I spent my last day off for this tour out exploring eastern Connecticut's "Last Green Valley", a large portion of which was my childhood stomping grounds in Pachaug State Forest. People don't often believe me when I share stories about literally roaming out of my parent's back yard and through their woods into this heavily glaciated landscape; full of upland swamps, bedrock outcrops and clear springs running fast towards slow moving rivers locked in constant battle with Long Island Sound twice a day.
Rural New England was once more populated than it is today, which means that one can find the echoes of prior civilization easily in Connecticut's largest state forest - stone buttresses aside a hard falling creek where once water did work for man, stone cellar holes of houses gone a century or more, and the ubiquitous stone walls. I had both of my trails today completely to my self. I only saw a couple of motorcycles on the road towards the Rhode Island borderlands. Interestingly enough, my cancer-prone lily white skin definitely needed protection from the sun even in the forest, as the trees here are only beginning to leaf out. That sun is now as intense as it is in mid-summer!
I'm ready and raring to take the stage this weekend, but I was grateful for a day at my own pace, in my own happy place; exploring the natural world, even as here it continues to soften the echoes of human history.
I hadn't taken ten steps on this trail when I spotted one lone lady slipper, not quite ready to bloom.
Busy beavers have made themselves quite a pond!
Water water everywhere, and so clear! Glacial leftovers means water is easily moving through the surface layer of earth, to and fro.
Native marsh violets are blooming anywhere there's surface water this week.
Echoes of the past - a stone foundation is all that remains of a 19th century house and farm.
By the Wood River beginning its journey through Rhode Island, just below Porter Pond near the border.