PA Honey Hollow National Historic Landmark, Bucks County

Here's an idea! Repair a severely damaged landscape so that in a few decades no one will ever know what it looked like before the forests, marshes, lush pastures, and bucolic barns. That's what's happened at Honey Hollow, a small watershed in the Piedmont section of Bucks County, PA. The main valley is under the management of the Bucks County Audubon Society and the entire watershed to include the Audubon property is preserved as conservation land. It is registered as a National Historic Landmark. For those looking for its soil conservation history, it might not be too easy to find.

One clue you've arrived is the official Pennsylvania Historical Marker.

This area is north of Philadelphia in what is now a pretty built up area. In the 1930s though, this rural valley was considered "out there." Not far from the Delaware River and the town of New Hope, PA, there were six farms that occupied the 700 acre watershed of Honey Hollow Creek. The farmers in the high land lamented that their soils had washed away after decades of intensive farming. The farmers downhill lamented that their fields were being buried by silt and mud every time it rained.

A mold board plow.

The age of horse farming was coming to a close and the age of mechanized farming was just reaching these small valleys of eastern Pennsylvania. Horses could plow places where tractors could not, and generations of horse-drawn moldboard plowing had torn, exposed, and destroyed hillier sections of the valley. Some of the farmers in the valley had switched to small tractors by the 1930s when the Soil Conservation Service was invited to survey the watershed for advice on what to do. Top of their list of recommendations was to stop using horses and stop plowing land with the moldboard plow.

Contour plowing with disc plow.

The farmers listened to what the SCS men had to say and made the switch. They also took all of the recommendations for soil conservation to heart: no more moldboard plows - switch to disc plows that turn only the top layer of soil. They planted cover crops to protect soils from rain and sheet erosion. They build miles of hedgerows to block wind protect hillier ground. The replanted trees and allowed forest to regrow in the steepest sections to protect the stream and close-over gullies with canopy. The farmers of Honey Hollow were the first in the nation to band together to protect a watershed as a cooperative - the Honey Hollow Watershed Association. Their work not only healed the land, but served as a model for hundreds of watersheds restorations across the nation.

Old gully.

I hiked about four miles of trails from the nature center, formerly a grain and equipment barn with a seedy story of its own. I had to look hard to find evidence in the thick woods of its past degradation. Hidden in the sloped hillsides were gullies and wash-outs barely visible under reformed forest soils. Steep banks of silt soils and a stream bed full of tumbled limestone boulders attest to Honey Hollow's flash flood history.

Stockton Sandstone (Triassic sediments) in Honey Hollow stream.

Stream crossing on the trail via Ordovician limestone blocks.

The valley is a relic landscape of an ancient Triassic sea, as is much of this section of northern Bucks County. The sedimentary sandstone rocks tell us that shallow seas received the erosional debris from eroding mountains nearvy. A slight rise in the landscape is all that is left of Buckingham Mountain and it crosses the conservancy lands to the north at the headwaters of Honey Hollow Creek.

American Chestnut sapling.

The hike up the stream bed reveals a forest in recovery. Update from Charlie Davis, Natural History Society of Maryland. " American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) is not considered an early succession plant—it is very tolerant of shade, which is a characteristic of late successional/climax species. It would have been a relict at Honey Hollow that somehow made it through the disturbance of forest clearing. It probably persisted on land that was cut and grazed, but not cleared. American beech suckers tend to be resistant to deer browse, and perhaps similarly for other ruminants." American Beech, considered a pioneer tree (one of the first species to establish in a transitional woodlot), is everywhere on the ridge. In the valley are tulip poplars, maple, sycamore, willow, walnut. There's not much of an understory. Deer are a problem. They nibble down the arrowwood, hazel, and dogwood. I noticed an experimental exclosure on the ridge, a fenced area to keep deer out. It looked as if a healthy understory was establishing in there.

Agricultural fields surrounded with mature hedgerows.

Looking down-valley to the marshes that were once silted fields.

Now a bluebird trail, old fields transition to meadows.

This is a short day hike. Don't expect to spend miles out on the trails. Some of the land is off-limits to hikers, as it contains an outdoor education facility reserved for students. Some of the trails are severely overgrown. A talk with the land manager revealed a need for volunteer trail maintainers. I avoided the overgrown trails and stuck to the forested valley trail. I met up with a small group of day hikers who had no idea of the area's history. They'd seen some signs but didn't understand the significance. "We're just going for a walk in the woods," said one hiker.

Update on ID:  Canada Horsebalm (Collinsonia canadensis) (Thanks, Charlie! NHS/MD) 

Trumpet Creeper vine in bloom.

Milkweed and Monarch caterpillar.

For an environmental historian, this landscape is exciting and full of secrets. I was pretty impressed that the day hikers had no idea as to the land's history. To them it was a walk in the woods. To farmers like P. Alston Waring and his neighbors in 1939, the deforested, wasted land was bleak and in need of emergency treatment. Their hard work and commitment really paid off. I had to search hard for erosional features and noted that the forests blocks most of the views except from the highest vantage points over the fields and lower marshes.  Waring notes in a small booklet for the Bucks County Watershed Conservancy (1972) that in 1702 a moldboard plow first broke ground here. In 1939, he writes that the farmers of Honey Hollow (himself included) "changes square fields to contoured strips, planted wildlife hedges and built ponds. Now man was working in harmony with nature."

Colonial Revivalist barn, built in 1935, now the Audubon visitor center.

Spring house, circa 1850.

National Historic Landmark marker and fire hydrant (left)

The farm that is now the Audubon Center has its own fun history and is worth investigating. Some of the trail signs highlight this story, but I found more interpretive signs by (with permission) rooting around in a storage area of the barn. The land was purchased by a rich (although criminal) investor from Philadelphia in the early 1930s. This was the age of the rich gentleman estatesmen who, like those bankers and real estate men of the pre-2008 crash, didn't know what to do with their millions of ill-earned cash dollars. "Honest" Bob Boltz hired an expensive Colonial Revivalist architect to build his estate house and barn. He hired landscape designers to install underground pumping systems to supply water from a pond to the house and barn with a system of buried pumps and pipes. Fire hydrants appear like weeds in the middle of fields and along the trail. "Honest" Bob knew that the feds were on his trail in the 1940s and he simple disappeared only to be caught and arrested in the late 1940s for his crimes of embezzlement and extortion. I giggled a little at the parallels of history.

Boltz Barn interior built in 1935, now a nature center.

A random fire hydrant from the 1930s underground water system installation.

Current entrance is just down the road from "Honest" Bob Boltz's estate house.

My favorite part of this short hike was discovering the water wheel house, nearly hidden from sight at the lower pond. I thrashed through some thorny vines to find the trail that took me over the raceway to the simple stone shed that housed the wheel and a family of black vultures. The building is in bad shape and the roof is nearly gone, covered for now with a plastic tarp. This is a shame but it takes a lot of money to preserve these old structures and keep them in shape. It was clear to me that the Audubon Society could use some help in this regard. [ Read this as "Please Send Money!" ] As I approached, the vultures, including their "cute" single fledgling youngster hopped obligingly up from their tarp-covered roost to flap loudly to a nearby locust tree. Once I had taken a few pictures inside and made my quick exit they loudly flapped back.

Momma (or Poppa?) Black Vulture exiting the roost as I approached the water wheel house.

Water wheel house, raceway, and nearly dislodged wooden wheel.

Rotting in the woods, but making for a great vulture nesting site.

My hike lasted less than two hours, but it was worth the two hour drive up just to be in this landscape that I've studied about but never visited. It was a great look at a fully restored agricultural landscape that is still being farmed, carefully and with great stewardship. The greatest threat this watershed faces now is encroaching development. Strip malls, busy streets, clogged tourist shopping districts, and McMansions are at the edges of the conservancy lands. It's worth the trip though, especially if you have the time ( I didn't) to go a few miles further to New Hope and hike along the canal trail on the Delaware - for me, another hike for another day.

Notes:

Bucks County Audubon Society. Thanks to Dave for getting me oriented to the site and allowing me to dig around in the back storage area of the barn. http://www.bcas.org/

A nice little 1972 booklet that BCAS let me have (it doesn't appear yet in PDF format online) was P. Alston Waring's "Inventory of Natural Resources," a collection of natural history inventories done by local biologists Lester Thomas (Chief Naturalist Bucks County Parks); David Benner, Professor of Horticulture, Delaware Valley College; George Carmichael, Pennbury High School biology teacher; Joe Pearson, Ornithologist; Elizabeth Rex Thomas, Biologist; Charlotte Gantz, Entomologist; Charles Child, Artist; and Malcolm Crooks, Honey Hollow farmer and founder of the conservation district at Honey Hollow.

I mention all of the contributors because I know some of this blog's readers are conservation historians and will recognize a few important names from Pennsylvania conservation history!

NY Twenty-Six Steps: Birthplaces and Resting Places of Long Island Heroes and Saints

I'm working through the idea of environmental pilgrimage - intentional journeys to places of great natural or historical significance. It was fitting for our birthday weekend overnight to Long Island that my sister and I paid visits to the birthplace of Walt Whitman, the family home of Theodore Roosevelt at Sagamore Hill, and Youngs Memorial Cemetery where TR and his family are laid to rest. It was a great opportunity for me to observe and explore how people interact with these special places.

I spoke to a NPS staffer about Sagamore as a pilgrimage site and she agreed that it has become such a place. "People who come here as pilgrims to this place, see it as an important step on their journey to know as much about TR and his times as they can. They come here having read everything, and I mean everything, there is written about him - including the many books he wrote. They've visited his birthplace, the White House, any place with his name associated with it: his western ranch lands, bird sanctuaries, you-name-it. So, yes, it is such a place."

Youngs Memorial Cemetery.

Just down the road from Sagamore is where TR and his family are buried. Laura and I stopped early in the morning at Youngs Memorial Cemetery, a small hillside burial ground that dates back to the early 1700s. TR purchased land from James Young in the 1880s on which he built the family farm and later, his home at Sagamore Hill. At Youngs Cemetery there is nothing to announce that TR and his wife Edith, their children, and grandchildren are buried here, save for a small sign, easily missed, at the iron gate entrance. The cemetery is managed and cared for by a small non-profit and offers a information brochure at the beginning of the walkway. For a presidential cemetery it is unassuming, simple, and small. We made our way up the single paved path and approached the twenty-six steps that climbed the little hill to TR's grave. Twenty-six steps for his place as 26th President.

TR and Edith Roosevelt's resting place.

We were the only two people in the cemetery. Despite the brochure's assurance that this was...

...a place of public pilgrimage for tens of thousands of people annually, the final resting place of the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, one of the greatest Americans of all time...

...we saw not another soul. We had the peace and quiet of the grave site and hillside to ourselves. It was maybe the quiet and peacefulness that caught us unprepared for the impact that arriving at TR's grave had on us. We climbed the twenty-six steps and there was the iron gate surround, a handsome but not overly large stone, a military marker and some flags, and a flagstone walk-around. It was so simple and elegant that we both were speechless - which, if you know us, is a rare occurrence. 

TR Jr., who died days after the D-Day Invasion, U.S. Army.

I became a little emotional, I must say. I've counted TR as one of my favorite presidents, and even though I had been to Sagamore Hill NHS a few years ago, I had never been to his grave site. We stood at the iron gate for a long time. Another hour went by as we wandered the cemetery, still the only ones there. We visited the marker of Teddy Roosevelt, Jr., who died shortly after the invasion of Normandy in WWII and, along with his brother Quentin who died in aerial combat in WWI, are buried side-by-side in France. We found the family markers of the Youngs - all farmers and craftsman who lived in this area overlooking Cove Neck Harbor. We found the Youngs family slaves, too, who were given burials in the same cemetery - not segregated from their owners as is often the case. So here were slaves buried in the same ground as one of America's most famous presidents.

Slave grave markers with Youngs family sites just behind

Some slave markers were simple wooden crosses while some were incised roughly with dates and initials. It seemed ironic that one of the most well-known Americans is buried in the same graveyard as enslaved people whose names and lives have all but been forgotten. I've seen slave markers in York County where I live, chunks of rough-shaped stone with or without carved dates. Some markers are large chunks of rounded quartz arranged around a particular grove of trees, now overgrown and overtaken with forest. To see the marker style again here, much farther north than where I live on the Mason Dixon line, attested to how deeply into northern states the institution of slave-holding had advanced, far beyond southern agricultural regions and borderlands.

Carved in rough stone - an enslaved servant's grave stone.

From the top of the twenty-six steps, I turned around and faced north for the view of the cove and it is easy to see why this area has been called "The Necks." Small sharp-ended coves fan outwards towards Long Island Sound. These pointy coves are the drowned pre-glacial mouths of rivers that once drained Long Island's north shore. The cemetery sits along the shoulder of a glacial moraine and we are reminded that Long Island is just that - a long glacial artifact where ice advanced then receded, leaving behind a series of steep boulder-strewn hills. The large rounded boulders that line the cemetery's pathway probably came from the morraine hill where TR and his family now rest, moved and smoothed by ice, and thousands of years later, moved and arranged by farmers.

Sagamore Hill NHS - Home of the TR Roosevelt family at Oyster Bay, NY

Sagamore Hill sits only a mile north of cemetery and the hill on which TR's home was built was farmed long before he purchased the land from Mr. Young.  The soils here are rich and well drained and throughout the area on well-kept land, farming was profitable and practiced for generations. On land that had not been as well cared for, however, there were stark landscapes. We were shown a old photo by a docent at the Orchard Museum at Sagamore Hill that shows TR's home just-built atop the treeless hill. Even at a distance, the photographer was able to capture the bleakness of the site - eroded soils and naked ground. Thinking about it, said the docent, TR must have seen the land as exhausted and probably got it for far less than what it would have been worth had it been prime agricultural ground. "In effect," the docent said, "He undertook a life-long rescue of this hill site, planting new orchards, encouraging reforestation, getting the exposed ground under lawn and gardens." During the 1800s most of The Necks region had been cleared of forest and looked like TR's purchase had. Now the forest has returned, blanketing most of the neck that holds the National Historic Site and the cemetery.

The beach at Sagamore Hill - note the thick shoreline forest buffer of the neighboring property.

From the Old Orchard Museum we walked the trail down to Cold Spring Harbor and found the beach in much better condition than it had been after my last visit the spring following Hurricane Sandy. It's much steeper and still shows piles of gravel sands and shell material from the storm, but gone are the wrack lines of debris and garbage, the mangled boardwalk, and the piles of tree trunks and large limbs that clogged the tidal marsh.  At the park just up shore, we could see the newly exposed interior of the glacial moraine that had not been a feature a few years ago. We didn't have much time to explore, however, as the tide was coming in quickly, filling a Sandy-cut channel cut across the back of TR's beach. We had to make a fast exit before the boardwalk was cut off from the hill!

Walt Whitman's Birthplace State Historic Site.

Our final stop to the Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site was several miles from Cove Neck. The small shingle home sits atop broad outwash plain left by the receding glacier. Despite the commercial-residential area closing in around the site today, it was easy to imagine (thanks to great landscape architecture) a more pastoral scene of Whitman's early childhood. These were heavily settled farmlands in the early 1800s when Whitman's father purchased the house and barn. The deep well on site still holds water which is sourced from the freshwater aquifer beneath Long Island. But by the time the Whitman's settled here, cold summers and exhausted soils made farming difficult. When Walt was four the family moved to the growing city for more reliable work in carpentry.

Birthing room where Walt was born.

My sister and I were part of a small tour led through the house by a college student who was working her way into a Master's program for historical interpretation and archival library management. Our group was a mix of interested folks, some with more knowledge of Walt Whitman than others. All of us were curious about how the young family lived. The parlor was arranged with chairs all the way around for conversations with family, neighbors, and local Friends (Quakers). What a thought - having a conversation with others! The highlight of the tour for me happened in a back hallway where we were rather closely packed looking at vintage 1950s-era photos on the walls. A mom (it turns out a professor at a NY university) and her college-aged daughter inquired about Walt's personal life - why was it that he never married nor had children. She was from China and in her home culture, children are incredibly important. Family is paramount to all else.

The parlor where chairs were placed all around the walls for gatherings of conversation.

The professor, wrapping her daughter in her arms, inquired again and again, "Why did he have no children?"  Our tour guide offered various explanations. Walt had never expressed interest in marriage. He was a bit of a 'rowdy.' He didn't want to be burdened with family. "But why not?" the professor kept asking. Suddenly, another woman burst out "You know," she said snarkily, flicking her pinky and waving her hand in a mean gesture, "he was - you know - gay! He was gay!" Our tour guide tried hard to regain control of the conversation. My sister glared at the woman. The snarky woman's companion (an older son, maybe brother or husband?) cleared his throat and grabbed her shoulder. I blurted out a disgusted laugh and said under my breath (sardonically) "Really? The pinky?"  Well, there went my professionalism. Everyone else in our group looked at the floor. Yet, the professor insisted "Why is that a problem? Why did he not leave children?"

The Whitman's family writing desk.

Sometimes when we travel to places we have long hoped to see, be it on pilgrimage or just for fun, we are met with moments of discomfort that challenge our perceptions of the place. Remembering why we come to these places, I had to put into context why I was here - at the birth home of one of America's greatest poets - and thought "What would Walt have done or said had he been here to listen in on this difficult moment?" Excessive admiration aside, I believe Walt would have been incredibly patient with both women. In his lifetime, Whitman endured professional rejection and continuous homophobic attacks. Resistance to Whitman as a gay man and poet continued through the 1950s as howls of protest from the Catholic Church of Philadelphia erupted when plans were announced to name a bridge for him. The same occurred in New Jersey as a rest stop on the turnpike was named in his honor. And here it was - still. The woman, still flapping her hand and smiling, seemed self-justified in her outburst. The Chinese professor looked to the tour leader. "Well, um, we are told not to engage in discussion about Whitman's personal life in regard to his sexual preferences." I imagined Walt standing in the corner, smiling at it all. "This is nothing," I imagined him to say, "You should have been around in 1863!"

Interpretive Center at Walt Whitman Birthplace - contemplation garden.

We can find fault with others with regard to how our heroes are remembered. But we can also fault ourselves for not acknowledging the flaws our beloved heroes carried with them during their lives. Teddy Roosevelt is best remembered for his tough talk, conservation ideals, and political leadership. But he was also known for his hard-liner's support for eugenics, the belief that imperfections and perceived weaknesses in humans could be eliminated with proper breeding. We kinda forget that part. Eugenics was a popular thing in the late 1890s through the mid-20th century but quickly faded when the horrors of the Third Reich, built upon a firm belief in eugenics, brought to light the implications of what exactly "good breeding" meant for everyone else - like gay men and lesbian women. Whitman and others like him were considered by men like TR to be unfit and degenerate. Whitman, had he been a German citizen during Hitler's reign-of-terror, would have been killed.

Manliness is often expressed through the uniform.  TR's Rough Rider outfit.

"Some day we will realize that the prime duty the inescapable duty of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type," wrote TR in a letter to a prominent eugenics movement leader, biologist C. Davenport.  These are hard lines to read for those of us who grant him American sainthood. Hitler noted that it was in the U.S. that eugenics showed the greatest promise. "There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States." Sometimes the pilgrim, in pursuit of the remains of the saint, may find dark corners haunted by unresolved truths.

As we sped home down the NJ Turnpike we talked about the behavior of the woman at the Whitman Birthplace. We also talked about the need for historical interpretation to include space for open discussion of trends of thought, now and then, regarding difficult subjects that continue to plague our society. (As I write this, neo-Nazis and white nationalists are rallying in Charlottesville, Virginia)

How do we think about the white crosses that mark the anonymous graves of enslaved people - even if they are placed alongside their white owners in the same graveyard? How do we relate to the disdain against gay men or women of the 1800s when it is still so evident in our present society? Heroes and saints are complicated ideas and the physical and social landscapes they inhabited have so much to teach us about these questions.

We need more bridges than walls in our society today than ever before.

Notes:

TR's letter to C. Davenport -
https://www.dnalc.org/view/11219-T-Roosevelt-letter-to-C-Davenport-about-degenerates-reproducing-.html

Beloved Americans and eugenics. A tough read for some - sorry for breaking the news.
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/matthew-archbold/7-beloved-famous-people-who-were-wildly-pro-eugenics

PA Welsh Mountain - Forest Bathing at the (Ancient) Beach

Welsh Mountain, Lancaster County, PA

After a busy weekend on Long Island with my sister for Birthday Weekend, I needed a quiet forest walk to decompress. We spent two wonderful days at Sagamore Hill NHS, Youngs Memorial Cemetery (TR's burial place), and Walt Whitman's Birthplace State Historic Site. The noise and commotion of the four hour drive up and back, however, and the infamously loud horn-honking habits of Long Island drivers left me craving a quiet day for reflection. I thought - why not a day at the beach?

Just completed!

Welsh Mountain is the Lancaster County Conservancy's latest completed public access property and was just what I needed. The beach of six hundred million years ago was quiet, forested, and amazingly quiet at 8am on Sunday morning. Only birdsong and the clip-clop of carriage horses on the over-mountain road could be heard. No crashing surf - just a tufted titmouse and a Carolina wren echoed through the woods. This is an important site. Lancaster County, one of the most cleared counties in Pennsylvania is working hard to protect what forests it has. There are the old growth forests of the river hills along the Susquehanna, but few sites such as this - in the midst of intensive farming land and developing home sites - that can claim to protect a large and connected woodland to make the length of Welsh Mountain a continuous ridge line of protected forest.

Fossilized Skolithos tubeworm burrows,

The rough-grade sandstones that lie on the low summit of Welsh Mountain have been quarried elsewhere near here. Money Rocks, a county park that shares a common boundary and two trails with Welsh Mountain, is near a sand quarry. There are numerous old sandstone pits along the north ridge. These old quarries supplied a good quality grey sandstone for the area's German barns, churches, farm houses, and mill at White Horse. Along  the blue-blazed trail there are ample weathered sandstone blocks and boulders to observe. A careful eye may pick out stripes of alternating dark and light sand crystals on some of the exposed rock. These are the fossilized remains of the burrows of saltwater tube worms, Skolithos. These fossils serve as indicators of the ancient shoreline of the Iapetus Sea where, at low tide, the tubeworms would burrow deep into the  exposed beach.

Half-mile packed gravel accessible path.

Excellent accessibility!

It took me a few minutes to adsorb the sounds around me. My head was saturated with the previous two-days worth of noise and crazy driving. I decided to check out the newly laid crusher run accessible path. Perfect for strollers, folks using walkers or canes, and for wheelchairs and scooters, this beautiful path circles around for about a half-mile through a red oak woods. I noticed plenty of American chestnut stump sprouts, some quite large. Indian cucumber and pokeberry held out their bright green berries to catch the sun, while mushrooms erupted from the forest floor. It was a nice slow stroll to get my head in the right place.

Blue-blazed loop trail, 2.5 miles.

I moved on to the blue-blazed trail that makes a two-and-a-half mile loop along the ridge shoulder. The Green and Orange-blazed Trails link through to Money Rocks County Park to the northeast. I kept to the blue trail with a short extension walk out on a pale tan blazed trail (easy to miss if you don't have a map - available at the main kiosk) to check out the northward view. I met three other folks on the trail. One was a really nice gentleman who said "Nice day for a little forest bathing!" He was right. The cool morning temperatures in the mid-50s and a brisk breeze sweeping through the woods was refreshing.

Lion's Mane fungus, Hericium erinaecius

Forest bathing is a revered Japanese tradition associated with Shinto nature worship. I once gave a summer camp for middle school kids in Shinto nature tradition. It was a real treat to hike a creek to its source, forest bathe in meditation, and practice nature art sitting quietly hidden as the woods came alive. I decided step off the trail and sit beneath a large red oak. The sounds of the breeze and a doe calling her fawn were magic.  An old red oak opposite my sit-spot was sporting white beard of Lion's Mane while at my feet an orange mushroom stood glowing in a patch of sun.

The essence of forest bathing or forest meditation is two-fold. There is a symbolic cleansing of walking through the woods slowly and deliberately, with measured steps and breaths. All the noise and commotion of every day life is exhaled and the cool, cleansed forest air refills the lungs. Walking slowly, we take deeper breaths. The frantic self-imposed distractive energy of modern life is replaced with the quiet, reserved energy of the peaceful stroll. Hearing improves. Small sounds lift from the leafy forest floor. A hawk wheels overhead and his shadow crosses the path. 

Sparkling quartzite sands from a long-ago beach.

The forest bath is also a unifying practice that brings us closer to nature as a member of a community rather than a temporary visitor. Shinto practitioners claim that they become other creatures, see through the eyes of deer or owls, and feel the forest at different scales - from a field mouse to a mighty oak. Sitting still or walking, the sense of being "just a human on a hike" fades away and - as happened during my half-hour at the base of the red oak - other creatures of the forest do not perceive you to be a threat. The doe called to her fawn, hidden in the brush. I sat quietly and moved only my eyes. With my peripheral vision I saw the fawn stand up and shake off just a few yards away. He walked right past me to join his mother on the ridge.

Blue Mountain in the far distance.

The hawk shadow reminded me that the seasons have turned. Autumn has come to the high arctic and soon we will be seeing shorebirds flowing south to our national wildlife refuges and wilder shorelines. Hawk Mountain, the East's most famous hawk observatory just a half hour from here, sits on the Blue Mountain ridge within view from Welsh Mountain. Official hawk watchers are preparing now for the start of the fall hawk watch that begins there on August 15.

I'll be back for a more rigorous trail hike of the combined parks, but for now, a slow 2.5 mile stroll was just what I needed. More on Birthday Weekend later, as the sounds of a quiet oak forest and a cool northerly breeze is all there is.

Notes:

2017 Fall Hawk Watch starts in a few weeks at Hawk Mountain! http://www.hawkmountain.org/events/autumn-hawk-watch/page.aspx?id=6554

Lancaster County Conservancy, Welsh Mountain - http://www.lancasterconservancy.org/preserve/welsh-mountain/

Forest Bathing and Ecotherapy - https://qz.com/804022/health-benefits-japanese-forest-bathing/

Trip Log: On To the Sea and the End of Hadrian's Wall Path Hike - Days 7 & 8, May 2017

Honesty Box - Trail Angel Magic

Our wonderful stay in Brampton ended with a pleasant taxi ride to our start point the next morning and the sad realization we were on our way to Carlisle, the city at the other end of the HWP. We started in Newcastle a week ago, and with a stay in Carlisle after the day's hike today, we would have just one more full day on the trail. We all thought about slowing down a little just to drag it out. We were out of the high country, walking across gentle swells of farmland of Cumbria, on to River Eden's floodplain. All along the way we'd met people and found trail magic to make our hike wonderful. Today we came across an honor box and read all the nice notes to the farmer who maintains it. 

Last two days!

The Eden was always at our side. Signs of serious flooding in the very recent past could be seen everywhere, however. I can't say I became immediately aware of it, but when we crossed into the riverside town of Crosby-on-Eden, it was crushingly obvious. Knots of flood debris caught high in tree branches. Washed out roads marked as impassable. Sandbars clean and bright, free of plants and shrubs. And the town itself, the center of a catastrophic flood in 2015 was still in repair. Boarded up homes. Pubs closed indefinitely. We had planned to have lunch at a pub marked as a favorite of Hadrian Wall Hikers but found instead the windows boarded up and a worker on a second floor porch who pointed to the high-water mark nearly at his feet. I was a child brought up on creeks and rivers and I remember well the tragedy of Hurricane Agnes at it lumbered across Pennsylvania, downgraded to "just" a tropical depression. My heart went out those who lost their homes and businesses as we walked slowly through the town.  But the river - my eyes could not leave it. I went into the zone as we walked and hardly heard a thing Molly or George were talking about. It was beautiful.

Salmon fishers on River Eden - we stopped and talked to these great fishermen with their huge fly rods!

The River Eden - birding along the banks was impressive.

Crossing the Eden into Carlisle.

We crossed the river to enter the city of Carlisle and not far from the bridge and in a historic neighborhood we found our accommodations for the evening. This city neighborhood turned out to be our home-away-from-home as the owners (father, son, mom) gave us an amazing welcome and treated us as family. We decided to book a second night after we returned from Bowness-on-Solway as our basecamp in Carlisle for a free day exploring. They were more than happy to help us, and really were happy to see us upon our return two days later. But I'm ahead of myself...

Cornerways Guest House - Home Away from Home

The river and the flood had been on my mind and as an environmental historian, my history-and-nature-brain was swirling with thoughts. I talked at length with our hostess about the floods and she assured me that the city and its outlying villages and towns along the river have had a long love-hate relationship with the River Eden. "It's happening more frequently," she said. "Some say its because of the effects of climate change - more rain is falling in shorter periods of time. In 2015 we got 75% worth of our annual rain in twelve hours. It was astounding. These kinds of rains come more often. People who would have rebuilt and left it to the next generation to deal with their own hundred-year storm are seeing these things happening four or five in their life times. People are moving away from the river." (From journal notes.)

Flood Quilt on display at the Tullie House Museum. 

Flood debris old and older.

Bits and shards of centuries past.

Floods, unlike other kinds of natural disasters, can happen over many days, weeks, or months. In the States we often think of natural disasters as happening with ferocity and speed - tornadoes, wildfires, Nor'Easters, earthquakes, and so on. Floods, however, carry with them not only the element of gradual onset, they carry the silt, muds, and toxins that come with submerged lands. As we hiked out through the river-side park the next day I observed the banks of the River Eden and took note (and pics) of the debris piles, sand banks, and high water berms that formed during the 2015 flood. Shards of pottery, old beer bottles, clay pipe stems, decorative bits of china and tea cups littered the ground for miles. We walked close to the river in a "Do Not Enter" section gated off (but torn open by others) and imagined what the scene looked like just two years ago. 

Fort and Flood Marker.

Near the A7 bridge was the Sands Center that had a post for the site of the greatest Roman fort built on Hadrian's Wall. Only the post existed to declare that here was the headquarters and epicenter of the Roman legions who built and guarded the wall. A flood post stood behind it with the 2015 flood high water level marked four feet up. Lugavalium was long, long gone. Not a trace survives, washed away like so much floodplain history. The River Eden continues to meander, bend, and create new channels, make new courses, no matter how protected the city shorelines appear to be. Yet, they are recently protected by wise decisions to turn industrial riverside areas into open space and buffer parks to allow the river to jump its banks and spread out. But not all of Carlisle's shoreline is this way. A system of new levees failed in 2015 filling school yards and neighborhoods, reminiscent of the storm surge disaster in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. The flood that came with Storm Desmond  had been the third torrential rainfall in a month. As we hiked along in the rain watching the river, I could feel the exhaustion of a city challenged to deal with a new and long-term reality of climate change effects.  

George is quickly surrounded by a dairy herd - both trying to stay out of the heavy rains under shelter.

The rains intensified as we hiked out of the city and into farm country. We climbed stiles again and crossed muddy barnyards. We walked along with cattle to seek tree cover and enjoyed their playful company. Each young milking cow had her name written on an ear tag and we had so much fun chatting with them. "Nice to meet you Ellie!" "Why, Moppet, you look fabulous!" and "No, no. no! Adelaide! George's pack cover is not the kind of green you eat." The landscape flattened and on shifting winds we could smell the salt air. We stopped at the Greyhound Inn for late lunch, our last HDW pub lunch - this made me sad. After paying our respects to King Edward I (who died of dysentery near here) we made the final walk to Bowness-on-Solway. I think I cried a little but maybe it was just the rain on my cheeks...

King Edward I greets us at the Greyhound Inn and Pub.

The rolling hills disappeared. Cries of gulls and salt air drifted over the great bend of the River Eden in its final course to join the River Esk. The salt marshes rose up and the sun came out. It was a remarkable change in weather as the squalls blew themselves out. The wall was no more. The last day on the path was also the last we saw of the Vallum. But the wall lives on in the place names: Walton, Walwick, Walltown, Heddon-on-Wall, Wallsend, Thirlwall, among others. The stone has been reused in so many different ways. We saw this from the start - churches, farms, pasture walls, castles, pubs. I was surprised to see Roman altars as porch and garden ornaments in Chester about midway on our walk and at the fortified farmhouse in Drumburgh, just a few miles from our finish at Bowness.

Almost finished!

The great estuary was my companion for a solo final four miles. Molly and George had hiked ahead while I dawdled along, dropping farther and farther until I lost sight of them. I enjoyed the birding, the wind, stopping to talk to farmers, and fellow hikers coming the other way. I figured Molly and George would have finished hours before me.

Cattle in the marshes, the estuary beyond.

The estuary, its flats and mud banks exposed at low tide, is an incredible intertidal stop-over for migrating birds in fall and spring. A cattle farmer, having lunch with his wife near his tractor, told me of the tremendous numbers of waders, oystercatchers, godwits , and plovers in the fall. He knew his birds! "You need to come back in fall and winter. It's not to be missed!"These marshes have been grazed and farmed for centuries but the wildness of the place was unmistakable. The first farmers here, stated my cattleman friend, had bee the Cisterian monks from the Abbey at Holm Cultram. Many of the drainage ditches dug during the Middle Ages were still visible and still kept good salt marsh pasture.

Drainage ditches dug during the Middle Ages still function to create pasture for sheep and cattle.

Fortified farmhouse in Drumburgh - note the Roman altar near the lower door in the garden.

Spent a long time here birding.

Just before I heard a voice call "MOM!"

I was taking so long to make the last four miles that I thought for sure that Molly and George would have found Wallsend House and gotten their showers, taken their naps, and headed out to dinner at (the only) pub in town. I was slightly (enormously) surprised to hear behind me a faint voice calling "MOM!" I turned around to see George hiking up behind me! How'd I get in front?! Not sure how they missed a turn after Drumburgh, they'd wandered farther inland about a mile or two and realized they'd not seen a trail blaze in a while. Meanwhile I'd passed the turn-off as I decided to walk the road so I could watch for birds along the banks. I felt so speedy! Molly was even further behind, electing to chat with a village character in Port Carlisle. So George and I walked together to Bowness and found the trail hut that marks the end. (It was a little tricky to find, but worth the snooping around.)

The beautiful trail hut at the end in its own cliff garden.

Across the water lay Scotland. We sat for some time and watched the tide begin to turn. A young man was far out on the banks watching the water advance. He'd step back, then back again. Finally he fast-walked up the bank and to the trail. I met him on the path. He was a recent graduate from University of Virginia, an ancient history major, and about to start the Hadrian's Wall Path with his girlfriend as a graduation present to themselves. He was so excited to meet us and was staying at the same guest house, Wallsend. We spent time at the pub over dinner answering his many questions about where to stay and what to see. It was great to meet them again on our free day in Carlisle as they walked through carrying their backpacks, headed to Newcastle!

Path to the banks, Scotland beyond.

Molly arrived an hour or so later and we had a great hug! The tiny village is built on the foundations of the Roman fort here. The church, parish house (Wallsend), and all of the little homes, including the pub, were built of the wall stone. I was reminded of how I felt when I finished the Camino de Santiago last year, after 550 miles from the Pyrenees to the Atlantic - a little sad and reluctant to say it was over.

Molly, me, George - Finished!

If I could take just a paragraph here to mention that this trip was made all the more fantastic by having our cousin Molly along. She trained hard for the long days and many miles at home in New Hampshire through a long winter and wet spring. I could hardly keep up with her and her knowledge of European and British history kept us intrigued at every turn. I cannot imagine ever having English breakfast without her again. So I won't. We will hike again!

An accomplishment! George at the finish!

George was raised on hiking trails, in canoes and kayaks, doing photography and digging history (literally), both ancient and pre-human. It was such a blast getting to spend time with him on this walk, a dream trip for mother and son. His enthusiasm for capturing the historic landscape was infectious and though I know my point-and-shoot pictures will not come anywhere near the beauty of his DSL wide-angle shots, I learned to see the land through his eyes - composition, light, line, and color. He excitement for adventure and discovery is equally infectious and I completely loved sharing this experience of a ten-day hike with him.

On their way! University of Virginia graduates, historians, sweethearts.

It is solved by walking.    - Algerian Proverb.

* We took a cab back to Carlisle and stayed an extra night at Cornerways Guesthouse. This gave us plenty of time to see the Cathedral, the Tullie House Museum, and the Castle in the city. Our visitor pass for English Heritage sure got used a lot! We HIGHLY recommend the Tullie House Museum for an afternoon.

** I have a lot of reflection yet on the theme of our hike "Walls - What Are They Good For?" and will probably write an essay for publication, which I'll post with a link on my EH page. The Tullie House, however, had an excellent and very thoughtful exhibition on Hadrian's Wall and border walls around the world both historic and contemporary. I think that the idea of stiles and bridges will figure a lot in my essay as will ideas of boundaries, barriers, deconstruction, and obscurity.  I certainly kept in mind the chest-pounding promises of current administration to build "big, tall, beautiful, border wall" while considering what happened to Hadrian's Wall and the empire that built it.

Notes:

Our stay in Carlisle was like coming home, thanks to the warm smiles and family-like place at Cornerways Guesthouse. Highly recommend!  http://www.cornerwaysbandb.co.uk/

Our last night at the end of the HWP at Bowness-on-Solway was at the Wallsend House. What a beautiful and expertly run establishment. I am thinking of going back to spend a writing retreat week here. Hmm. http://www.wallsend.net/

Print Resources We Carried With Us:

• Stedman (2014) Hadrian's Wall Path, 4th Ed. (Guidebook) Trailblazer Pubs. Pocket-sized but loaded with info and hiker's tips for places to eat, stay, etc. Ordered on Amazon.
• National Trail Hadrian's Wall Path (XT40) Waterproof, detailed, section panel maps on one fold out map. Purchased at the Segedunum Fort Museum Store. 
• English Heritage Hadrian's Wall Guidebook. (2009) Thin, 60 pages, but packed with architectural lay out diagrams of forts and mile castles, aerial photography of much of the path area, and lots of concise historical info. Purchased at the Chesters Fort south of Chollerford. 
• English Heritage visitor passes, a bargain at $30 per person for 9 nine days. They paid for themselves right away as we stopped at most all of the many EH excellent sites.