It’s been a while since I got out in Nature,
which is actually kind of odd, when you consider how much Nature there is in
Northern Virginia. Mostly of the sort that crawls and bites or sucks blood.
However, on Saturday I went to Great Falls
National Park, right on the Potomac River, and spent a couple of hours walking
around.
(The last time I was at the park, it was for a
photo class. When people had cameras that used film.)
It’s been raining a lot in the area, so the
trails were soupy.
(Also—although I sprayed myself liberally with
repellant, I still ended up with mosquito bites.)
But this made for some spectacular viewing of
the falls. I mean—we’re not talking Multnomah, but still:
Further down the trail, here’s a little feeder
fall:
There were quite a lot of people out—dog walkers,
runners (a couple of them scared me, going at a good clip even on the slippery trail
and even-even on the trails where I had to pick my way through protruding
rocks), family groups, even…I guess, rock climbers.
I have to say that signage is kind of sparse
and ambiguous in the park. I did wonder what happened here:
Also—not manmade, but I also wondered about the
story behind this:
The park also has a few remnants of canal
locks, from the pre-railroad days when the Potomac was a highway between
Washington and the West, and shippers needed a way to get their goods around
the falls. If you didn’t know what to look for, you might not even notice these:
By the time I left, I felt better able to deal
with the world, and I’m grateful for the treasure that national parks are, and
for having one so close. I’m also grateful that I went on Saturday, because it
pretty much rained the whole live-long day Sunday. I’m expecting to see a large boat with a lot
of pairs of animals aboard floating up the Dulles Access Road any day now.
No comments:
Post a Comment