There's nothing like a good walk through nature to soothe the soul. It being nearly autumn, the annual Summit MetroParks Fall Hiking Spree has begun, and now that my cast is off of my right leg, I can start in earnest going hiking along the park trails. So far this weekend, I've hiked two of the eight trails necessary to earn my hiking staff shield. The first trail I hiked was the Alder Pond trail at Goodyear MetroPark in east Akron. Pictured left is the pond (not my photo - thank goodness for Google Images!). The Alder Pond hiking trail basically goes all around the pond and even across it on a wooden causeway. There you can see waterfowl like geese, ducks and herons fishing and swooping and gently swimming in the shimmering water surrounded by beautiful wooded scenery. There are many very large trees in this park, some of which could easily be well over 100 years old, judging from their massive circumference. There was one very large tree that had obviously been blown over by last weekend's hurricane that could well have been a very old tree. It made me sad to see that it had obviously been uprooted very recently because its leaves were still green. Sadly, there's no way to right the tree and replant it once it's been uprooted like that. It will have to be cut apart and chipped and the hole left by its uprooting filled in with fill dirt. Doubtless in a few years, seedlings will replace the old fallen tree. This is the cycle of nature. Old trees die, or burn or get uprooted, new ones take their place. And the woods go on as the trees rise up toward the sun and the seedlings grow along side of the old trees, inching up year after year to eventually replace the ones that die or get blown down by high winds.
Today I hiked through the newest of the MetroParks, Liberty Recreation Area in Twinsburg. It has a fairly short and easy trail to walk, although they must have re-routed it since the last time I was there, because I distinctly remember part of the walk going through what looked like a small gorge, but I did not see it this time, so I suspect that the trail has been slightly changed. Still, I began to get the impression that part of the park had at one time been someone's old apple orchard, because I smelled that old familiar tart apple smell and looked up to see apple trees burgeoning with big, plump, ripe red apples, inaccessible due to being surrounded by heavy brush and other trees. It made me sad to see such beautiful fruit go to waste, especially given that these trees more than obviously survived the ravages of last weekend's hurricane. This year was said to be a bumper year for tree fruits in Ohio and judging from the number of big fat red and golden apples dangling on these trees, they're not kidding. I suppose the crows and other birds will have a feast on them since no one obviously harvests them anymore. Right next to the park, there is what looks to be a very large old house. Whether anyone lives in it anymore is hard to say, but I could imagine in the late 19th or early 20th century, when this home appears to have been built, it was probably lived in by a proud and prosperous farmer who also had an orchard on his property. Sadly, there are any number of decaying old farm houses in this part of the state that speak of our former agricultural heritage, and as the tart apple smell in the air filled my senses, I could almost close my eyes and imagine a scene from out of the past, a proud family harvesting apples in the fall, running a farm and caring for it with their own hands. But alas, over time, younger generations probably lost interest and probably wanted to go to the Big City (read that, Cleveland, just to the north) and work a real job, perhaps on the railroad, the canal or on Lake Erie. Who knows. I just let my imagination run amok as I walk through these parks and try to imagine an earlier time when all of Ohio must have been heavily wooded and birdsong filled the air as you walked through the forests. At least a walk through the woods is a balm from the hurly-burly of city life and its attendant stresses and a touchstone to our past when our state was nothing but heavily forested wilderness. If you close your eyes, you can almost take yourself back in time and imagine yourself a pioneer walking through these woods. Who says time travel isn't possible?
There's nothing like a good walk through nature to soothe the soul. It being nearly autumn, the annual Summit MetroParks Fall Hiking Spree has begun, and now that my cast is off of my right leg, I can start in earnest going hiking along the park trails. So far this weekend, I've hiked two of the eight trails necessary to earn my hiking staff shield. The first trail I hiked was the Alder Pond trail at Goodyear MetroPark in east Akron. Pictured left is the pond (not my photo - thank goodness for Google Images!). The Alder Pond hiking trail basically goes all around the pond and even across it on a wooden causeway. There you can see waterfowl like geese, ducks and herons fishing and swooping and gently swimming in the shimmering water surrounded by beautiful wooded scenery. There are many very large trees in this park, some of which could easily be well over 100 years old, judging from their massive circumference. There was one very large tree that had obviously been blown over by last weekend's hurricane that could well have been a very old tree. It made me sad to see that it had obviously been uprooted very recently because its leaves were still green. Sadly, there's no way to right the tree and replant it once it's been uprooted like that. It will have to be cut apart and chipped and the hole left by its uprooting filled in with fill dirt. Doubtless in a few years, seedlings will replace the old fallen tree. This is the cycle of nature. Old trees die, or burn or get uprooted, new ones take their place. And the woods go on as the trees rise up toward the sun and the seedlings grow along side of the old trees, inching up year after year to eventually replace the ones that die or get blown down by high winds.
Today I hiked through the newest of the MetroParks, Liberty Recreation Area in Twinsburg. It has a fairly short and easy trail to walk, although they must have re-routed it since the last time I was there, because I distinctly remember part of the walk going through what looked like a small gorge, but I did not see it this time, so I suspect that the trail has been slightly changed. Still, I began to get the impression that part of the park had at one time been someone's old apple orchard, because I smelled that old familiar tart apple smell and looked up to see apple trees burgeoning with big, plump, ripe red apples, inaccessible due to being surrounded by heavy brush and other trees. It made me sad to see such beautiful fruit go to waste, especially given that these trees more than obviously survived the ravages of last weekend's hurricane. This year was said to be a bumper year for tree fruits in Ohio and judging from the number of big fat red and golden apples dangling on these trees, they're not kidding. I suppose the crows and other birds will have a feast on them since no one obviously harvests them anymore. Right next to the park, there is what looks to be a very large old house. Whether anyone lives in it anymore is hard to say, but I could imagine in the late 19th or early 20th century, when this home appears to have been built, it was probably lived in by a proud and prosperous farmer who also had an orchard on his property. Sadly, there are any number of decaying old farm houses in this part of the state that speak of our former agricultural heritage, and as the tart apple smell in the air filled my senses, I could almost close my eyes and imagine a scene from out of the past, a proud family harvesting apples in the fall, running a farm and caring for it with their own hands. But alas, over time, younger generations probably lost interest and probably wanted to go to the Big City (read that, Cleveland, just to the north) and work a real job, perhaps on the railroad, the canal or on Lake Erie. Who knows. I just let my imagination run amok as I walk through these parks and try to imagine an earlier time when all of Ohio must have been heavily wooded and birdsong filled the air as you walked through the forests. At least a walk through the woods is a balm from the hurly-burly of city life and its attendant stresses and a touchstone to our past when our state was nothing but heavily forested wilderness. If you close your eyes, you can almost take yourself back in time and imagine yourself a pioneer walking through these woods. Who says time travel isn't possible?
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