PA Horseshoe Trail, French Creek State Park

I want to hike all of the parks that the Horseshoe Trail passes through so I started this weekend with French Creek State Park about thirty miles north of Philadelphia. I did a big loop up and around Williams Hill where a State Lands Firefighting Unit is based, then down to Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site. I ran out of hiking time and drove the remaining four miles  St. Peter's Company Town (listed on the National Register of Historic Places). The day's total mileage was 8.5 miles, give or take a few tumbles.

The start of my French Creek State Park loop.

All the leaves that were on the trees last week are now on the ground. This made for some very tricky footing heading up and down Williams Hill. The trail follows old charcoal wagon roads and is deeply gullied in many places. That's bad enough as it is, but add a foot of fresh oak leaves to cover all the rocks and cobbles and you've got a heck of an ankle twisting hike. I stumbled and fell several times and would have done so a hundred times more if I hadn't been hiking with my poles. I met two groups on the hill trails and everyone was complaining about twisted ankles and pulled tendons.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet.

The sound of fresh leaves kicking up under foot was so loud that I had to stop several times just to listen to the quiet. I encountered several energetic mixed winter flocks, with the titmouse pair always in charge. A very active Ruby-Crowned Kinglet could have cared less about me being just a few feet from where he was foraging. My one good bird picture of the day!

Orienteering post.

Coming down off of Williams Hill, I heard a man yell. Like really loud. I couldn't tell where he was as the sound of leaves rustling under my boots made it hard to catch every bad word he was saying - loudly. I came upon the intersection of the Horseshoe and Boone Trails and found him there in the gully that is the trail with his running shoe off. With no ankle protection he rolled off a hidden rock and twisted his foot under him as he fell. OUCH! His wife was tending to a wrap of duct tape over a bandana to try to stiffen the joint for the walk down. He refused any more help (he was very embarrassed and taking out on her) so I continued on my way down. Within minutes I had pinched a tendon in my ankle, thankful I had my high topped backpacking boots on! It could have been a fall with more serious consequences.

Hopewell Lake.

Now on the Boone Trail I wandered into a group camping area with old CCC-era sleeping cabins and a beautiful camp hall and kitchen much like the one my mother managed when we were growing up on a summer camp property. My dad was the caretaker there and for nine months we had 600 acres of hills, cabins, the hall, great kitchen and creek to ourselves. We had wonderful family gatherings there in the off season including Thanksgiving dinners for a hundred people! When I came upon the hall at French Creek I was flooded with happy memories and stood there looking at it for a very long time.

A wonderful flood of memories when I came upon this camp hall and kitchen!

I reached a smooth gravel road and walking became easier on that sore right ankle. I met the couple from up top as he limped off the trail further down the road. He looked to be in quite a bit of pain. I offered to hike back to the parking lot with them and give him some Ibuprofen I keep in my car (hikers candy!) so we walked slowly along. He wasn't complaining as much, but clearly not having his best day. We arrived at the parking lot on the lake and I fetched the pills (and took two myself!). I said goodbye, then continued on to follow the lakeshore trail towards Hopewell Furnace. Like many of my hikes in Pennsylvania, I have to remember that these were industrial landscapes. Even without the historic buildings and wayside interpretive signs, the clues of this area's iron mining past are all around me.

CCC-built 1935 spillway to Hopewell Lake. Very birdy!

Out on the lake were buffleheads and mallards. Canada Geese came in to land by the hundreds! I crossed the spillway and found the cattail meadow below the dam to be very birdy with White-Throated Sparrows, Robins, Mockingbirds, Winter Wrens, more Kinglets, Juncos, Titmice, and a Fox Sparrow!  The path became another wagon road, but this one is kept well by the park and is wide and flat. The yellow blazes turned into yellow horseshoes as I entered Hopewell Furnace National Historic Village.

What would have been a busy crossroad is now a National Heritage Trail.

The path leads past many relics: an old anthracite furnace ruins, a collier's hut, the foundation of a charcoal house. Of course I had to explore e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. I dawdled and wandered and poked my head in here and there. Great stuff this history business!  And great geology too! This hilly region is part of the complex of hills that connects to an earlier hike at Middle Creek WMA a few weeks ago. The iron ore region of South Central and Southeastern PA extends in an arc across the state and defines the south edge of a huge rift basin known as the Gettysburg and Newark Basins. The underlying rock types and geology have everything to do with the ecosystems of these hills.

Anthracite furnace ruins.

Anthracite ruins and the big blob of iron left in the middle of the furnace crucible.

There are mines, quarry pits, charcoal pits (or circles), tailings piles, borrow pits, cut stone waste, and old roads everywhere, but this is iron country through and through. Known as the Schuylkill Hills, this region was logged for its hardwoods, chestnut, red and white oaks, to make charcoal to fuel the iron forges and furnaces. Just inside the Hopewell Furnace NHS is a set of waysides that explain the charcoal making process (the old pictures shown here were taken from those panels). A collier's hut stands nearby.

Cordwood stacked to make charcoal.

Making charcoal involved teams of men - loggers, sawyers, drovers, and the collier and his assistant. This guy had to be one tough cookie! The cordwood was stacked precisely around a chimney, layer upon layer stacked leaning into the center, until the mound was twenty feet across. The collier would set the mound afire and allow it to burn hot for a short while before covering it with dirt and wet leaves. It was left to smolder, 'charring' the wood inside.

Colliers hut.

As the stacked wood slowly collapsed the collier would rake off some of the covering, very carefully. If the mound began to show yellow smoke up through the chimney it meant the wood was too hot, so it was covered again. This required the collier and his assistant to climb all over the mound risking a cave-in at any time to cover and uncover the mound, always watching for the proper blue smoke to indicate that charcoal was forming inside.

The last collier at Hopewell.

The collier and his assistant minded the pit day and night to keep it at proper temperature. A simple earthen hut was built at each set of mounds so that the men had a place to rest and eat their meals. No sleep for anyone until the mound was reduced to charwood, though. It was messy, smoky, and very hot work. The cool of the hut must have felt like heaven. When all was done the charcoal was raked open and cooled then shoveled cold into the charcoal wagons for the trip to the furnace. Acres and acres of oak were consumed every day the furnace was in blast - week upon week of roaring blast. It was loud and dangerous business. 

Water wheel pumping the bellows that fire the furnace.

The trail winds right through the iron furnace village, past workers homes, the iron master's home, the company store, and draft animal barn. Horses were the most important part of such a large operation. The hauled everything - wagons of slag away from the furnace, pig iron and castings to the forges and shops, ore, limestone, and charcoal to the furnace.Today there are two token heavy horses on the grounds as well as two big oxen, also very important to hauling and logging. 

This is one very heavy (and kissable) draft horse!

Charcoal wagons ran along the charcoal roads throughout the region.

 The Hopewell Furnace is one of the finest preserved examples of 19th century iron industry. It's covered walkway leads from the charcoal barn where the wagons would line up. Ore, limestone, and charcoal were dumped into the stack from above. Below the blast master maintained constant watch on the process. Explosions were not common but when they did occur, men died and buildings were destroyed. The eerie glow of blast at night filled the valley.

Hopewell Furnace House.

The hearth at the base of the crucible.

The sound of the large waterwheel cranking on its giant oaken axle and the whoooshing of the large bellows was a constant backdrop to the roar of the furnace. Men shouting, horses whinnying, the creak and crunch of wagons wheels on slag roads - it must have been deafening to work in close proximity to the furnace. Closest of all was the iron master himself, who lived in a fine mansion a few hundred yards from the furnace. When an emergency occurred he was right there to tend to it.

Iron Master's House and draft animal barn behind.

The day I hiked through, Hopewell Furnace was brimming with young Mennonite men and women. Unlike the 'English' visitors who seemed preoccupied with their smart phones and taking gads of pictures, the Mennonite men in particular studied every aspect of the village. The young women visited the workers homes and spend happy time with the heavy horses.

Mennonite boys inspect the sand casting area.

I thought about all the different kinds of people who must have worked here. The furnace operated from 1771 to 1883 and employed many free black men and women as well as slaves early on. Though the original Iron Master, Mark Bird, owned around 20 enslaved people, after 1780 slavery on the whole in Pennsylvania declined rapidly when the Pennsylvania Assembly ordered an emancipation that year. Quakers in the area assisted run-away slaves from the south through the area during the 1800s until the mid-1860s. Many took to living in the rocky hills near here where men found work in the forest as sawyers and colliers. There are several small African American communities nearby at Joanna and Six Penny Creek, remnants from freedman's communities of the late 1800s, and carefully tended cemeteries bear the headstones of the African American men and their families who worked in area quarries, mines, and at the furnace itself.

Tallus slope on the edge of French Creek State Park and Hopewell NHS.

Large oxen graze in the meadow. Beyond them is a railway.

The most notable item manufactured here at the village was the Hopewell Furnace woodstove. Every home and office, store and shop in the area had at least one. Many were sold in Reading and Philadelphia. I stopped in at the workers homes and the park Visitor Center to look closely at the fine castings that when assembled panel by panel became beautiful stoves.  The furnace buildings contain castings tables, frames, and mold boards. On special weekends the craft of sand casting is demonstrated.

Heating by wood in a workers home.

Cast panels for assembly into a variety of stoves.

A museum piece - Hopewell Stove at the Visitor's Center.

While at the Visitor's Center I did my time check and decided it was time to reverse course and head back around the lake to return to my car. The sun was getting low and I was a little worried about a tire that had gone flat on the day before. I'd had it plugged, but still - I didn't want to find out the hard way on a dark, narrow Pennsylvania road that might need to be replaced after all.

Under the surface of the leaves - a million rocks!

I stumbled and tripped back along a charcoal road, my ankle reminding me that I'd need to take another Ibuprofen before bed. I decided I had just enough late afternoon sun to make the few miles drive to St. Peter's Company Town. This is where all the local mines, furnaces, and forges sent their products to be shipped to the cities north, east, west, and south along the Wilmington and Northern or Delaware and Lancaster railroads that converged here. An industrial village since 1845, it ceased to be a mining and industry center in the late 1970s. Thankfully the forge and quarry owners had the foresight to preserve the town under historic ordinance and petitioned to have it added to the Register of Historic Places.

St. Peter's Company Town.

Up the hill behind the town is the great stone quarry pit, now safely fenced off, with one of its many derricks visible just at the top in the woods. As is true where I live in the slate region of southern Pennsylvania, the open quarry pits have been too attractive to local youth over the years. The cold waters of a deep quarry lake can be too hard to resist on a hot, humid summer day and some young folks have died diving here. Even though this pit is now fenced off with a nine-foot chain link barrier, there are dozens of smaller and remote lake pits scattered all over the region and its a talk that many parents have with their teenagers, to be safe and sober when exploring around them. I'll admit to having swum in the slate quarries of Delta in my high school years, but after losing a friend to a diving accident at one when I was twenty, I keep away.

The Big Pit at St. Peter's Company Town.

Iron forge and assembly plant at St. Peter's Company Town.

The sun was getting low (and I prayed my plugged tire was not) so I finished my exploring and headed back to the large parking area north of the town. I looked down into the French Creek Ravine where hikers explored the large diabase boulder field that almost blocks the river. An erosive landscape of ravine and down-cutting streams, the creek slowly ate away the surrounding soft rock that held the instrusive igneous dikes of magmatic trap rock during Triassic times, popping large boulders out of the ravine walls over millions of years and smoothing them over time with the weathering action of water and ice.

Diabase boulders, French Creek Ravine.

Now the creek bed is a maze of tumbled, jumbled boulders. Though fossils are hard to find in this area, there are some outcrops of plant and animal fossil-bearing rock within the park. 200 million year old dinosaur tracks have been found within the Gettysburg and Newark Basins not far from here. But looking down in to the ravine from the porches and ledge gardens of the quaint homes and beautiful inn and bakery here, I can imagine the fantastic animals that once roamed these hills.

Beautiful ledge garden over the ravine.

Notes:

The geological and mining report for Hopewell Furnace and French Creek State Park can be found here. Very interesting reading!
http://nature.nps.gov/geology/inventory/publications/reports/hofu_gri_rpt_view.pdf

Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site webpage:
http://www.nps.gov/hofu/index.htm

French Creek State Park. Print your trail maps from this website! There are no maps available in the park. There are over 30 miles of hiking trails available here and that link to other trails, including the Horseshoe Trail. You could spend a week in this park!
http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/findapark/frenchcreek/

PA: Middle Creek WMA, Lancaster Co. - Hiking the Furnace Hills

Pennsylvania has a long tradition of conservation and outdoor recreation. The PA Game Commission is one of the Commonwealth's agencies that works hard to balance the opportunities for hunting, fishing, hiking, and nature appreciation with the need for land management for wildlife. It's a delicate balance, for sure, considering how emotion-packed some of the user group issues can be. But if you know the fall hunting seasons (area closures), peak birding periods in winter (traffic-clogged roads), and wear your blaze orange in both of these seasons, hiking the Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in northern Lancaster County, is a great day hike.

Check out the Visitor Center first for trail maps and beautiful displays.

I explored the Furnace Hill trail system, the Middle Creek WMA's segment of a long arc of ore-rich ridges of red sandstone. A combination of trails starting at the Visitor Center forms a nice 5 mile loop: Conservation Trail, Elders Trail, Middle Creek Trail, and a road walk back to the Visitor's Center that offers several nice views of the lake.  Other loops can be made using a section of the Horseshoe Trail, built in 1935, that passes across the ridges. Horseshoe Trail connects the AT north of Hershey to Valley Forge National Park near Philadelphia and is known as one of the premier long-distance equestrian trails in the East.

A cold front was passing over in the morning hours making for dramatic Furnace Hills views.

I started off on the Conservation Trail at the corner of the parking area. It features a large swath of restored grasslands and meadowlands and beautiful views of the valley. Sparrows were everywhere! White-throateds dominated the meadows and chipping sparrows captained the wind-driven edges of sumac and young maple. A brisk northern wind whipped leaves from the tulip poplar and beech trees in a fantastic yellow leaf fall for most of the day. After a  few hard freezes the only flowering plants remaining out on the meadows  are the purple asters and despite the chilly morning the cold-hardy bumble bees were busy foraging. 

Owl zone! 

The Furnace Hills are part of a large complex of iron-rich landscapes in the Pennsylvania Appalachian foothills that were critical to the Colonial iron industry. Many of the trails through this region are actually surviving Colonial roads that connected mining sites to charcoal pits (an important furnace fuel) to furnaces to industrial pikes and highways. It's important to remember that what may look wild and natural today was once an industrial landscape where few trees stood. The forests that now blanket the Furnace Hills are second and third generation woodlands.

Tulip poplar dominates the hillsides and creek valleys.

Walking along the old roads (i.e. trails) I met up with dozens of other hikers in family groups and small Sunday hiking clubs. Everyone was chatting away in German. "Guten Morgen!" was the happy greeting. It wasn't until I returned to the Visitor Center in the afternoon that I heard any English at all.   Old Order and Mennonite  are incredible birders and naturalists! Whenever I have the opportunity to practice my German I learn something from them. Today I learned that the barred eulen are getting active down in the low woods and to listen for one in particular that is a real show stopper.  Fall through winter is what we call the owling season when most resident species are courting and many northern migrants can be observed through the rural countryside of Pennsylvania. Resident owls include the great horned, screech, barred, northern saw-whet, and barn owls. By late fall and winter we can add northern species like short-eared, long-eared (though these do breed in north central PA), and snowy owls.

Clearly, the barred eulen who lives here disapproves of hikers on his boardwalk! 

The barred owl action began almost as soon as I set foot on the boardwalk that traverses the wet woods between the two ridges I would hike today. I saw him/her only once, a shadow shifting through a bright yellow curtain of foliage, an eulen shape quiet in flight but not in voice! How so much noise can come from a football-sized feathered creature I do not understand, but the owl's caterwauling and barking kept up all the way through the woods and ended when I stepped off the walkway. I waited for other hikers to come by to see if the performance would continue and sure enough a young Mennonite family ventured across the boardwalk escorted the whole way by the hollering eulen. The young children giggled with delight as their dad tried to mimic the owl which only seemed to agitate it even more.

An old iron furnace road showing managed shrub edges for habitat.

Out of the low woods I followed an old gravel road to the Elder Trail start.  Tiny peeps and chirps of early forming winter flocks of chickadees and tufted titmice drifted in and out of the edge habitat on either side. PGC maintains healthy edge zones for wildlife by cutting back the mature trees up to ten feet from the road edge. Though interior trails are not given such treatment, it was nice to have such a broad view through this forest. Numerous horse-drawn carts and buggies rattled along loaded with binocular-wielding birders and picnickers on their way to Sunday afternoon gatherings. The Elder Trail branched off on a two-track road that climbed to the summit of a ridge.

A trotting cart and horse canter up the Laural Road.

The names of the old furnaces are still found throughout the region. In some places the Colonial and Post-Colonial furnaces themselves survive. Upper and Lower Valley Forges, Coventry Forge, Warwick Furnace, Hopewell Furnace, Joanna Furnace, Elizabeth Furnace, Upper and Lower Hopewell Forges, Speedwell Forge, Cornwall Furnace, Colebrook Furnace, Manada Furnace can be found as place names. Cornwall and Hopewell Furnaces are restored historic sites that feature preserved iron worker villages and their original furnaces. Speedwell Forge survives as a restored red stone iron masters house and is a fine B&B. An industrial archeologist has determined that along the arc of iron-rich hills that sweeps from west of the Susquehanna River east to Philadelphia, over 40 forges and furnaces were in production from 1750 through 1820. As forge and furnace technology improved larger furnaces and plants replaced these and following the Civil War the large steel-making plant at Steelton was in full production while all others closed.

A Mennonite hiker shared some great local history information about this old iron road, now the Elder Trail.

I crossed the intersection of the Elder Trail and Horseshoe Trail and headed downhill along an old iron road. I met a Mennonite hiker coming up. He was a font of iron furnace and forge history - most of it shared in German. He drew on my trail map where, outside the WMA, I could find the remains of several Lebanon County foundries and furnaces to the north. He pulled a small point and shoot camera from his pack and showed me a recent find in the woods, the remains of what he called the New Market Furnace. I'll have to check that out, I told him. "Gut! Gut!" he said, "Before natur vernichten!" (Before nature consumes them!)

Horseshoe Trail and Elder Trail intersection on the top of the Furnace Hills Ridge.

Horseshoe Trail heads west along the Furnace Hills ridge on an old furnace road.

I'm not sure why the encounter with the solo hiker in black pants and suspenders slowed me way down. He went on his way up the hill in strong strides. I went on my way downhill. But he went up a lot faster up than I went down. I found myself almost inching along the old road. I wanted to see the landscape the way he did - full of hints and clues to its industrial past. The northwest wind played tricks. The bumping of limbs against trunks and branches against limbs became the thump and rattle of axles and wheels on these rocky wagon roads. Leaning trees squeaking against the boles of others became the sound of high-sided buckboards holding heavy loads of charcoal. The wind created so many voices in the forest that in my lazy stroll down the valley  it wasn't just me hiking, it was we - a friendly ghost kind of hike.

"Fedora" Mennonite family.

I explored an old cabin foundation, the chimney still standing and its mortar  showing clearly the impressions of log walls. I dabbled in a hand-dug well and spooked a large green frog from his yellow blanket of poplar leaves. Red sandstones and conglomerates  were easily quarried from these hills. Driving around the area you can see how beautiful redstone foundations of large German barns and handsome village homes. I stayed at the foundation for some time running my hands over the stone and tracing the deep impressions of the cut-end of logs in the mortar.  Deer moved quickly across the trail and what I thought might be a bear in the distance scramble up a slope - though by now my imagination was so active I well may have dreamed the bear. They are here, however, and from the many large boulders overturned along the trail, a bruin had in the past week or so come through looking for grubs, bugs, ants, and worms.

Chimney still contains log end impressions in its sides.

Autumn woods, especially on blustery days such as this, do play on the imagination. How many "sightings" of panthers and bears turn out to be feral cats and black dogs out exploring? How the mind wants to see wild things! We crave the thrill of seeing something rare or secretive exposed and when our minds create these sometimes fanciful and wild artifacts out of shadows and semi-stories, we feel the goosebumps raise and we shiver a little.

Black Oak on the dry ridge top.

Compared to what settlers may have found running wild in this landscape 350 years ago (and subsequently destroyed) we are only just beginning to see the return of species that our grandparents would never have dreamed of seeing out their farmhouse windows or while on their Sunday walks along the stream. Coyotes big as wolves (the Pennsylvania wolf sanctuary is not far from here), lumbering black bears, a bobcat. I've seen these animals in the Furnace Hills - some for real, others in my imagination -wishing they were as common as the squirrels and as loud as the barred owl. I want them back. I wish them back. As I neared the bottom of the valley within earshot of the creek I stopped short when I saw the bear. It shaped shifted into a black-clad Amish teenager walking along with his German short-haired pointer. I laughed (but shivered again!) and we said "Guten Nachmittag!"

Middle Creek Trail follows an old trolley grade.

The hairpin turn from Elder to Middle Creek Trail is easy to miss. I was still laughing at my imaginary bear when I realized I'd missed the hidden connector and wound up in a parking lot at the bottom of the valley. I retraced my steps until I found the trail, an old trolley grade. At a narrow wooden bridge that sits atop the trolley line bridge abutments I met two young Mennonite hikers exploring some ruins. They asked if I would take their picture with their point-and-shoot camera at standing in front of the old bridge.  "Opa remembers the obus that came through here. He will enjoy this photo. Danke!"  The trolley line ran through nine rural villages and connected many area farmers with markets in Ephrata and Lebanon.  Though it was only 22 miles long the trip from end-to-end took almost two hours! The trolley grade turned trail, however, is only a mile and a half to its terminus and soon I was hiking along on the main road for a final mile back to the Visitor Center.

Views of the lake with happy honking of newly arrived Canada Geese!

I took my late lunch on the tailgate of the car and looked out across the valley. Formations of Canada Geese were swirling around the lake calling to those hundreds already on the ground. Goose greetings were as happy as those of the  German-speaking hikers I'd met on the trail. Looking to the hills I tried to imagine the iron industry here and how it consumed the forests creating ecological wastelands in its hundred-year long wake. Danke! to the PGC and generations of conservation workers for restoring the view, the woods, and the hope that the wild is working its way back home.  

Notes: 

Time your visit carefully during fall migration as this place can fill up fast with birders and tourists, their cars lining the roads and filling every available parking space. Sunday mornings are the best time during peak migration to plan a hike here. Plenty of parking at the Visitor Center before 10, bathroom, and well-stock map racks! Save a little time to wander the museum. 

http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=613318&mode=2

If you are coming from far away and want to stay right in the WMA, you can't go wrong with a few nights here!  http://furnacehills.com/

Don't forget that this is a popular hunting area. Areas are well posted when they are closed for hunts. But always pack a blaze-orange vest or cap just to be safe. "Hunters wear orange and so should you!"

PA: Nixon County Park, York Co. - I'd Rather Walk

Autumn hillside, Nixon County Park, York County, PA.

I used to drive the lead Jeep in long caravans of 4WDs full of tourists visiting the South Carolina coast. We rolled over dunes, roared up barren beaches, and snaked through jungle-like lowcountry forests bedecked in curtains of Spanish moss. The sea island park I worked for made almost all of its money on these tours, so they were important if we wanted to take home a paycheck. As one of my first professional jobs in my early twenties, it's when I really began to dislike tourism. I still do.

Ruby-crowned kinglet, female.

I understand that many natural areas around the world wouldn't be what they are today without the money tourism generates. But the kinds of people who paid a hundred dollars or more for a Jeep tour to look for 'gators weren't the kinds of people I felt any connection to. And they certainly didn't spend enough time to develop any relationship to the landscape. There are different kinds of tourism of course, but I have my particular 'beef' with ecotourism. But after a recent trip to Acadia National Park with its packed tour buses with camera-wielding out-of-towners clogging roads and parking lots, I had to re-examine my dislike for all thing touristy in nature.

UK birders on a morning hike, York County, PA.

Near where I live there is a large Amish Market placed just off a busy interstate. Like in Acadia National Park, the buses can quickly clog the parking area and the sheer numbers of people can overwhelm the vendors and the space inside. I shop here frequently and have often wondered how the Amish bakers, butchers, cheese-makers, and produce sellers handle it.  I asked Susan at the bakery about the tourist hoards. She said "Yes, sometimes I feel like the attraction, and they don't necessarily buy much of what we sell. We rely on our local folks like yourself to sustain our business."

Savannah Sparrow.

I make a terrible tourist. I am not into resorts and I don't enjoy manufactured or fake landscapes. I don't feel the need to be entertained by guides or hired locals, and sure as heck wouldn't pay money for a tour when there is a perfectly good trail system nearby!  I just get out of the car and walk. There's something about the earth underfoot that can tell you more about a place than any guide. Having the freedom to stop along the trail and simply listen or look speaks volumes about the forest, farms, neighborhoods, waters, and people you meet along the way.  But my distaste for tourism runs deep and I credit those first few years on that beautiful sea island in South Carolina with stoking it. 

Overgrown farm road in York County, PA.

The people who paid over a hundred dollars to explore our remote sea island for a two hour Jeep tour had the money to do so, and this leaves travelers without such means to find places and experiences that are affordable and accessible. More affordable or free and accessible places tend to be better patrolled and policed: a good thing for the benefit of those environments. But those out-of-the-way places that cost a lot of money to visit? They are probably out of range of local natural resource authorities as well.  I used to collect those funds. Off-road enthusiasts paid the park hundreds of dollars in back country fees and private tour groups with their own 4WD expedition vans paid three times as much. Tour guides walked out with pamphlets that explained back country rules after they signed a piece of paper to promise they wouldn't harass wildlife.

Monkshood in October.

As leaders of our own tours, we were expected to demonstrate proper back-country travel protocol but I frequently observed permit holders busting over dunes for some 'air time' and once watched an expedition van loaded with "nature" photographers racing a flock of black skimmers up the beach - straight through a nesting area! There was nothing I could do except radio our HQ and hope the one back country ranger (usually on another island) could come by to investigate.  When a region depends on ecotourism to expose rare and fragile environments as economic privilege, the ecosystems suffers first and foremost. Additionally, the influx of ecotourism dollars rarely stems profitable  illegal activities such as poaching, logging, fishing, and resource extraction.   

A healthy young crop of chestnut oak forms a colorful understory.

Before I left my position as rookie ranger in South Carolina I asked permission to walk the island rather than drive it. My supervisor was intrigued. "Walk it?" he asked. "That's eighteen miles up and eighteen miles back." It took me three days. After working on the island for several years, I had never known the island as I did that week hiking it. What I experienced would fill a book. Two hours by Jeep failed to reveal the dozens alligator nests, osprey, eagles, owls, red-bellied mudsnakes, and glass lizards that lived just yards from the vehicle trail. I counted fifty sea turtle nests in places we hadn't even considered good nesting sand, far from the egg poacher's trails. I added ten new birds to  my life list. I watched dolphins cooperatively herd schools of small fish into mud cuts on the back island edge and sat for an hour counting clapper and king rails in a low tide marsh. I caught sight of my first American bittern staring at me from only yards away. I learned to "see" hawks and owls by the chatter of other birds. I began to understand landscape as an immersive experience. 

Nixon Park, York County, PA.

Shortly after my island walk we moved to Maryland where I began my teaching career and continued to work in natural resource education and law enforcement. I made it a point to never spend a full day in the classroom, taking classes outside for hikes in the woods or just around campus. With my park assignments I left the truck and patrol car parked and did most of my shifts on foot, though I worked with rangers who never left their vehicles unless they were writing a ticket or answering nature's call. I hiked with my young children on the AT or local park trails, fly-fished, rode bikes, bird-watched, camped. I never felt the need to travel to resorts or vacation-lands when there was so much to explore close to home.  And when I travel for work now, attending this conference or that meeting, I still make time to walk the landscape and to get to know it from the ground up. I'm a bit feral when it comes to striking out to the woods, mountains, rivers, and  I could easily go completely wild.

An October morning over the foothills of central York County, PA.

I often wonder how much more scientifically and culturally literate we could become as a society of pedestrians who chose to walk or hike compared to touring from inside a tour bus or SUV. I know that freedom from extravagant costs of exclusive resorts and access to privileged locations opens me up to actually putting my money thoughtfully into the pockets of those who work and live in the landscapes I want to explore. My guides are often the folks I meet along the way. Today while hiking at a local park in York County I met up with two nice folks from the UK who had just visited the busy Amish Market and were doing a little birding. I was happy to serve as their 'local guide' and direct them to a nearby hawk watch, the AT, and some great local eateries. (We friended each other on Facebook so that when I get to the UK they can return the local favor!)  "How beautiful to just spend this time and walk," Bryan said as he and his wife Kim topped a ridge trail to look over the view. "We find that in America you imagine more sightings of wild beasts and tend not to see the real ones." 

Bug and Annie hike with their noses.

The idea of being a tourist places me immediately outside an intimate experience of the land and the people who live on it. It's a temporary experience I need only endure for the scheduled time slot. Walking instead unhitches me from an agenda framed by the constraints of the short-term visitor and frees me to look for those things I would otherwise miss. Better yet, walking with my coonhounds engages a whole new world of scent and track that I would have missed completely had not they strained against their harnesses to follow some trail or sniff some sign. 

Crossing.

Debates over the pros and cons of ecotourism are held at all levels of conservation, biological science, economic development, and cultural preservation. But I think that a walk in the woods (not a movie about a walk in the woods) even and especially close to home can certainly be a personal trek well-grounded to the wilds of our own perception. Beyond the itinerary of a highly structured day or week as a visitor with limited time in a new place, pretending (even for just an hour or two) that your feet are striding on home ground can make all the difference, and for that experience alone I'd rather walk.