In January, I will be starting a new part-time job inspecting residential water lines to inventory lead pipes for a lead pipe replacement project. It involves a lot of walking so I figured I better start training. I have a couple of weeks until I start and I need to be out walking every day to get ready. I started out on a short walk through my neighborhood, a walk I often do that takes maybe 30-35 minutes.
2 hours and 4 miles later, I’m back at the house. Took a little detour.
I will sometimes turn around at a cul-de-sac that also is the entrance to state game land and water authority land. Other times, I’ll head into the woods. This time I went into the field/woods and turned left up the hill towards where I’ve been fishing.
Turning right and going down the hill leads to the forested game lands and a small creek I like to explore. Turning left and heading up the hill goes to a mix open open brush, heavy thicket, some large rocks, and forested area. This is where water authority land borders our HOA land and game land.
Colonial maps will often show the entire larger area as “The Great Swamp” and I can see why. The headwaters of the small stream that heads southidown the mountain through the game land starts in a swampy area there. This is water authority land. While exploring this area, I found a few interesting features.
Looks like someone built a tree stand on water authority property. I need to check with them and see if this is legal. All the water here is the swampy headwaters of the stream, I’m guessing. I need to explore it all more. This is actually quite easy to get to because of the all the paths that are cut through the brush. I was walking down one of these 5 or 6 foot wide paths when I hit a 90 degree turn and rather than turn I went straight into the woods and found this. I looked around a bit and when back to the path to continue on and get back to one of the main fire roads to head home.
When I hit the fire road, I decided to explore the wooded area to the east and it was a nice open wood and also a bit swampy in places. There is a larger creek north of this area a few hundred yards that I’ve fished some. I found some interesting features here as well.
Someone built a little blind.
There was also a very old tree stand nearby. Whoever built this drove spikes directly into the tree to climb up. Not a nice thing to do these days but maybe that was acceptable back in the day. This is still water authority land so I’m very curious about what you can get away with on this land because this is not permitted on state game land.
At this point, it was getting late and this open woods area was changing to the thicket that we have everywhere so I return back to the fire road and headed back to the paved streets of civilization.
This was a nice walk and I need to spend much more time exploring this area.
I Wander Where I'll Go 