Seen on the Link Trail

Bettina submitted the following shots and captions from her hike yesterday. Thanks Bettina!

Great Lobelia

Black Snake root

Beebalm

Red baneberry, berries



White baneberry, 'Doll's Eyes'

Joe Pye Weed

Turtlehead

Boneset

Work Hike Details (July 4)

For many more pictures from this hike, see the Picasa web album.

Grace and I met Steve, Mike, Carol, and Kathy at about 9:00 in Cazenovia. From there we carpooled to a section of trail a few miles south of Stone Quarry Art Park. We divvied up the pick mattocks, shovels, rakes, buckets, bow saws and sundry supplies and headed south. Grace and I talked to Steve as we followed the winding trail through the woods. He's a retired Air Force doctor who does volunteer work now, so he's an interesting person to talk to. Of course Grace, being a Columbia student, had more in the medical line to talk to him about.


These beautiful little flowers were all over the place. At the time, Grace and I thought they were wintergreen, but they turned out to be partridge berry.

We got to the site, dropped the gear, and followed Steve as he explained the whys and wherefores of the project. There was a beautiful view down to the stream on our left from along the top of the steep right bank. For a hundred yards or so the trail ran along that edge and then crossed near the ravine's downhill entrance. But the crossing itself had become a problem. The stream banks, along with the trail leading down to them, were steep enough to cause falls. Today's goal was to close off that section of trail and establish a crossing upstream.

Steve had chosen a point where the stream flowed over a broad, flat, level shelf of solid rock. We would be cutting a new trail that curved to the left off the existing one, forming a switchback with a gentle slope down to the crossing.


The main engineering task was to level off the trail and extend it out into the stream so that hikers will be able to take a single, short step down onto the stone. Since the edge of the stream was very muddy, this meant constructing a platform. Steve told us what size rocks we needed and sent us to gather them from the soon-to-be-ex-crossing. I started hauling buckets of these rocks up the trail while Steve went to work with his chainsaw.








By the time I'd formed a decent pile of rocks downstream of the crossing, Steve had returned with two sawed-off pine logs about six feet long and eight inches in diameter. He placed the logs about three feet apart on one end of a sheet of Eco-plastic fabric. He and Mike began carefully placing the rocks onto the fabric between the logs, fitting them together to form a solid foundation. I, Grace and Kathy kept hauling rocks while the platform slowly took shape. Soon Steve folded over the Eco-plastic and tucked it in, making a sort of rock sandwich.




Before we could start piling on the dirt, we had to have a dirt supply. Fortunately there was one forthcoming: the switchback trail we were about to carve into the slope. Steve spotted an adorable little salamander, and I got some shots of it while he explained about digging the trail. I also got some shots of a harvestman that was very anxious to be part of a photo op.







Per Steve's instructions, we used the mattocks to chop and slough off the top layer of organic material and roots, and then went to work with the shovels and rakes. The idea was to make a trail with a consistently gentle slope, and a slight outward slant so that rain wouldn't collect on it. We cut the upward edge with the mattocks, pulled back the organic layer, shoveled the underlying dirt downward, collected the dirt in buckets, and shuttled it down to the platform. Pretty soon we couldn't see where the trail ended and platform started: we were building a level terminus to the crossing. As we were finishing up, we met a pair of hikers with their dog. They were the last hikers to travel down the old trail.


The new trail was taking shape, so we branched out into new jobs. Grace and Carrol took hammers and went to work removing old blazes and nailing up new ones. The rest of us piled branches onto the trail just beyond the new bend so that people would know to take a left. I spied a medium-sized pine tree lying uprooted about forty feet north of the old path, so I grabbed a bow saw, cut if off at the base, and wrestled it back through the woods. This would have been a lot easier if the base hadn't been pointing away from the trail to begin with; I had to turn it around before I could start dragging. By the time I'd hauled it onto the newly closed section of trail, I felt very close to my father. I'd had an excuse to do something egregiously manly, which was just his style.

By the time I got this done, everyone but Kathy was at the other end of the new section, clearing trail and blocking off the old stream crossing. Steve was just about ready to wrap things up when Grace and I said our goodbyes a little before 1:00. We had a date with my nephew for another Link Trail hike!




As we walked back through the woods to the car we marveled at the dramatic change we'd wrought in just a few hours. I agreed with Grace that it was a shame to close off such a beautiful section of trail, but I pointed out that people will still make their way around our little jumble of brush to have a quiet lunch off the trail. And besides, the new, improved trail looks fantastic!

Letter to the Editor

This is the letter I'll be sending to all the local papers. I'm happy with it, although I think it may need some trimming before it sees print.

When I was a kid I could walk along Fairview Avenue for a mile without seeing a car. I could wander through woods where my father took me to swing on vines, pastures where I knew tasty woodchucks were living, and farmer's fields where I learned that corn leaves could cut like knives. My father told me about tadpoles turning into frogs. There was transformation in nature, and that knowledge brought a new magic into my world.

I can't go back to the frog pond where my father first showed me those tadpoles. I can't take you to the vines. The land is all posted. And when I walk with my five-year-old nephew along that same stretch of road that I first walked alone when I was his age, twenty cars race by before we can walk a mile. No one in their right mind would let him do it alone. The world has changed.

Ever since my earliest wanderings I've loved secret places. Isolated forest glades carry a touch of the mystical, but it's those hidden spots that lie just steps off the beaten path that make me feel like I've entered another world. Last summer I found a doozy. It's called the Link Trail, and you could walk twenty feet from it and never know it was there. If you step inside, you may feel what I felt: some of that old magic returning.

Maybe you're not as emotional as I am. Fine. But I defy you to see your enthusiasm reflected in the face of a five-year-old and describe the experience as anything but magic. And that magic is exactly what you get when you share nature with a child. So take the kid out onto the trail. If he likes construction, tell him about all the people and expertise and equipment that it took to build a trail over a ravine, or the long staircase near Canastota Creek. If she likes fantasy, show her the fairy dust sprinkled beneath the old log from countless larvae chewing into it. If you're religious, bring him to God's cathedral and read him Job 12:7-10. If you're into history, show him the patches of bloodroot and tell him about the Native Americans who used them for dyeing, and if you're a conservationist tell him why you're not allowed to pick them. If she's obsessed with death, show her the rabbit fur in the coyote droppings and the saplings growing on dead trunks--show her that you don't get death without rebirth.

But whatever you do, unstick that kid from the glowing rectangle du jour and get him out onto the Link Trail. And remember, nothing you do for a child is ever wasted. Don't believe me? Take a look at www.CNYLinkTrail.blogspot.com. See the beauty I've seen. See the magic I've shared with my nephew.

And get that kid out there.

Work Hike Video

It may take me a while to prepare my entry for the July 4th work hike; there was a lot of great strategy and leadership and hard work, not to mention fungus and flowers and arachnids and a beautiful little orange salamander. But for now, here's the video I took. It shows the results of about eighteen person-hours of work.

Geocaching?

I was talking to Al Larmann the other day, and he was telling me that most of the people who subscribe to the NCTA Newsletter are older folks. The more I thought about this the more it bugged me, because of all the great joys I get from the Link Trail, seeing my nephew embrace my enthusiasm for it is the greatest. I think that the Link Trail is a jewel that should be shared with young people most of all! So I started mulling over potential ways to attract younger people to the trail.

The first idea I came up with was geocaching. Wikepedia has a good summary of what that is.

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container (usually a tupperware or ammo box) containing a logbook and "treasure," usually toys or trinkets of little value.

Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.[1] There are over 820,000 active geocaches in the world right now.

The idea of geocaching is simple enough. I have a good idea of how to do it. What I'd like help with is what to put in the caches. I mentor a young boy in New Jersey, and I know what he'd say: Bakugan cards! But New Jersy isn't Cazenovia. I don't know what young people around this particular area would most like to find in a geocache. So please, comment on this post with your ideas, or e-mail them to me. I'd like to start geocaching on the Link Trail soon.

National Trails Day: Hike

For many more pictures, see the Picasa web album for this hike.

Some people from the morning visit to the Canal Town Museum gathered at the trailhead near the graveyard for a short hike. The trail was beautifully sun-dappled, and there was a new flower blooming around every turn. I lingered at each one, wondering if I should break out the camera yet, and began falling back before we'd even hit the reservoir trail.


I managed not to get too far behind - for about ten minutes. Then I saw a bug on a plant just north of the old reservoir, and it was all over. Later I used BugGuide to find out that this is a female Panorpa. Judging from the Wing Guide of Ontario, I'd say it's a Panorpa acuta. It's definitely a female, because the information page tells us that the males have an appendage on the rear of the abdomen that looks frighteningly like a scorpion's stinger. They don't sting, though, so you can relax. I know I did.


I caught up with the rest of the folks just as they were entering the woods. Then came the depressing part of the trail: the procession of broken birdhouses. It turns out that Kathy Disque had just put them up this spring, and as we passed through the woods to the tall staircase, we saw that they'd all been vandalized.


Looking at the sad bundle of birdhouse slats that Mary collected, I thought again of my old theory to explain why people seem hard-wired to engage in vandalism. I think that it's a manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics. In attempting to gain a reproductive advantage over its peers, an organism has two basic choices: work to build up its own resources, or work to destroy the resources of others. Since the entropy of any system always increases, it's always far easier to reduce order than to increase it by the same amount; tearing something down is much easier than building it up. It seems clear to me that an evolutionary process could select for vandalism, enraging though the results may be. Thoughts like this help me cope.


We crossed the big bridge over Canastota Creek and the little one over the tributary just upstream, climbed the slope to the old railroad bed, and gathered around while Al told us some of the history of the railroad. Then we turned back, stopping on the bridge for the shot at the top of the page.


While Mary, Kathy and others fished some garbage out of the creek, I noticed a spider hanging from its web a few feet away. I took the opportunity to snap a few hundred shots as it devoured a fly it had caught. Later I referenced BugGuide and found that it was Mangora placida, or tuftlegged orb weaver. There was something strange about this one, though, because orb weavers are, by definition, supposed to weave orb webs. This one instead had a simple, thick, horizontal tangle web. It also had a bum leg, as you'll see if you look closely at shots in the Picasa web album. I wonder if that had anything to do with its aberrant, slipshod approach to web-building. Check out these gorgeous shots of the same species.


At the top of the stairs Mary paused to see if anything could be done for the bench, also recently vandalized. Apparently not.


Between the stairs and the trail I got some shots of a yellow wood-sorrel, but unfortunately my shots don't show the angle of the seed pod stalks, which would tell me what species it was.


On the way out of the woods I snapped some shots of herb robert, a constant - one might say unavoidable - companion in these parts.


We passed back out of the woods and along the path over the old reservoir, and as I reentered the woods northwest of the cemetery I made a point to get some shots of the delightful blue-eyed grass I'd seen on the way in. They're not what you'd call rare, but they're also not something I see every day, and that little blast of saturated blue with a brilliant yellow center always makes me smile.


Nearing the end of the trail, we passed through a plentiful copse of dame's rocket, an old favorite of mine from back when I was traipsing up and down Fairview Avenue with my Peterson's Guide to Wildflowers.


I certainly couldn't end the hike without grabbing some shots of the first burst of color I'd seen that day: some forget-me-nots growing in the stream just a few feet from the trailhead.

National Trails Day: Canal Town Museum

For more pictures from the museum, see the Picasa web album for this visit.

Among the people gathering in the office next door to the Canastota Canal Town Museum were a bunch of Link Trail folks. We watched a video presentation about the museum, and then went next door for a tour. I got talking to Mary and Kathy about Link Trail stuff, so I fell behind the main group before it got past the first room.

When I walked into the second room I got that pleasant shock of making an unexpected connection. The air vent on the front of the old wood stove shown above had lost its cover, and I immediately realized that the radiation hazard symbol came from that shape.


I got a big kick out of the assortment of Weed Tire Chains advertisements from the early 1900s. They used hard-sell FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) techniques; it looks like they sold their product by scaring the heck out of people.


As I passed on, down the stairs into the basement level, through into the next room, back up the stairs, and on through the rest of the upstairs rooms, I became more and more impressed. This little museum packs a lot of New York State's history into a very small space. I regret not going in before, and plan to come back. On the way out, I spent the $10 for a yearly membership.