Return hike

It's nice returning to places at different times of the year. You might think it would be boring, say, hiking the same trail several times, but there are always new things to notice. Today I returned to a trail I discovered in April.

It's an urban hiking trail, but except for one end of the park where you can hear traffic on a busy road, you'd think you were in the middle of wilderness. It's just a narrow path through the forest, winding down a ridge, crossing a stream several times and running along a small gorge. Quiet, birds calling, lots of wild plant diversity, evidence of wildlife. Most prominently, today I heard chipmunks giving warning calls as I passed, several places along the trail. If I didn't know better I'd say they had some sort of Midnight Bark network! I also saw a couple of big, gorgeous millipedes, one dead and one decidedly alive--when it realized it had been discovered, it started flipping and twisting itself up into a curl. I see lots of centipedes, but millipedes, not so often, and they're always larger than I remember.

The biggest difference on the trail, last month to this month, is that the creek is almost dry now. It was flowing along happily in early April, but now it's not flowing at all in most places. There's really only water left in the deepest pools. I don't know if it's always seasonal, or if last year's drought and this month's relative lack of rain is affecting it. This spring hasn't been nearly as wet as last, when we had an unusual number of tornadoes and floods.


Millipede | Raccoon jawbones in a creek bed


Dogwood bent by a fallen tree