No one calls it "Seven Ponds Road" but me. When they started naming the trails out at Hillman, they decided to call this old dirt road the "Wetlands Trail." I like my name better, and I've been using it longer.
Hillman is an unremarkable place--reclaimed strip mines. It's got a lot of open, grassy meadows and rolling hills. It'll do in a pinch if you're a Pittsburgher who just needs a quick outdoor fix and who has neither the time to drive anyplace better nor the patience to deal with all the dogs and crowds in the county and city parks.
Mullein or "flannel leaf" is luxuriously soft to the touch and said to relieve backaches, earaches, dry coughs, and various lung ailments. It also grows in disturbed soil where nothing else wants to put down roots.
Which means that mullein is a common find at Hillman. If you stray off the Seven Ponds Road and onto one of the many tributary paths that open onto it, you can find this rolling landscaped reminiscent of some old BBC remake of Wuthering Heights or The Hound of the Baskervilles.
It's nice to have these broad grassy hills all to yourself. You don't even need a trail where there are so few trees to impair visibility. I've never met many other people out here except when I've been dumb enough to come in November or December--which is deer hunting season. The hilltop on which I'm standing in this photo is approached by the faint track that runs straight through the hollow below. This summit felt defensible.
I partly came out here to test the theory that this is an awful year for deer ticks. A lot of hikers on social media are moaning about all the legions of ticks, which--they say--have become impervious to repellent. I know of no place worse for poison ivy and deer ticks than Hillman State Park, so I thought I'd check since I've got a very long trek planned for the summer.
Like a lot of social media hype, I did not find it to be true. Not a single tick in three hours of moseying over the grass. So depending on how you count them, the Seven Ponds Trail could have anywhere between four and seven ponds--each of them delightfully unique.
There are three ponds immediately to the right of the road at various short intervals. This is the third one, which has been amended by beavers so that the water level is higher than the road. It's an odd feeling to walk along the roadway and see that the water just beside you is actually up to your waist or higher.
Then, each roadside pond has a smaller pond downhill from it and hidden in the trees to the left of the road. At this time of year, these runoff ponds are visible through the bare branches, but in high summer they're totally hidden. That makes three visible ponds and three oft-invisible ones. Here is the seventh and final pond. It also happens to be my favorite.
This little pond is the last one in the series, and it sits by itself off to the left at a short distance from the road. Its seclusion is nice, but I mostly like it for its clear water--which I tried to photograph, but the glare from the sky obscures it. My brothers and I would have swum in these ponds when we were kids. In fact Pond # 7 would be perfect for a swim....
No comments:
Post a Comment