Haunted Hillman State Park

One of the worst scourges of climate change thus far is the dry Aprils. We get lots of rain annually, but only in torrents and mostly outside the growing seasons. The woods is dry as tinder. On a fluke, I came back to Hillman and to a part that I haven't hiked in years, a place where--today--the mayapples are wilting where they stand.

It's an ugly, scraggly stretch of scrubland, and each time I come here, I'm reminded why I stopped.  Nearly half the trees are strangled by wicked looking vines.  The horse riders and mountain bike riders tear up the unmarked trails so bad that any rain at all makes them unhikeable.  There's a spooky dreariness about the place.  And yet, it's got several sweet spots if you know where to look.  

One nice thing about Hillman is how suddenly and dramatically the countryside can change--which is why the mountain bikers like it.  You'll be slogging through briers and brambles beneath a sparse canopy of dying trees when, off to your left, you spot a big, alluring swath of green.  And voila!  You've got this pleasant open meadow.  These do look like Japanese honeysuckle, an invasive species, but a pretty one.  And this place is surely rife with deer ticks.  But it's still so inviting, with its blue skies, butterflies, gentle breezes, and birdsong.  Ridges and cliffs appear unexpectedly at Hillman, too.

And the scrappy, viny patchlands can turn into rich, dark forest just as suddenly, all earthy with the scent of evergreen.  Many of the trails I thought I recalled through here are either gone or never were. I've gotten lost nearly every time I've ventured very far into this dismal place.  It's an eerie feeling, but my biggest worry is not spooks or toothy animals; it's getting home in time to meet my kids off the bus.  And did I mention the strange, unidentified noises, and the enormous anthills, and crows, and jaggers fit for a Golgotha coronation?

Just look at these angry sumnabitches!  And despite it all, it was such a peaceful, perfect day to be alone in the woods--even this Blair Witch Forest.

Speaking of crowns of thorns, here's the only sort-of happy poem by my favorite poet, A.E. Housman.  It's appropriate for all the cherry trees in bloom.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

is hung with bloom along the bough,

and stands about the woodland ride

wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,

twenty will not come again,

and take from seventy springs a score,

it leaves me only fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

fifty springs are little room,

about the woodlands I will go

to see the cherry hung with snow.

My ten-year old daughter loves all the poems I've memorized--like this one.  When I told her it was Housman's only happy poem, she said, "Yeah, but it's not really happy either."  We just got back from a cruise to Bermuda.  Each time I go to the beach, I'm reminded again that though I like it, I'm really more of a riverine creature, a lover of forests.  But Bermuda was beautiful.  Here are some pics.