OWL-DRAGON

Friday Trail Run

Those of you who truly run the trails over long distances in true wilderness must get a chuckle out of my trail run accounts. As someone said if you get lost on Rocky Run just listen for the sound of traffic and go to it. Still once I leave Route 352 I am a thousand miles from civilization (or perhaps a thousand years). This time of year you enter a green tunnel. The undergrowth is dense and the canopy covers completely.

Last time the woods were lousy with deer but today none. Perhaps they have sought out dryer spaces. A light rain is falling creating its own background noise to the birdsong. Occasionally there are other creaks and groans – are the trees shifting position? No wonder our ancestors found the forest so mysterious and dangerous. As the brambles reach out and clutch at me I know why fairy tales have the trees grabbing people.

There are mysteries here. Someone has laid large block stones in a 20 foot section of the trail and covered them with a heavy wire meshed. Erosion control I suppose, but why there and nowhere else. Further on there is a stone structure about ten feet off the trail. It’s not like the abandoned houses you see in Ridley Creek Park, it looks more like an abandoned bridge but there is nothing to connect and it is near no other human construct. It’s as mysterious to me as Stonehenge.

Can humidity be more than 100% - I’m not especially hot but I am soaking wet – not from rain, the canopy keeps most of it away – but from my own sweat.

A while back I read Oliver Sack’s book about ferns and today I noticed that there is a riot of ferns all through the woods. I guess they like the damp weather. These prehistoric survivors reinforce my sense of being in an older age.

All too soon I have circled around and am back on busy Rt.352 and have burst back into the 21st Century. Well it will be nice to go in and get a nice hot shower and some coffee which I couldn’t do if I was well out in the wilderness.