Hillman State Park, Haul Road

           I've never before hit Raccoon Creek and Hillman both in the same day, but today was special.  My wife made me go to a formal "benefit dinner" in the city with her on Thursday evening, so she was especially generous with this weekend's hiking time.  After the early morning trek through Raccoon, I set off to explore the back roads connecting that park to its nearby neighbor, Hillman State Park.  

          Only about 10 miles separate the two parks, but they feel like separate planets.  Because most of Hillman was strip mined, it will take Nature several millennia to restore the place to the rich vegetative state you find at Raccoon.  As a recovering strip mine, there are areas that are entirely without topsoil.  In other places, the soil is so thin that the trees remain stunted, and they dry out by the end of the summer.

          There are enormous anthills--as in this photo--like I've never seen outside the African plains.  The scrubby grasses and twisted bushes add to the savanna-like feel.  Today I discovered a large marsh with a pretty good sized buck and a doe hiding among the reeds.

          And yet, there's a melancholy loveliness to the place.  Theodore Roosevelt wisely said, "Comparison is the thief of joy."  And he's right.  I could compare this scrubby waste to Blue Knob and be forever dissatisfied with my weekly treks.  Or I could take it for what it is and find beauty, silence, and solitude even here.  In the 50s and early 60s, strip mining upset the balance of this land.  But balance returns eventually.  It will never be exactly as it was before, but it will find its new equilibrium.  How long it takes to get back to a place of balance!  By the time our spirits discover balance, our bodies have lost it.  Whenever something comes along to upset our state of orientation, we always want to work backward toward what was.  But that's unwise.  The steps go from orientation...to disorientation...to reorientation.  Reorientation is never the same as the original state, but it is its own thing, and also good in its way.  Too bad I won't live long enough to see the new thing that Hillman will become.