage of quarrying as Rocks Chrome Hill Road (Harford County, Maryland), Bald Hill Road (Baltimore County, Maryland), Barrens Road (York County, Pennsylvania), Chrome Mine Road (Lancaster County, Pennsylvania) and many others.
Polished serpentine on footpath - Willisbrooke Preserve, Chester County PA
The story of this landscape starts as much of the region's geological history does, during the Paleozoic Era. Some 500 to 250 million years ago, ocean sediments, volcanic islands, and ultramafic crusts (that ooozy stuff gone solid) was squeezed together as accreted terranes (parts of other land masses) and thrust onto the North American continental plate by the great migration of the North Africa. Imagine layers of sodden leaves packed tight against a midstream boulder - layer upon layer of tilted ocean beds, compressed islands, flattened vertical pillows of lava, welded seams of sediment end on end, and the mantel crust itself pushed up and over an unyielding plate. Where the layers of raw ocean bottom stand vertically exposed at the surface they look a lot like this:
The chemical composition of serpentine is a combination of magnesium, chromium, iron, and nickle - heavy metals and toxic! These are the components of Earth's deep interior that have come to the surface very different than other types of igneous or continental crusts! The resulting soils are very low in calcium and other minerals important to plant life. The most tolerant lichens and mosses introduce basic biomechanical processes that slowly weather the rock and here a thin layer of nutrient and moisture-holding humus accumulates.
Thin soils over gravel - Goat Hill Serpentine Barrens, Lancaster County, PA
Exposed cliff outcrop near the old chromite mine - Goat Hill.
Serpentine soils do not hold moisture well. Outcrops and barrens occur on steep land, atop high, sun-scorched ridges. Thin soils are more like those found in desert environments. Endemic plant communities that form in these places are strictly contained by the boundaries of the serpentine exposure. The most plant diversity occurs in pockets of soil accumulation and in shady areas that hold precious moisture. The rarest of plants occur where conditions exclude all others. Those that thrive do so on inhospitable ground. There is a lesson here in the evolution of life in a toxic environment, like the environment we've created out of heavy manufacturing and industry over the course of the Industrial Revolution. Heavy metal soils are found downwind of industrial centers, dump sites, and brown fields of manufacturing plants along the Eastern seaboard. I wonder what a serpentine barrens can teach about reclaiming soils for a less toxic life?
A tuft of Bryum moss holds morning dew - Goat Hill.
Pixie cup lichen holds rain droplets and dew in its upturned bowls - Goat Hill.
I examined collections of moss and lichen and noted that oak and sassafras leaves from distant woods had blown across the savannah and were caught in tangle of pine needles and fallen twigs. The simple process of blowing wind imports vegetative matter, dirt, and dust needed to start the process of forming a duff layer. When enough of a stable surface has built up grasses will germinate and take root. It may take centuries for enough organic matter to build under a living layer of grass and moss before pines and bear oak can establish. The forests in most protected barrens are over a hundred years old but may only be twenty feet high!
Gravels and distinct soil zones that favor grasses then trees - Goat Hill.
The savannahs of the barrens served indigenous people well. Susquehannock and Lenne Lenape hunted large grazing animals on these grasslands: bison, elk, deer. Early hunters learned to manage the savannahs for ultimate productivity by burning the barrens every few years to kill off intruding forest and scrub and to encourage fresh new grasses favored by big game. Whether fires caused by lightening or managed by man, this process is essential to barrens ecology even now. Today the Nature Conservancy, Natural Lands Trust, and Pennsylvania State Forests management in the WIlliam Penn Forest section include control burns in cyclical applications. The only thing we are missing are the large herbivores!
Willisbrook Preserve.
Can you imagine when large parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania existed as lush grasslands? I can picture how beautiful it must have been! Though the barrens landscape is but one type of Eastern prairie, the whole classification of native grassland in our area is considered endangered under threat from suburban sprawl and highway expansion. What developer doesn't love a treeless plain on which to build the next mega-mansion neighborhood? Sally and I gawked as a new 'carriage home' community was being built right up to the edge of the Willisbrook Barrens Preserve. Surrounded by sprawl, conservation and land trust groups scramble to save these places from development.
Indian Grass, Willisbrook Preserve.
Dropseed Grass, Willisbrook Preserve.
At Goat Hill Preserve, William Penn State Forest, Lancaster County, survey flags are found along the trails - please don't remove them. Rutgers researchers are looking how shifts in ecological communities occur over time as soils build and improve, and as plant communities colonize and migrate. All living things require metals for metabolism and evolution has provided ways to balance this with the possibility of toxic overload, especially in those plants that tolerate these soils.
The Rose Trail start at the Goat Hill parking lot.
What is interesting about plant studies on inhospitable land is that heavy metals in our atmosphere, emitted by coal burning power plants, a century of historic heavy industrial steel industry, vehicle and manufacturing plant emissions, all eventually end up in our soils. This forces ecological communities to quickly adapt or perish. What we are learning from the barrens may help us with bioremediation strategies that address toxic industrial sites including the use of moss and lichen soil builders and tolerant plant communities. It looks like lichens, mosses, and grasses save the day!
Research site, Goat Hill Barrens.
The evolutionary responses of plants to a toxic environment include complex interactions within biogeochemical community networks. What we know about the serpentine barrens is that, realistically, conditions should be so severe here that it might just as well be desert. But it isn't. So our curiosity is piqued and we begin to ask questions. At the level of genes, mutation, and adaptation, complex responses change the trajectory of an organism's ability to thrive or die. As I walked around this achingly beautiful grassland with Sally at Willisbrook Preserve on Saturday, and by myself at Goat Hill on Sunday, I couldn't help but ask questions that have everything to do with our own survival in a world we've made hostile by our own doings:
Maiden Hair Fern on the edge of a grassland community.
Is there a contemporary proxy for environmental adaption to human-induced heavy metal pollution?
What can life's ancient and exquisite ability to form protective systems teach us about enhancing our own prospects for survival?
How do mammals and birds intersect and interact with disconnected grasslands communities in our region?
Will it ever be possible to reintroduce large grazing animals like elk (that are doing fine in North Central PA, thank you!) into some of our larger barrens landscapes? What would the trophic cascade look like if elk were re-introduced?
Bushy aster is a rare blue flowered serpentine plant, Goat Hill.
Serpentine aster, another rarity, is abundant at both sites.
A tiny mustard flower in a brown and parched section.
I don't think it's a matter of biomicry, to simply copy what another species is doing to survive, but a question of restoring relationship to other species from bacteria to bald eagles and beyond. The world of the serpentine barrens teaches us about the processes of biological community evolution, some important lessons in a world where we are just waking up to the idea that, as Leopold said, we are part of landscape community.
The start of a grassland - marked for migration survey.
Notes:
Goat Hill Preserve is closed from October to January for hunting season.
There are several conservation lands that feature or include serpentine barrens in our area. You might be surprised, however, at how development and the pressures of other types of land use have surrounded them.
Friends of the Stateline Serpentine Barrens oversees a broad expanse of serpentine barrens, working towards a connective sanctuary concept of interrelated sites. They maintain an index of published papers regarding flora, fauna, paleoclimate, and geology on this site. http://www.statelineserpentinebarrens.org/home/about_the_state_line_serpentine_barrens
Emily Monosson, PhD has written an incredible book for us science and natural history geeks interested in evolutionary response to hostile environments. Evolution in a Toxic World: How Life Responds to Chemical Threats (2013).
Saturday August 9, 2014: Northeast MD to Perryville MD, 11 miles
Kim and I continued on our Mason Dixon Trail this past Saturday to complete the MDT from Chadd's Ford PA to Northeast, Maryland, a trek we started Memorial Day Weekend and will continue until we finish all 200 miles of this National Heritage Trail. Today's section completes the last reach of MDT east of the Susquehanna. Map # 7 shows a fairly straight trek of 11 miles, a nice mix of road walking (oh, how we've gotten used to this!) and what was described as a well-marked path through sandy pine woods, grasslands, and barrens. Think bobwhite, woodcock, turkey, wildflowers! By 5 o'clock in the afternoon the map was crunched into a ball and stuffed into my cargo pocket. We called it the Stupid Map, Joke Map, Map of Lies, the Map of No Use. Kim and I ate our end-of-the-trail celebratory ice cream and snowball in exhausted silence. Then we started laughing. What else could we do?
MDT does not pass by the most scenic views.
"When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about."
Edward Abbey,
The Monkey Wrench Gang, 1975.
Now I'll say this up front: Cecil County has some mighty fine natural areas. I've been to a few, I've seen them myself. But DO NOT HIKE this MDT section if you want to see any of those. The trail crosses behind an iffy-at-best trailer park after walking a road mile in search of the sandy path into a mixed deciduous and pine woods. Here is where I had my first sad. The trail is used as one long unending community dump. Throw in a couple of mean dogs and a lot of squalor. Note to MDT Club: Relocate the trail!
Blue blazes look more like lichen.
Leaving mean dogs, trash, trailer park behind we followed what we thought was the MDT through a set of confusing loops and connectors courtesy of said trailer park's four-wheeler riders, leading to an array of bigger junk, mostly burned furniture and disemboweled vehicles. We stopped the first time. Kim pulled out her GPS. I pulled out The Map. Where was the straight line path? I squinted at a tree. Kim squinted at a tree. "Is that lichen or is that a blaze?" We decided it was a blaze and followed the four-wheeler trail.Note to MDT Club: After relocating trail, add fresh bright blue blazes.
Flood debris bridge over raging torrent - not.
The Stupid Map then said something about crossing a stream on some wet rocks and something else about a parallel trail should the ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING and BEWARE OF MEAN DOG signs bother us. We added a few more loops through a very new condo development while trying to avoid the nasty neighbors who made it very clear they had nastier dogs than those in the trailer park. We wandered up a flood-battered stream trying to find anything that would pass as a blue blaze on the other side. No such luck. The GPS gave our location as being somewhere in Cecil County. That was helpful. All we needed to do was to find a cable right-of-way and happily re-enter the woods. Note to MDT Club: Revise the map. It is now a joke.
Look! Nature in tire ruts! Broad Leaf Arrowhead in bloom.
We blundered across driveways and sneaked through weirdly inviting poison ivy-covered fences - it gave me a warm Santa Claus kind of feeling to just drop in on people having breakfast on their back decks. And then, like a sign from above, there was a blue blaze - quick, follow it! Through a patch of woods we skipped! The Trail! We Found the Trail! Until we came to a road crossing and saw the best of the most clearly marked blazes of the day (the second one) on the other side of a chain-link fence clearly placed to discourage hikers. We followed the fence all the way around this property and house in hopes of intersecting the trail beyond the backyard. The Map of Deception gave me a paper cut. Note to MDT Club: Talk to the guy who closed the trail with a brand new chain link fence.
Nature's barbed wire. Greenbrier vine.
We snagged spider webs like nobody's business. When our spider web stick ran out of batteries, my face collected them. Yellow jackets? No problem. The pain and swelling goes away eventually. Nature's version of barbed wire - greenbrier - seemed to utterly enjoy itself reaching out to slice our legs with needle straight thorns. There was blood. So isn't this story fulfilling some definition of heroism? "Pain? What pain? I can take it!" We found the trail again (see faded blaze picture above) and cheered "It's straight to the Restoration Hardware Industrial Park!" And it was straight - straight into a twenty foot high bank of thorny thicket with a twelve foot high fence adorned with razor wire at the top. The trail was nowhere to be found. "Let's just walk around the outside of the fence until we come to the trail on the other side!" I said cheerfully. HA HA HA HA HA HA! Right. Note to MDT Club: Please send a thank-you note to Restoration Hardware security for being off-duty today.
There was no way around. I forgot my machete.
We tried to bushwack our way around the complex. We went up and down the twenty foot embankment twice trying to find the path The Joke Map said was surely there. More thorns. More blood. We made it as far as the first corner and LO! The fence was a little loose at the bottom. Kim pulled and tugged and Oh-Tro-Lo-Lo! It seemed to be just enough room for us to squirm under. "Do you think we'll get in trouble?" "Oh! I hope so! Let's get arrested so we get a free ride out of this place!" "PLEASE SOMEONE ARREST US! LOOK TRESPASSING! HERE WE ARE!"
Now here's where I have to use some discretion. We took pictures of what happened next, which was basically illegal and funnier than all get-out. But we don't want to demonstrate on this blog what it took to peel back the fence and trespass inside the industrial park for fear someone may try to duplicate it or implicate us in this, our crime of desperation. So just imagine those pictures HERE:
We waved at the security cameras. We walked a half mile across the back of the asphalt lot. We watched longingly for a security truck. We stopped and took pictures of the multihued truck trailers parked artistically in a storage lot. We waited for a loudspeaker, an alarm, a deep voice annoucning us as trespassers. None came. We found our way out by rolling commando-style under the back gate at the far end of the park. Then we ate lunch. It was good. We made some notes, like "Remember to pack bolt cutters, hacksaw, and wire snips" for our next hike. Hayduke lives. Note to MDT Club: Please make a MDT commando patch available for those who successfully break into and escape the industrial park.
The Map of Lies shows not this large object ahead.
Foy's Hill is a large dome of unconsolidated gravel, sand, and clay leftover from the great ice age melt-off when the interbraided Susquehanna and the Delaware Rivers dumped huge loads of sediment here. It's a beautiful barrens forest of pitch pine and grasses that will soon however be bulldozed for a sand and gravel quarry expansion. I had another sad after seeing all the survey stakes. The Map of Jokes and Deception described thrilling views from the top of Foys Hill. We would see the Bay! But no. We weren't anywhere near the trail. But we did have a beautiful view of a Horton Waterspheroid.
Sand barren grassland habitat - soon to be a sand quarry expansion.
Sixty-four foot high Horton Waterspheroid - we used to call these water towers back in the day.
To save the loss of any more blood, and what was left of our energy, we decided to follow the service road down to Rt. 40 and hoof it west to the intersection with Rt. 7, where we easily found the blue blaze again - on the sign post in the middle of the median strip between cars and trucks roaring by at 70 miles per hour. We crossed, collapsed at the quarry gate, and had some more lunch.
Road walking down Rt. 7 - The Old Post Road.
Past the 1836 office of the Principio Furnace, destroyed by the British in 1813. Our second iron works of the MDT.
James Run Formation marking the Fall Line on Principio Creek
There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some.
Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of
locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life.
Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who’s
always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much
bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details.- Ed Abbey
Passing by the historic iron furnace, mansion, its associated graded school, built by and named for the 1800s iron master George P. Whitaker , I was reminded of how important the geology of this area was to early industry and settlement. It kept my mind off the long hilly walk and the increasingly humid air. Hiking across the bridge at Principio Creek we stopped to admire the ultra-mafic, metamorphosed, weathered, and strikingly beautiful chutes and ledges of the James Run Formation. This formation surfaces in a few Piedmont creeks from here to west of Baltimore and south to the Potomac. We stood on wedges of a terrane one belonging to a volcanic island arc that formed over a subduction zone during the continental collisions of the Pre-Cambrian. These are some incredibly old rocks. Think Aleutian Islands or Hawaiian Islands caught and crunched up like the Map of Doom and Deception in my pocket.
Nearing the end of the Cecil County trek.
We turned into the community park at Ikea Way just coming in to Perryville, then dog-legged a turn on to an old carriage road, now grassed over and part of a greenway that follows along behind the VA hospital. We saw a picnic table and had some more lunch. I put my head down on my backpack and moaned softly into it "Omphimumphitaaabummpledo." "Yes," Kim confirmed, "Only a mile to go." Regaining our pace and stride (more like a limping stumble) we topped a hill and looked across to Havre de Grace at the far shore of the Susquehanna River! The Chesapeake to the south! The Boxcar Ice Cream Shop to the north! Map #7 completed at 11 miles in 8 hours. Note to MDT Club: We did this despite the Map of Horrors!
We ate our end-of-trail ice cream and snowball in exhausted silence in Perryville.
To celebrate, we drove down to the beach near Kim's place, toasted Teddy Roosevelt with a Coors (he once stayed in the small hunting lodge here to hunt geese and ducks on the Susquehanna Flats), and played with Stanley the Welcoming Committee. Stanley's smile made it all worth it. We made it to the Bay and will soon cross the Susquehanna! Onward!
Stanley welcomes us to the Chesapeake!
The Chesapeake!
Notes:
We're really not mad at the MDT hiking club. We understand that some areas are developing quickly and that maps become outdated almost as soon as they are printed. Be sure to check the club's website for updates, but in our case, there were no mentions of trail conditions. What if each county's hiking clubs organized clean-up days, or brush-clearing weekends, or re-routing meetings? I worry that for someone coming a distance to do this section - not from around here as Kim and I are - they could get very lost and even more discouraged than we were. Re-routing must happen to avoid the trailer park. I hate to say it, but no amount of clean-up days will address the apathy and disrespect people have for the trail here.
Check for updates to the trail here. The chain link fence is mentioned on Red Toad Road. It might have saved us some time and wandering to follow their suggestion but where's the adventure in meandering through another development? http://www.masondixontrail.org/news1.htm
