Lake Wateree State Park, August 27, 2013 Desportes Island Nature Trail

I drove to Wateree State Park from Columbia, up I-77 today, a few miles off the marked exit, near Winsboro in Fairfield County, eight miles south of Great Falls.  It is still summer with Black Eyed Susans along the way, only here and there a tree beginning to turn.  I pass over Taylor's Creek which looks less like a creek than a wide lake, then over a railed spit of land crossing Lake Wateree and you are there.  Pass the brown ranger house on the left with a 3 foot carved rooster on the porch.  Imagine a blob like splayed hand with fingers reaching into the lake.  The office here is open 7 am to 7 pm week days and 7 am to 8 pm on the weekend.  They give you free handfuls of trail mix bars called Mojo and Clif.  There is a long dock with a gas tank for boats, a playground, camping and picnic tables.

I take the Desportes Island Nature Trail which loops around the bloby index finger of the hand. The trail is wide and surrounded by oak, holly, cedar and pine.  Crows are mobbing and arguing, cicadas are singing, invisible insects are stinging now and then.  I can see the fluttering of white wings lifting over the water.

Near the shore, the water is like green olives through glass and farther out like silver, shining in the sun.

Father out on the trail, there is trash, even an old tire.  Still it is quite beautiful.

Leaving the park on Hwy 21 north,  I spot what looks like a yellow squirrel with a ring tail.  I see a big fat wild turkey near a sign for the Piedmont Hunt Club then pass a nicely refurbished black hearse with orange and red flames on the side.  This old road is startling in its rod like straightness.  You can see the road for miles ahead stretching up through the forest on the way to Great Falls where there is a great falls on the Catawba River.

August 18 through 22, 2013 The little Tenderfoot Trail at Cedar Lakes, WV

I walked this little trail above the Cedar Lakes Center several times.  In West Virginia, there are mountains everywhere and so you first must climb up the edge of the mountain on the leafy, rainy, foggy trail which circles two dark green lakes with yellow and brown leaves floating on their surface.  In places the path is very muddy. Last year, I am told, the quilting instructor was bittten by a snake on her heel while on this trail.
So don't wear sandals on hikes.

Unassuming Sarah, who painted beautiful water color flowers at my table, said that the first hiker stirs up the snake and the snake bites the second hiker.  She learned this when walking the entire Appalachian Trail with her husband.  Second only to having children, it was the greatest experience of their lives.  She carried 35 lbs of food, but they mailed packets of food to general delivery along the route. They stayed in the shelters or just in their tents, often finding books left by Trail Angels along the way.  Their children were grown. The husband's company had downsized and he was retired early. She had taught 5th grade for many years and now retired. They decided to cross the full expanse of the United States from California to Maine on bicycle.
Her husband died in a tragic accident along the way.  She climbed to the top of Mount Katahdin in Maine, the terminous of the trail and scattered his ashes.

The fly fishing teacher told me that there was a "geocache" up on the trail, that there was a fallen tree with another fallen log across it and a stone on top of that.  Without a GPS, I searched without results for the cache.  Later he told me that it was about 30 feet off the trail.

I drove back down the magnificent mountains in the fog and rain on Friday. At Tamarak, I gave a woman gas money. She was stranded without gas to get home.   Although the trees and fields are still green and the sky a pale insistent summer blue, there was a wind with yellow leaves swirling down on the road to my house, hinting at fall on its way.

I walked the familiar Rail Trail Saturday morning passing my fellow travelers:
the political refugees from Columbia, the fit Japanese man with the foot shaped running shoes, the attorney with his cell phone to his ear discussing a ruling, the two women and a man from the Phillipines, the home school family on bikes, the jogging girls with their pony tails swaying mightily, the roller bladers, the tall, sturdy New Zealander woman, the elderly woman who walks eight miles a day,  the two handsome gray bearded brothers ambling on  their long legs, the two sisters with dazzling smiles, identical except one is tall and one is short, all the dog walkers and the dogs in the Rail Tail dog park.

Bull Hawg's Barbeque has made a path from their back door to the trail with wooden steps, a bike rack, picnic tables and a sign advertising breakfast bagels.  The biggest lure, however, is the aroma.

Volunteers are cleaning and pruning and have provided a big dry erase board for ideas for the new year.
I suggest "Little Libraries", the kind they have in Decatur, essentially a box on a pole where you can leave books and where you can take books to be your own, if you wish.

Children are returning to school.  Everywhere on the edges of the woods, Confederate Jasmine vine is blooming.

July 28, 2013 Sadler's Creek State Park, Muscadines and Relentless Optimism

Such a beautiful Sunday, a very fine day with the temperatures in the high 80's and low 90's.  Everything is still deep summer green and not the scorched brown as in the past years of drought when the temperature in July was usually at least 100 degrees.  I am on my way to Decatur to stay with Martin and Mathew and to have supper at Chai Pani on Ponce de Lione Street, walking distance from their house.  Here and in Decatur, the Crape Myrtles are in full exuberant bloom, pink, red, tropicanna, watermelon , white and old fashioned purple like the one in my yard I planted some years ago on July 26 , my sister's birthday in her honor.

After Anderson, take exit 14 and go south on the Heritage Corridor of Rivers and Lakes, SC Hwy 187.
Soon I am crossing the Calvin Wesley Belcher Bridge which curves across wide shining Lake Hartwell.
On the right is Pearl Harbor Rd, Mohawk Rd and then a large shopping center area where the highway takes me right out into the countryside.  It is about 14 miles from I-85 to Sadler's Creek. Just before I get to the sign for Sadler's Creek Road on my right, I see Sadler's Creek BBQ, a gigantic establishment on the left, open on Saturdays.

If you could fly above the park, you would see a peninsula jutting into the lake, looking like a short narrow tube expanding into a big round balloon, a lovely forrested place which has 37 campsites and a picnic pavilion and trails. There is a .5 mile nature trail as well as a 5.4 mile trail through the woods.  I take the 5.4 mile trail which is well cared for and shaded.  I step from the real world with a surge of anticipation into the enchanted forest.  There are nats, a few of which I breathe in. The ranger tells me that you can get a hat with a net veil over your face, but it is hot.  There are hardwoods and pines and many, many muscadine vines, some of which have ripe purple berries dropped to the ground.  On the trail, I stumble upon a folded wad of dollar bills, only a little damp.  These I donate to the park in the big glass jar in the ranger station. People have been here, but I see no one.

The trail winds up and down, here and there coming along the lake shore.  Two white tailed deer leap across the path ahead of me and near the shore I find a piece of driftwood, oddly shaped like deer antlers which I take home with me.

In the car now on the radio, I hear the Sihk mantra:  "Go with Relentless Optimism" .