May 16th
The morning brings showers.
Enough rain that I’m thinking of making it an indoors day today. No walk at all I’m thinking. I’m already stranded from a car point of
view. My car stuck in the garage as the
asphalt of the driveway cools and hardens.
So maybe I should just relax inside for the day.
In Newfoundland, rainy days usually seem to stay rainy. If you wake up to a steady rain, chances are
pretty good you’ll go to bed with the same steadiness.
Ottawa has rainy days to be sure. But you can’t bank on the idea that because
it’s raining now, it will be raining in a few hours too. And that’s the case today. After a bit of lunch, I see the clouds
lightening up enough to show a dry afternoon and I decide to venture out after
all.
A quick walk, is my thought.
I’ll just do the Crushed Stone Trail.
The trails across the street from me each have their own
characteristics and length of time to walk.
I’m getting to know each trail as if it’s a living being.
For instance, the Creek Trail (What I call it in my head) is
the woods trail that goes straight parallel to my house… it’s short and fast… a
straight line running along the creek until you come to the fence of one of the
long time neighbours. This trail is
short and easy… not too muddy or wet… not much time… a few scenic views along
the way… there and back again in ten minutes.
This one isn’t so much a walk as a little aside to be taken during the
main walk. Perhaps a cool down… the
final stretch.
If you turn right instead of left at the Creek Trail, you
head down the Meadow Trail (again, my name for it… I don’t know any official
names for any of these trails). The
Meadow Trail runs parallel to the other Townhouses of Trailsedge Way… the ones
around the corner. And yes… there’s a
few small meadows here. Robins hop along
checking the place out… only to flutter into trees as you come through. They aren’t terribly bright though. They’ll head for trees in front of you… then
as you close that distance, they feel threatened and flap over to another tree
ahead. This goes on and on… a procession
for my walk along this trail.
The end of the Meadow Trail is wet. Muddy water means you have to skirt the trail
and tightrope along some fallen trees or brush before the trail pops out at the
far end of Trailsedge, only five minutes down from my house. This trail is often the tail end of my walks…
do this and then follow it with a quick walk along the roads of the
neighbourhood before getting back to my place.
The Deep Wood Trail isn’t really deep into the woods… simply
because there are no real deep woods here.
But it does bring you into the woods fully… immerses you. You enter this one across the street from my
place and pop out again only about five minutes further up towards the power
line corridor… but the trek is more round about then that and you can be in
there for at least ten and more often fifteen minutes. You enter it crossing the creek. It’s an earth bridge where you can pause and
check out the water. I’ve seen small
fish here sometimes… startled the beaver another. And once you leave the bridge, you enter a
fern forest. Ferns are everywhere for
the first few hundred feet of the trail.
But they give way to a more mature forest… muddy in sections… outright
wet with rain pools in others. But where
the trail is dry and undulating, you feel like you’re hiking in the middle of
the wilderness as you pick up pace and hear the crunch of twigs beneath your
feet.
There’s several more trails in the area.
The Green Straight that gives a shortcut from the crushed
stone trail… shooting you through the woods from the near pond to the power
line corridor.
The Parallel Trail… which runs through the woods parallel to
the crushed stone trail. This one always
makes me feel like Bigfoot, plodding through the woods and startling those
neighbours who stick to the crushed stone… unaware of my presence until the
crack of a twig and sudden movement of swinging arms.
The Far Woods Trail… a five minute trail going from where
the crushed stone ends and brings you to a far meadow.
The Run Off Trail… that cuts through the woods in a straight
line towards Innes Road. A great ditch
has been dug here where water runs out from the woods and makes its way to the
ponds.
Jump over the ditch further up the Run Off Trail and you
come to the Skidoo Trails. Grassy roads
that bring you through fields and put you within sight of the movie
cinema. In the winter, this area is
groomed for skidoos.
And the Skidoo Trails come out half way up the power line
corridor. Go straight across, and you
hit the big empty space where geese spend the night and moose and deer tracks
can be seen. This area will soon be
developed with more housing. But now you
can trek over the barren land as if walking through a post apocalyptic
wasteland. And on the far side of it,
you can hop back into the woods and meet up with the Deep Woods Trail.
Turn left at the power line corridor, and you head to Mer
Bleue Road. And turn right, you go back
down towards the ponds and Crushed Stone Trail.
And this trail… the crushed stone one… is the one most
used. It goes along the four ponds and
cuts through the power line corridor. To
go from one end of it to the other, at a good paced walk, is around twelve
minutes. Meaning just this trail alone,
to the end and back, is a half hour walk.
So… now that the majority of the trails have been
introduced… My usual walks end up being a combination of several of these
trails. For instance, my most common
walk has me doing the Crushed Stone, incorporating the Far Woods, backtracking
to the Parallel Trail, cutting down to the Meadow Trail, and finish on the
streets of Trailsedge for a good 45-60 minute walk.
Today, though, my plan was to be short. Crushed Stone and that’s it. Get home again in a half hour. Things change.
I’m drawn to the Green Straight. It’s just too green looking after the rain… I
can’t pass it by. This will lop off
almost five minutes of walk time however… not good for my exercise. So picking up the pace when I emerge from the
Green Straight and rejoin the Crushed Stone, I’m trying to get the heart rate
going. I shoot across the power line
corridor and am turning the corner to the far pond when I look across and am
forced to stop dead in my tracks. MOOSE.
The moose are at the far end of the pond. Nibbling on tree branches. There are two of them… both looking young…
one out boldly having a munch on the young leaves of a tree planted on the edge
of the pond… the other, more timid, hanging back in the woods, eating from the
more mature trees.
And my first thought is “there goes the exercise portion of
my walk.” I’m here for fifteen
minutes. Staying still… taking pictures…
watching what they’ll do next.
The moose spot me.
And after a few minutes of tolerating my presence, make their way in
through the far woods.
I begin my walk again… meaning to do the end of the Crushed
Stone… but decide to stop as I get closer to the edge of the woods where they
just went. I figure if one of those
moose was the mother, and I get too close for their liking, I could be getting
myself into some trouble.
So I turn about… having not completed the Crushed Stone and
having done the short cut of the Green Straight before this… I feel like I’ve
gotten no exercise.
So energized by the moose encounter, I decide to venture
further than normal. I hit the power
line corridor and make a plan to walk to Mer Bleue Road… a walk I estimate to
be about a half hour one way.
Sandpipers wonder what I’m doing there. They fly away from standing pools of water
and scurry along the sandy soil on the other side of the corridor. And a surprise greets me two thirds of the
way along. Another pond.
Where the ponds near my place are man made and fed by the
creek as well as neighbourhood drainage, this pond is natural. Small… scarred on one edge from the cutting
of the power line corridor… but still naturally vegetated. I imagine generations of ducks and geese
having stopped here over the years. And
deer and moose stopping her for a drink.
And, sure enough, deer tracks show me such a thing had happened just
recently.
Next to this pond is a fairly unattractive ditch of
water. Still, the tidal pool exploring
kid in me forces me over to its edge to look in and see what there is to be
seen.
Tadpoles! Thousands
of tadpoles are here. Strange how it
happens. Many other ditches run along
the power line corridor but few signs of life are found there. I assume that frogs live in this little
natural pond and they hop over to the ditch to lay eggs… and here the tadpoles
are… swimming around in a frog nursery.
It’s too much… first the moose… now the tadpole
civilization… I call home to share the discovery. But with nobody there, I leave my message and
continue on to Mer Bleue Road.
Just before the road, a wild turkey scurries from the open
of a meadow to a nearby thicket of trees.
My planned thirty minute walk has turned into a wildlife adventure.
Returning along the power line corridor, I reach the stream
next to the Crushed Stone trail and startle a frog into a jump into the
water. Venturing down, wanting to see if
I can spot him, I startle two more frogs… causing a diving competition here at
my feet.
I pause here long enough to see two of the frogs resurface…
watching my moves before coming back to the land (I’m not sure what ever
happened to the third frog… he never returned from the depths of the stream).
Spent, I head home along the Parallel trail. Noticing a few flowery sections that weren’t
in bloom the last time I was here. I pop
out, back onto my street, 90 minutes after I headed onto the trails.
And that’s where walks can take you. A planned thirty minute walk that was thrown
together only because the rain decided to let up… and it becomes a ninety
minute wildlife adventure. Two moose,
three frogs, two sandpipers, a wild turkey, and a thousand tadpoles… Next time
I plan a short walk, I’ll have to bring a tent.
The Green Straight
Moose
The Natural Pond
Tadpoles
Frogs
Flowers along the Parallel Path
--- Dayshift. It’s a
trying day. Some time off again soon may
be in order.
--- Little TV when I get home. Tired this evening.
FRIDAY…
--- Days again… tired.
--- Walk after work followed by Facetime on the phone with
Edena and some TV.
SATURDAY…
--- Night shift.
Quiet night… more than normal even.
SUNDAY…
--- Don’t sleep as much as I should for night shift… but get
through ok anyway. Cheat day means
Wendy’s makes a supper treat at work.
MONDAY…
--- Physio is followed by ball. We tie.
Ties always feel weird to me in ball games but it’s quite fun being out
there again.
TUESDAY…
--- Longer walk than normal.
Out about 70 minutes. They’re
working on driveways these days. Hoping
the paving happens tomorrow.
--- BBQ hot dogs make it feel all the more summer like.
--- Finally decided to hang some pictures. Had a few up in the living room and such all
along but have been going months with family pictures on the floor in my
bedroom… no more.
WEDNESDAY…
--- Driveway Day… my car is now stuck in the garage for a
few days. They did offer for me to take
it out before the pavement went down, but I decided I didn’t need to go
anywhere anyway.
--- Hour and a half walk.
Crazy nature day… A few moose nibbling on branches… sandpipers up the
power line corridor… a small pond I didn’t know about towards Mer Bleue Road…
tadpoles by the thousands… frogs too.
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