Potomac – Splattered Brains

The Approach of Winter

Although winter is not officially here yet, we are seeing signs that the transition to the season is well underway. The difference in the nature of the woods during past few weeks is stark. This is how a certain section of the trail looked two weeks ago.

This is how a section of the trail that we visited (a different one) looked yesterday morning.

It was still early in the morning when we got on the trail yesterday at Whites Ferry. It was quite cold outside, in the 30s. We are still getting used to the onset of these kinds of temperatures, fairly typical for this time of year at this time of the day. Fortunately, it was not windy. The sun was still struggling in and out of the clouds from its position low on the horizon when we arrived. There was little warmth from its presence. The weak rays of light barely reached us through the leafless trees.

The majesty of the towering Sycamore trees was once again revealed to us in its fullness: on the trail,and across the river on the shores of the Potomac.The perfect reflections on its calm and quiet waters further enhanced our views of the river, and uplifted us, on this beautiful morning.

For some reason, we encountered very few people on the trail yesterday. But we did see a few great blue herons. The herons were more skittish than I expected – like this one that we encountered early on in the walk.

Its eventually warmed up into the 50s, a more reasonable temperature to handle at this stage of our transition to winter.

The long walk that we took served well to compensate for the calories consumed during the Thanksgiving meal. It was a quiet and relaxed affair with just the family and a friend, with the kids putting in most of the effort in preparing the meal. We are thankful – for everything!

The Hiking Weekend: The Billy Goat Trail (And Other Trails At Great Falls)

The Great Falls of the Potomac river are located not too far from where we live. There are parks associated with these Falls on both sides of the river. Great Falls Park is on the Virginia side of the river. On the Maryland side, the park is considered a part of the 184.5 mile C&O Canal National Historic Park that runs from Washington, DC, to Cumberland, MD. The Billy Goat trails are located in the Great Falls section the national historic park. There is an old tavern beside the canal at Great Falls that now serves as a Visitor Center for the park. There are many visitors to this section of the C&O canal, most of them who have come to get a view of the Potomac river and the Great Falls from Olmsted island. You can see the river in all its fury as the river channel narrows and the mass of water is funneled down into the Mather Gorge.

But the adventure that drew me to this location was not the Great Falls themselves. I was here because I wanted to hike the Billy Goat trail, Section A – the original Billy Goat trail. (Sections B and C are more recent additions.)

It had been many years since I had faced the challenge of the Billy Goat Trail. It was a distant memory by this point. I remember clambering over rocks of random shapes and sizes and negotiating rocky cliffs. I remembered having to use my hands for climbing, and my butt for sliding down. I also remembered the views of Mather Gorge from the trail. I had a memory of how much fun it all had been.

The trail system around Great Falls was not well developed when I last explored the original Billy Goat Trail. I decided that I would get my miles in by exploring these newer trails also this time. I finished the day walking almost 9 miles.

This Billy Goat Trail has become more and more crowded in recent times because of of its location. This is a well populated section of Montgomery County, the place where we live. These are also the suburbs of Washington, DC – a big city and the capital of the country! The Billy Goat trail is probably the most challenging trail close to us.

In order to better manage an untenable situation with an increasingly overcrowded trail, starting in 2020, the authorities have strongly recommended its usage as a one-way trail. (Indeed, all the relevant trail markers do not indicate that this is only a recommendation!) This setup prevents one from running into people going in the opposite direction in sections where it is clearly impossible to pass each other. You are supposed to hike the trail from north to south. The best place to park your vehicle to get to the trail head as quickly as possible is at the Visitor Center at Great Falls, a location less than a half-an-hour drive from home. So, there I was!

This was the morning after the change from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time. As a result, I was at the park very early. I walked south along the canal towpath to get to the entrance for the trail.

There were other signs warning people about the challenging nature of the trail. This was not a hike primarily about climbing great heights or descending down mountains. The main challenge is keeping your footing when climbing up and down the big rocks. Dogs are not allowed on this trail!

The early sections of the hike were relatively easy, but the random rocks that you saw along the way were an indication of what was to come.The trail ran parallel to the Mather Gorge. There were certain places where you could walk up to the edge of cliff to view the gorge. This is a panoramic view of Mather Gorge early in the hike. (I “stitched” three individual picture to create this view.)From the pattern of the shadows in the gorge, you can make out that it was still early in the morning when I took the picture.

Soon we were clambering over rocks. It was easy to get lost because there was no obvious trail, and the only indication that you were headed in the right direction were the trail markers, sometimes at a distance, painted on the rocks. You had to scan the horizon (in a manner of speaking) to find out where the next marker was located since the path to be taken to get across the rock piles was not necessarily a straight one. Having said that, it would probably be difficult to get lost in this space if one kept going a generally southerly direction. The primary issue when going off-trail was probably wandering into ecologically sensitive areas and causing damage.

You had to use both your hands to climb up and down rocks, and to keep your balance on uneven surfaces. There was the occasional use of the butt to slide down rocks. The trail even went up and down the side of the cliff beside the river on a couple of occasions. I had to put my camera away in the backpack so that it would not bang on to the rocks and get damaged. I would only take it out on occasions when I sensed a photo opportunity.

It was about this time of the hike that I began to feel the draw of this particular trail in a stronger and more insistent manner. This was exciting! The adrenaline was flowing.

Here are a couple of pictures of the gorge taken a little later in the morning.
The most challenging section of the hike was the location seen in the picture below. I believe that unofficial name for this place is The Traverse.

Although difficult, the challenge of The Traverse is probably more mental than physical. You do have to overcome your fears. You will reach out with your hands and feet for something that seems unreachable. You will have to also trust the traction on your shoes as you step on the inclined rock. (Do not wear shoes with worn out soles!) In the end, people of varying abilities and of a wide range of ages seemed to be able to make it through. Of course, you would not want to try to get across The Traverse if you had some infirmity that limited your movements in any way.

After a while, the trail veered away from the river towards its termination point on the the C&O Canal towpath at Widewater. The nature of the trail changed somewhat,although there were still some rocky sections like this one.Once I was back on the towpath next to Widewater, I proceeded south to the bridge at Anglers Inn.

I crossed the bridge

and got on the Berma Road trail to connect to the newer trail system at Great Falls (that I talked about earlier). I took a random path through these trails, moving generally in a northerly direction, but also checking out as many of them as I could in the process. The Gold Mine Loop Trail appears to be the trail of note here. The trees were generally still mostly green in the woods.I was able to make my way back to The Tavern using the Overlook Trail.

I could have ended the hike at this point since I was back at the place where I had started it, but the distance I had covered at that point was less than what I had covered the other days of the weekend. It did not feel right! I compensated by walking a further couple of miles – going north on the River Trail and returning to The Tavern on the towpath.

This was a fantastic end to a weekend of hiking!

The Heat of Summer – Once Again!

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn’t it a pity
Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city……………..The Lovin’ Spoonful

The temperatures began its rise into the 90s last weekend. Knowing that it was going to get very hot, we started our walk earlier than usual on Sunday. We were on the trail at Swains Lock before 8 O’clock! In spite of the early start, it did not take too long before we began to feel the sweat collecting on our necks and back. It was going to be one of those days!

We walked towards Great Falls. Here is a picture of the tavern at Great Falls.

We continue to see flowers for the first time this year along the towpath. The numbers I am recording are staggering. These include Tall Meadow Rue,

Yarrow,

Trumpet Flower,

Pickerelweed,

Mullein,Thistle,what I believe is Bindweed of some kind,

Black Cohosh,

Day Lily,Basil Bee Balm,

and a couple of flowers that I could not identify.

We also found raspberryand pawpaw fruitalong the trail.

The heat of the summer also brings out the dragonflies and the butterflies. We saw a few skimmers, a zebra swallowtail, and even a Red Admiral and a Crescent butterfly. (I will post some of these and other pictures in my Pbase photo galleries.)

We took a detour on to the River Trail just north of Great Falls on our way back to Swains Lock. It was a delightful experience! We ended up walking on a narrow trail along the side of the river. There were very few people on the trail and we saw a lot of birds. There were so many herons on the other side of the river, with many of them standing on their own individual rocks!I have to believe that there is a park on the other side of the river that is attracting the herons.

We also saw a Indigo Bunting.At first I was not sure about the identity of this bird, being confused by a shaft of light falling on its breast, but I now feel more confident of my conclusion. (Of course, I am not an expert on this matter, and my process for identifying a bird is always subject to verification/confirmation by any knowledgeable birder or ornithologist who happens to come this way!)

Here is the video of the song that I mentioned at the beginning of the blog.

More Flowers Of The Season

We saw more flowers of Spring during our outing on the canal last Sunday. Here are the new ones that caught my eye.

Celandine:

Fleabanes:

Phlox:

Miami Mist:

The real Virginia Waterleaf! (I believe I falsely identified the following as possibly Virginia Waterleaf a few weeks back. The real Virginia Waterleaf grows closer to the ground than the plant we had seen earlier!):

Mayapple:

Star of Bethlehem (different from the Nodding Star of Bethlehem!):

Possibly Sweet Cicily:

and Dames Rocket:

We could see the distinctive Rosa Multiflora plants in some sections of the trail. These will be blooming soon, and, along with the honeysuckle, taking over the sides of the trail before too long!

The manner in which I have approached the presentation of the flowers observed along the canal this year has made me better appreciate, perhaps for the first time, the wide variety of the flora that we have been coming across over the years in our own backyard. This is amazing!

Our exploration last weekend started from Point of Rocks. It has been a while since we came here. There has been enough new development around the area of the towpath that I initially even missed the entrance to the park. I would consider Point of Rocks to be at a somewhat intermediate distance from home, creating the situation where one is not really sure whether to consider it close enough to home when planning Sunday walks when there are time constraints, or far enough from home when we wish to spend more time exploring less-visited and newer spaces. This indeterminate state of affairs is probably one of the reasons that has led to the less frequent visits to this place.

Also to be considered in the context of making excuses for not visiting Point of Rocks is the fact that there are a lot more people visiting this place these days than in the past. The place is actually crowded! I still remember the days when there was almost nothing here. I would see very few people in the parking lot or on the trail. At that time, I had discovered the area from some newly found source of information about the C&O Canal, and I was still in the process of exploring these new spaces for the first time. The parking lot at Point of Rocks used to be a small area of cleared gravel/dirt beside an undeveloped road – on the other side of a narrow wooden bridge over the dry canal bed. (I once wrote about a bird that landed on my car while I was in this parking area. I need to rediscover that e-mail!) In those days, the dirt road actually extended on to the then unmaintained towpath, and ran all the way to the bottom of the Route 15 bridge over the Potomac river. There used to be another undeveloped dirt parking lot under the bridge at that time. All of this has changed. The trail has been resurfaced since then and is no longer accessible to visitor vehicles, and the previous parking area under the bridge is now overgrown with vegetation. The NPS parking lot at Point of Rocks these days is huge. The lot has a paved surface, and there is also a nice boat ramp to the river at one end of it.

A noteworthy element of the experience of coming to Point of Rocks is the sight of the Route 15 bridge across the Potomac in the early morning light. It is always striking. I never fail to take pictures. Here is another example.

We walked all the way to the Catoctin Creek Aqueduct and back.(Can you imagine that this was how the place looked in 2006, many years before they began reconstruction of the aqueduct?!)

There were a lot of gnats in the air at the aqueduct. It is a reminder that summer temperatures are slowly but surely making their way to our neighborhood, although, right now, we do have some days that are still cold enough to require a light jacket or a windbreaker.

Last weekend was the first time we went out to a restaurant after a gap of well over a year. We were expecting to see a light crowd. It was a shock to see the large numbers of people gathered in the shopping area. They were out enjoying the great Spring weather that we were experiencing that day. The restaurants in the neighborhood were all also quite busy. If people had not been wearing their masks, and if the spacing between the occupied tables at the restaurants had not been increased for safety, one would have assumed that this was a normal day in the county without anything amiss. But there is indeed a pandemic still going on! It was a little difficult sometimes to maintain spacing with other people while on the walkways, but, thankfully, most people wore masks. We also sat outdoors at the restaurant. All of this was a little risky, I suppose, but new Centers For Disease Control (CDC) guidelines for people who have been vaccinated suggests that the risk levels are low in these situations. This is not an exact science. We are still learning. One still has to be very careful, especially with mutations of the virus, like the particularly virulent version that seems to be prevalent in India, that are spreading around the world.

We did enjoy our dinner, although there were elements of the experience that felt a little new and unfamiliar to me once again. The interactions with the waiter felt somewhat unnatural. Truth be told, we have gotten so used to ordering food to eat at home, and enjoying the food in the relaxed and quiet atmosphere at home, that the home dining experience feels more natural and easy. One would go to restaurants primarily to enjoy the company of friends. That was what we did on Saturday.

Songs From The Woods

Let me bring you songs from the wood:
To make you feel much better than you could know
Jethro Tull – from Songs From the Wood

The weather report indicated that it was going to rain that morning. But I was determined to make it to the towpath anyway. The irony was that we had had good weather earlier in the week, suitable for outdoor activities, but I had successfully made excuses for not going outdoors and doing my exercise. The weather turned out to be bad on the one day I was going to be making up for my laziness during the week. Rats!

It rained as we drove to Pennyfield Lock last Sunday, and it was raining as we began our walk.The rain was not too heavy, and I kept my camera under a poncho that I was wearing. We were comfortable. And the rain did peter out as the morning progressed – even though the skies continued to look threatening from time to time. The wet weather did nothing to dampen our enthusiasm for the walk.

When we arrived at Pennyfield lock, we were met by a steady background noise, the sound of some kind of an insect it seemed, emanating from the woods all around us. We stopped to listen, but we still could not make out the source of the sound. It seemed to be everywhere. You can listen to these sounds in the background of this recording that I made in a section that also happened to be full of birds. I am thinking of crickets, or maybe cicadas.

There were more Spring flowers to be seen this week along the trail, including the unique Dutchman’s Breeches!We also saw Cutleaf Toothwort, Gill over the Ground, and some small yellow flowers that I did not recognize.

We also encountered a few different birds. There were quite a few Great Blue Herons in this section this morning.The Canada geese were also plentiful. They seem to be somewhat ornery this time of year. I think it is nesting season. They were squawking at each other, and we even witnessed one loud fight going on on the river.We speculated that this was a situation of two males fighting over a female. We had no informed basis for coming to such a conclusion.

We saw a few of the musical Carolina Wren,and the colorful Northern Cardinal.They brightened up the place.

A Barred Owl also made an appearance.I even sighted a couple of Wood Ducks. They are not that common in these parts, and the only time you are likely to see them is in winter.

As usual, there were noisy sparrows in the bushes all over the place. I reacted to their presence by dismissing them, half jokingly, as “just sparrows”. I think it was an unfortunate response, and it happens a lot because we see a lot these birds. The truth of the matter is that they are also amazing creatures like all of the other birds – regardless of how often we get to see them. Perhaps people would tend to respond differently in places where there are fewer of them. I am sure any curious child would find them amazing. Can any of us even claim to be able to fly around effortlessly like these birds? How many of us really understand the phenomenon of bird flight? And yet we take it all for granted….

The lyrics of the song I noted at the beginning of this blog are worth listening to:

A Sigh of Relief on Another Beautiful Sunday

We went back to Williamsport last Sunday. It was a beautiful morning – somewhat cold when we started our walk, but above 70° by the time we finished. We walked in the general direction of north and west, towards Dam 5. The river meanders a lot in this section. To be certain of the direction you are facing at any particular moment in time, you have to be paying attention to the direction of the rising sun and/or the shadows being cast across the trail. Beautiful morning!

We finally got to breathe a sigh of relief on Saturday. Four years of complete political chaos, and complete dysfunction in governance, will hopefully come to an end soon. I was going to add that four years of division will also come to an end, but that remains to be seen, given the attitude of the current resident of the White House towards the handling of his loss, and his approach towards the transition that needs to happen. This particular con game of his has finally reached its limit, even as he spews out absurd lies about widespread fraud in the election process. Even while some of us breath a sigh of relief, many are very unhappy. Even as some of us breath this sigh of relief, the cases of coronavirus rise in record numbers. People are also dying in large numbers. There is a lot of work that needs to be done at a national level to save ourselves.

Will end the blog on a happy note with the pictures from our walk.

The first few pictures were taken at the beginning of the walk. A faint mist was visible in the distance over the canal as we crossed the bridge on to the trail.

The skies were clear. The air was still. The reflections on the water were perfect. These are pictures of the Cushwa Basin,and of the Route 11 bridge over the Potomac river,taken as we departed the area of Williamsport.

Further along the trail, we found a place where there were steps that went down to the river.The majesty of the winding river was easy to appreciate from down beside it.

The clear and crisp morning light enhanced our experience of the trail, and our view of all that remains of the Fall foliage in these parts.

We turned to return back to Williamsport at a point where a dirt road led to a parking lot next to canal. Earlier on, I had considered driving to this parking lot, and walking along the towpath from this point onward. Seeing the condition of the road, I am not sure I would use this lot any time soon for that purpose.

I decided to swap lenses on my camera at about this point in the walk, and use the zoom lens for the rest of the trip. As I raised my head from the camera bag which was lying on the ground (over which I was changing the lens), I saw a deer standing on a rocky ledge on the other side of the canal. Why don’t you take my picture to make sure that you have attached the lens to the camera properly?, it seemed to be asking. That is exactly what I did.It is a magical place, this canal of mine!

Towards the end of the walk, we came upon our old reliable friend, the great blue heron. I had to take its picture.

We had to depart Williamsport quickly at the end of the walk because of another appointment that we had closer to home. I did not have time to take the picture of the Conococheague Aqueduct from the level of the creek as I had originally hoped to do. Now I have an excuse for making another visit to Williamsport sooner rather than later!

At Antietam Aqueduct

It was early Sunday morning. When I asked Teresa which section of the canal she wanted to go to, she left it to me to decide – because it was my birthday. There was no particular time constraint either on how long we could spend on our adventures that morning. I picked a place to go to that took a little longer than usual to get to, a place that she had not ever been to for hiking. We spent the whole morning on the towpath hiking near Shepherdstown, WV, (my biking companions from 2016 will surely remember the place!) and Sharpsburg, MD.

This walk was a little different from usual. We spent more time than usual exploring off-trail, beside the Potomac river itself.

As we drew into the parking lot after the long drive from home, my attention was drawn to the sound of a freight train beginning to make its way across the river from West Virginia, on its way to Hagerstown. Although I had the urgent need to visit the facilities, I changed my mind and quickly grabbed my camera from the back seat after parking the car. This is what we saw. It made me wonder.

Once on the towpath, we decided to head in the direction of Harpers Ferry, towards Washington, DC. It was a nice and cool morning.

The first time we decided to walk down from the towpath to the river was when we heard the sounds of the water rushing over rocks, indicating the presence of some rapids. We do not come across rapids that often during our walks. Usually, the river is very quiet. Additionally, we had noticed many places where people had walked off the marked trail towards the river and created ad-hoc paths through the woods in the process. We took one of the paths that appeared to be more easily navigable. Since the towpath happens to be at an elevated level when compared to the level of the river in this section, we had to be careful coming down the sandy trail to the level of the river.

It was still early in the morning when I took these pictures from beside the river. The rapids, if I could even call them that, were very gentle, with a very small drop in the level of the river at this point.

Back on the towpath, we passed a neighborhood with older houses on the berm side of the canal. This one could have been unoccupied, and perhaps even abandoned.

We arrived at Antietam Aqueduct after passing a huge campground next to the trail.The Antietam Creek Campground is the only one of its kind along the 184.5 mile towpath. It is a very different setup from the regular Hiker and Biker campsites that line the rest of the trail. This campground is much bigger, with many individually marked sites that can be reserved. Unlike the Hiker and Biker campsites, this one is accessible by car. There were many vehicles parked in the vicinity of the campground on the berm side of the canal. The facilities in this campground could be considered slightly less primitive than at the Hiker and Biker sites – but not by much.

When we arrived at the Antietam Aqueduct, my first instinct was to go down creek-side to get a picture of the aqueduct itself. This proved to be a little bit of a project since the closest approach required stepping down a steep slope immediately next to the wall of the aqueduct. The slope was covered with small, loose, gravel. It would have been easy to lose footing while trying to go down, and to end up sliding down to the bottom.

After some exploration, we managed to find a spot further along the towpath that was less intimidating, a spot where other people had attempted to go down to the river in the past. We managed to get down to the river, and then walk back along the riverside, on a rough and uneven path, to the the mouth of the creek, where the creek met the Potomac. The aqueduct was revealed to us in its fullness.

This was a view of the river from the mouth of the creek.

We got back to the towpath taking the shorter route up to the trail, the one next to the aqueduct itself. It helped to hold on to the wall of the aqueduct while climbing. I think going up is easier than coming down, especially if you are dealing with damaged elbows.

The next time we decided to go down to the river was on our way back, when we found a nicely cleared path down to the river in the section of the towpath next to the homes we had seen on out way out to the aqueduct. This foray into the woods resulted in the decision to attempt to keep walking along the riverside, using whatever rough trail we could find, for as long as we could.The risk was of having to walk back along the same rough trail if we found ourselves stuck, with no easy way to get back to the towpath from where we had reached along the river.

We had to pick our way over a narrow and very lightly used, perhaps even disused, pathway, walk over sand and pebbles in some places, and even navigate past fallen trees. If I were a child, I would have enjoyed the experience even more. Eventually, we got to a place where we had to cross a stream that passed under the canal via a culvert. Fortunately the stream was shallow enough for us to walk across.The path along the river seemed to end here. There was a path back up to the towpath on the other side of the culvert. That was the end of this particular escapade. I would be remiss if I did not post a picture of this object that we found in this section of the trail.Some of you might recognize it for what it is. It makes you wonder!

The final time we explored off-trail was when we got to the general area of the parking lot we had left our car at. We walked beyond the parking lot and up to the bridge for vehicles that went over the Potomac river, the bridge over which my friends and I had biked in order to get to our hotel in Shepherdstown one evening in 2016.Walking back to the parking lot along the riverside allowed us to see the remains of all the old bridges that used to connect the two sides of the river at this point.The railroad bridge that we had seen the freight train activity on earlier on could also be seen from the level of the river.

The off-trail activities that took place throughout the morning ended up making this a longer outing than usual. But that was not the end of the story. We also took the longer route home, taking the country roads, and driving past Harpers Ferry on the Maryland side of the river.

We were sad to see that the National Park Service had shut down the parking spots that used to exist next to the road in the section of the road next to Harpers Ferry. It will make any future attempt to climb Maryland Heights a somewhat longer effort, with much more walking involved. It is also the end of free parking if you were planning to visit Harpers Ferry itself. It is probably a good thing that they closed the parking lots. Their locations were dangerous.

That was about it for the long morning on the towpath. I had my customary PB&J sandwich for lunch, after which I attempted to take my usual Sunday nap that was needed to recover from all the activity. But this was not the usual Sunday.

Early Monday morning, we got some very sad news. It was about a death in the family. Joy Aloysius Thomas was a truly remarkable person. You do not find people like him in this world often. He was incredibly brilliant and knowledgeable. He was also an terrific human being by all measures. He was humble. He had already done so much in his life in the service of humanity, and for his fellow human beings. He would have done much more if he had not lost his life. He died young, unexpectedly. I decided to hold off on this blog until funeral services were complete.

Fields of Gold (9/11/2005)

I wrote this email in 2005. I had just started visiting the C&O canal towpath the previous year, and was still in the process of regularizing my weekend exercise routine beside the Potomac river. Some of the places that I visited along the canal were not as familiar to me then as they are now.

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I was up early this morning and headed for Point of Rocks for my morning run. These morning runs have become less frequent with the efforts to get the rest of the family involved in the C&O canal activities. Last weekend Teresa and I biked 16 miles on the trail. (That is certainly an great achievement for a first-timer!) I have biked with Angela on other occasions, and, a couple of times, also run on the trail while the others have biked along. However, as I realized this morning, while getting the family involved is a good thing, you still need your own time to rejuvenate and recuperate. There is nothing like the silence of the woods in the cool of the early morning to sooth your soul and bring your internal temperature back to normal. Come what may, I need to find a way to continue my travels and meditations.

As I was driving towards Point of Rocks this morning, I was struck by the sight of the fields of gold. Yes, the leaves in some of the fields are beginning to turn golden yellow. These fields alternated with the neighboring cornfields where the stocks of corn stood tall, some of them turning brown due to the coming of Fall. It was a sight to see, and I stopped by the roadside to take pictures. It immediately brightened my mood. Lona Alias, my favorite Sunday morning DJ on the radio, provided some reminders of events in the real world, including the anniversary of 9/11, and happenings down in New Orleans. She played some nice songs. If you have not done so already, you should find a way to listen to the song “Louisiana 1927” by Randy Newman. Although it is going to take up some space, I am going to include the words for the entire song here. Hope you don’t mind.

“What has happened down here is the winds have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangelne

Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tyrin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, “Little fat man isn’t it a shame what the river has done
To this poor crackers land.”

Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away
They’re tryin’ to wash us away”

Apparently, the 1927 flooding of Louisiana resulted in widespread death and destruction, and very poor response from the authorities. History is repeating itself. Enough said.

I ran from Point of Rocks to the Monocacy Aqueduct and back today. The morning was cool, portending the coming of Fall. All the people I encountered on the trail were cheery and greeted me with smiles. The kids were packing materials from the campsites that they were vacating after overnight stays, and carrying the stuff to their cars. Other kids rode their bikes in disorderly columns, with adults trying to provide supervision and prevent them from running people over. As I jogged by, one gentleman even wished me well on my efforts to complete the 12 miles. I did not even feel too tired after the run and my muscles did not give out on me during the run. I still feel great!

One incident to note. After I finished the run, I walked up to the railroad tracks to take some pictures. I walked along the tracks with my camera, trying to find spots with some interesting shots. When I returned, I observed a vehicle belonging to the Park Police in the parking lot facing my car. I walked by the officer trying to act nonchalant, wondering if I was in some kind of trouble, especially since I had been trespassing on the railroad tracks a couple of minutes back. (Think Al Qaeda!) “Good morning” I said to the policemen. “How is it going?” he responded cheerily. As I opened the driver’s door and got into the car, he got out of his vehicle and started walking towards me, at least that was what I thought. As he got closer, he angled away towards the car besides mine. It was an old beaten-up wreck, parked further away into the woods. He inspected the car carefully and started talking into his radio. He then turned and walked back to his vehicle, taking a glance a me as I sat in the front seat of my car eating a donut as he went by. He then drove away. I wonder if he also checked out my license number in my absence, and if I am now on some kind of a watch list. Of course I am paranoid! Anyway, that was my adventure for day.

Enough for now.
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The above letter was written shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. This hurricane devastated the city. It never fully recovered to its old self.

You can listen to the song I talk about here.

Here are some pictures taken that day.The parking area at Point of Rocks has changed significantly since 2005, the time I first started visiting. It used to be real rough. There were just a few spots off a dirt road, and you parked in whatever random space you found. You could also drive beyond the lot to a space under the bridge carrying US Highway 15 across the Potomac. You could find dicier parking (if the water in the river was not too high) there. All of this has now been replaced by a real parking lot, and a very big one at that! Also, you can no longer drive beyond this lot to the space under the bridge. The space on the other side of the canal, between the railroad tracks and the main road (MD Route 28), has also now been converted into a well-maintained park. And a lot more people visit these days.

The River Runs Brown at Cohill Station (5/19/2014)

It is a strange process of the mind that has gotten me to post this particular blog. I actually started out wanting to bring Christina’s blog from her Peace Corps days back to life (at least temporarily). The final blog, before she leaves Guinea, is a classic. But, then, I thought that the circumstances of my referral to that blog in my original e-mail in 2014 were also interesting enough. I post my original e-mail in full. I do this in spite of the fact that we are heading into the season of Winter at this time, and not Summer. In fact, the temperature outside right now is about 20°F.

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It rained cats and dogs, and squirrels and gerbils, last Thursday. The wind rattled the blinds of the open window in the bedroom waking me up in the middle of the night from my solitary slumber. Teresa is in Bangalore with her dad, Angela is in school taking her final exams, and Christina is wandering around the country, taking a break after returning from her Peace Corps adventures. The wind blew hard enough that night that I had to get out of bed to close the open windows. A little bit of water even got into the bathroom through a skylight that was apparently not sealed adequately on the roof. Our region also experienced a significant amount of flooding and road closures in the aftermath of the storm. We have been seeing an unusual number of similar storms this Spring. Is it the impact of global warming?

Since I was alone at home, I decided to head out as far west as I could this Sunday morning in order to extend my coverage of the 184.5 mile C&O canal trail. Two weeks ago I had started my run at the Cohill Station traiI access point at near mile 130. Today I started my run from the end of the WMRT at Pearre, MD, near mile 136. I managed to get all the way to mile 139 today. Some day I will get to the end of this trail. (KJ note – I did get to the end of the trail finally in 2016.)

Very few people live in this part of Maryland these days. The ridges of the Appalachian mountains run north to south, and in these parts they provide natural barriers that cause the Potomac to turn left at the Cacapon mountain and actually flow north for a few miles before the river turns east and south again to head towards the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. Further to the west lie the Paw Paw bends of the river that cause the it to meander in S-shapes through the hills. I wondered about the processes that caused this section of the river to actually be created. Was the Potomac formed because of erosion by glaciers during an ice age? As you make your way to the trailheads on roads off of Interstate 68, you will find yourself traveling along the valley or the crest of the little known Tonoloway ridge . You see abandoned homes along the road. When you get to your destination, you also notice the many abandoned trailer homes beside the trail. I wonder if this used to be a poorer part of Maryland. How did people survive? Did their source of living vanish due due to changing times? OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Three weeks ago one could make out the new leaves of Spring on the trees along the trail. Today the area looked lush and green. Change can happen quite quickly!But the thing that caught my particular attention was the high level of water in the river and the nature of its swift flow. When there is flooding, the initial impacts are usually felt in the local streams and creeks, but all of this water eventually flows into the rivers, and the river can actually crest a few days later, after the storms have long gone by. The Potomac only crested in certain sections on Saturday, the day before my run. The river looked browner than usual. Imagine the massive quantity of mud that was being swept down the river because of erosion in our backyards, the mud that was causing it to look different. There is no way to reclaim this sediment and to reverse the process. Material that was in a certain location at one time is gone forever from that location. This change is irreversible. It reminds me that we human beings have difficulty adjusting to change, while in the grand scheme of things irreversible change is inevitable. To what extent does it make sense to put up a fight? No other species has done as much as humans to put up a fight, and with knowledge and technology we have brought tremendous sophistication to this endeavor, and quite often we do not care about the secondary consequences. When does it make sense to accept nature’s reality gracefully without trying to fight it? OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA The solitude of the trail (and perhaps even the quiet of the empty home) actually soothes the mind. Such conditions provide moments of clarity that would otherwise not be possible with the constant interactions and distractions of daily life. The trail is perhaps one of the very few circumstances when I am capable of trying to ponder if there is a bigger picture considering how inconsequential our existence is on the grand scale of things. The trail provides perspective. You are aware that everything else that is going on around you is for the most part independent of the human factor. The world can actually exist without us humans. Why do some of us think there is an overall purpose that is to benefit our species to the detriment of others? Why does it seem that the progress of human society appears to be a process of positive feedback that is leading to increasing inequality in almost all dimensions, while the ultimate result is inevitable? What does a human really need beyond food, clothing and shelter, and what happens when you get beyond that? All things considered, what should I be trying to do? Should I even spend my time thinking about things like this? You might actually get some answers that work for you under the right conditions.

So, what about Cohill Station? It used to be a real railroad station on the Western Maryland Railroad in the old days when the population in this part of Maryland used to be more significant. Nothing remains at the former site of the station. Dust to dust! I wonder how things were for people who used to live along the river, especially when it ran brown.

Things change.

Returning Home at Journey’s End

Heading back after a morning out on the river.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — A man and his dog

These pictures were taken at the location where Seneca Creek meets the Potomac river in Montgomery County in Maryland. Many people start their travels on the river from the creek. This is also the location of Riley’s Lock on the C&O Canal.