New York: Day 3

DAY 3

Today I spent a lot of time outside in the woods.  I traced all the trails we blazed so far and then walked the old trails as well, meanwhile I tracked my progress on a GPS tracking app on my smartphone. According to the app I walked a distance of 3.31 miles, in 3 hours ten minutes.  This is a screenshot of the satellite view (with no identifying landmarks, no I'm not dumb enough to show anyone where this place is) The paths I took are marked in red.

The original trail cleared by my grandfather and uncle is the top line. it goes more or less straight back to a clearing, where it turns and goes down a steep hill into the deep woods, a marshy swamp where the trail abruptly ends; they were not able to push it any further. There's a massive boulder back there about the size of a minivan, which marks the end of the old trail. I was told that this boulder might have been moved there by a glacier many thousands of years ago. Rocks that size don't just roll downhill.

What my father and I have done is extend this trail and connect it to another one, which only exists in our GPS devices. We marked off trees along the route with orange caution tape. Now this bottom route is over very uneven ground, and we have no idea if it will be passable in the summer when the foliage is grown up.

My trail is the more or less straight one that goes through the middle. The area inside this 'circle' has never been explored or charted. It is actually a nice walk over fairly even ground. The beginning of this trail follows some deep ruts left by wagon wheels over a hundred years ago when this place was a farm. Then it feeds into a natural path frequented by many deer and other animals.

Personally, I'm excited about this. If only my grandparents had lived to see the wonders of technology. I always wanted to make a map of the forest since I was a kid, and now thanks to smartphones, mobile GPS and satellites, we now have a perfect map far better than any we could draw ourselves.  It always seemed kind of boring how we'd walk back as far as we could go then have to turn around and come all the way back. And so now we have a closed loop that brings us back to the starting point.  This is a groundbreaking achievement if you ask me.

So anyway, here's some of my pictures from today.

This is how we marked our new trails. Now to see if they hold up until the spring.

The existing trail. Those are my footprints. I retraced my path 3 times to walk every
foot of the known paths plus our new ones.

This is a lean-to shelter I built from a Boy Scout handbook several years ago. It's held up
long then my other shelters I have built before.

This forest is about 60 years old....but there is always new life.

Mom tells me that these huge holes in the tree were dug out by a Pileated woodpecker.

Aren't these pines magnificent?? These form a huge gate almost...a gate to the deep, deep forest.

More magnificent pines. I never get tired of seeing them.

...And finally, some critters!

A chickadee on a branch. These things are so tame, they aren't afraid of humans at all.
The only way I could have captured this was by standing less than 5 feet away, and using my medium range lens.
This could very well be my favorite bird picture ever taken by me.

And finally, some deer!  These walked right into the backyard and were visible out the back window.