the Way of the Turtle

1 Mile Walk in the Pine Bush
Thursday, May 22, 2008

While the temperatures are still a bit chilly for this time of year, the sight of sunshine when I left work convinced me that I wanted to get outside for a bit before teaching karate tonight. I started out by heading over to a section of the Pine Bush I've never visited before - the Kings Highway Barrens, which shows a 1 mile long trail on the official Pine Bush map. Unfortunately, after making my way through several busy interesections, I found the trail there closed due to habitat restoration (ie. large scale removal of invasive plants, mainly black locust trees.) So instead I headed back to the Discovery Center and the trails in the Karner Barrens.

There's still a lot of construction work going on at the Discovery Center. The new access trail is apparently in use (though it will look a lot nicer when they finish the work and the plants grow back) so I took that up to the main trails under the eyes of several soaring turkey vultures. They seemed be be enjoying the windy day. I haven't been on the Karner Barrens trails much in the last year, and when I walked there back in March one section was closed for habitat restoration, so I headed over to that trail today to see what had been done. I had hoped to walk the entire length of the trail, but time was getting short so I ended up taking a connector trail instead, which took my right past the area they'd been working on during my last visit. The effect on the trails seemed minimal, which was nice - I hadn't been looking forward to walking through a desert.

So a short walk, but still a pleasant one... I think I'll have to get over there for a run sometime soon!

JMH