365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Picked For Proximity
Day 348: Yesterday, I was entertaining all sorts of ideas about where to go for an end-of-season hike, but when I woke up this morning, the inspiration had fled. It wasn't that I didn't feel up to the miles; no, it was that I didn't want to drive to get there. Consequently, Pack Forest won out on two counts: proximity, and offering multiple options in case I felt like going farther than planned. I decided to make the hike do double-duty, and packed my GPS and field notebook so I could record invasive plants.
When I reached the halfway point in my original plan, I wasn't nearly ready to go home. As I was coming off Hugo Peak, I ran into some Park friends who suggested going out the 2130 Loop, a route which I thought was closed to all traffic, vehicular or pedestrian. "No, it's fine. They don't mean hiking," I was told, so off I went, game to add another 4 miles onto the day. I have to admit I was a little foot-weary when I got back to the car after a total of 14 miles, about half of which was spent on hard-packed road gravel and half on "softer" trail. Unfortunately, I didn't find any chanterelles for dinner, but I will be writing my invasives report from now until bedtime. Common tansy, tansy ragwort and foxglove abound.
Labels:
Crow,
hiking,
Hugo Peak,
Pack Forest
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