Indian Summer at Ryerson Station State Park

Either it's the most beautiful October we've had in years, or I'm just especially susceptible to its charms this time around.

Sometimes two roads really do diverge in a yellow wood.  The one to the left goes downhill and can't be seen.

 Ryerson is a lovely little park, and it's trying so hard to keep up, despite some seriously hard luck in recent years.

The sign at this overlook says that the bench sits 424 feet above Duke Lake.  The problem is that there is no more Duke Lake.  The coal diggers undermined it, and it won't be coming back in our lifetimes.

And as for the Wolf Tree, the 300+ year old oak that used to tower above the forest here, it was destroyed in a storm.

This fellow stands close to the spot where the Wolf Tree used to stand, and he's a seriously majestic sight, but he's not 300 years old.

 Here lie the remains of Duke Lake, a bed of cattails.  The PADCNR is talking about putting in some other sort of watery attraction here.  Wetlands?  A rapids ride for kayaks? But we all know it won't be the same.

 I never knew Ryerson with a lake, since I didn't start going there until five years ago.  But any visitor senses its absence.

 The park has no focal point--which the lake used to be.  So they've extended the trail system and improved the campground, adding two cottages and keeping it open year-round.

 No more Wolf Tree and no more lake.  But these are the vicissitudes of life.  It's still a nice place to visit, and maybe whatever new thing they do will feel as vital and living as a body of water.

 Human beings are drawn to water.  Somehow it feels like life and potential to our primal hearts.    

 The Box Turtle Trail, the Lazear Trail, and the Fox Feather Trail all join to make a nice loop through the south side of the park.

 I just like knowing that the campground is always ready for me to drop in and set up my tent...though the weather will be getting a little too cold for that in about a month.

 If I had to offer a critique of the place, I'd say that wild grapevines are strangling much of the forest.  Can't something be done about that?  Also, I don't like the way it's dissected by two public roadways. 

But every time I go there, I say to myself, "Yes.  This is what I needed.  This place deserves more attention than I give it."  I almost stepped on this snake on the Iron Bridge Trail.  This lethargic little denizen of the forest was sunning his cold-blooded body in the golden rays of an October afternoon.