One project we've been saving for cold winter weather is some more rerouting of trails in Autumn Hill Reservation--the 78 acre preserve across the road from Herrontown Woods.
It's a perfect time to work in the woods--no ticks, no mud, lots of light being recycled by the snow, and the dense invasive vegetation is less intimidating in its dormant state. I can wear heavy clothes that protect me (mostly) from the thorns of multiflora rose, and the cold air balances all the body heat generated by the physical labor.
Improvements to trails
started three years ago, as we began shifting trails away from some chronically wet areas, and built plank walks where wet ground was unavoidable. Last winter, we
bypassed some wet areas along the yellow trail.
This pulse of energy comes fifty years after the YMCA built the original trail loop in 1972, and some 30 years after Bob Wells and the local boyscout troop expanded the trail system in the late 1990s. This according to a
little history of Autumn Hill I compiled.
This winter, Andrew and I explored off trail to find drier, more scenic routes, and were gratified to find them. One new trail will follow a ridge. Another will follow an old rock wall previously hidden from hikers' view.
The process of trail building requires cutting through some dense stands of invasive shrubs. Linden viburnum and winged euonymus are especially numerous, with some having grown to astonishing size. Border privet, Asian photinia, multiflora rose, and autumn olive add to what can be called "thickets of inedibility", that is, the dense, nonnative understory that deer refuse to eat. Birds eat the berries, but if nothing is eating the foliage, solar energy collected by the plants can't move up the foodchain.
There are also many fallen trees that need to be cut through to make a new trail. Ash trees in particular, killed over the past decade by the introduced Emerald ash borer, periodically get blown down during wind storms, their trunks rutted with the zigzag pathways cut by the EAB larvae.
It's rewarding to be able to cut the vines of asian bittersweet and Japanese honeysuckle that have been quietly strangling trees and native shrubs. Cut them at the base and all the growth above will die and eventually fall off. A quick tap on the cut stems with a Buckthorn Blaster helps prevent regrowth.
The most numerous native shrub is spicebush. The deer numbers are down enough that spicebush has been able to make a spectacular comeback, but the shrubs can still be stymied from growing new stems by deer browse.
When the time comes to mark the new trails, we'll remember this word to the wise: Don't nail the trail markers tight to the tree trunk. The tree will slowly swallow the marker.
Once the new trails are done, the Autumn Hill experience will be drier and more scenic, and I'll have gotten some good winter exercise.
