Walked the trail at Union Furnace Preserve for the first time today. Remnants of the colonial ironworks survive in several stone foundations and in the mill race. A segment of the trail runs along the top of the berm.
Other trail highlights included the four-hundred-foot-high hill, which is the bulk of the preserve, and the view from there, through the bare winter trees, of Spruce Run Reservoir. It was a cold and especially still day. When the clouds parted, we sunned ourselves and were warm. But we didn't see a single animal in the preserve.
However the walk back to the east trail head, along the reservoir, produced what appeared from a distance to be two beautifully gliding red-tailed hawks. Also, a large wasps' nest, heavy with precipitation and burdening its branches.
Walked a distance beyond the fisherman's access point, over the shallows of the reservoir, now exposed. I find this terrain creepy, unnatural, at least for earth. Perhaps a moonscape. A minimalist surface, devoid of trees, brush, grass, plants of any size. Spongy to the step, a thick of dry water weeds, over pocked, frozen mud. Fringed at the access point with bare black walnut trees, crusty and dying, like a warning.
This is my bit of a blog. Rambling words about rambling days. No focus and nothing ambitious. I seem to write most about local color, nature, and animals, and there is an incomplete chunk about my road trips of 2011.
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