A Luminous Walk

Kris and I headed out for a new area to walk today.  It was a warm, wonderful, colorful, crisp Fall day in the neighborhood.  We headed to Rockwood Reservation, a park well known to me from many years ago but one I hadn't visited in years.  This area was once home to a munitions dump during World War II, a prehistoric tribe of native peoples who had fires in a huge cave now off limits to humans, a lime kiln near a quarry, and an area where afficionados of such things once practiced rock climbing on the abundant cliffs in the park.  Now, the munitions are gone, the ancient natives have probably died out, the lime kiln and quarry are abandoned, and rock climbing is prohibited.

Still this area offers a wealth of wildlife to watch, trees to linger under, and trails to wander.  Smoky The Bear even offers an animated warning about how only YOU can prevent forest fires, just as he did here when I was a kid.  There are also pens of various animals for viewing.  Today, we drove past vicuna, llamas, and deer in the pens, all seeming to be at peace.

We chose one of the 5 or so trails and headed uphill for about the first third of the trek.  The color was sensational.  We weren't thrilled that this trail was paved with asphalt, but the views made up for that.  We encountered friendly folks on the trail, along with dogs, kids on scooters being a bit reckless, and a few on bikes.  Then, we encountered stairs.  That was a bit unusual.  The first staircase was up a steep incline.  Later, there was even a longer, steeper staircase going down a ravine.

All the creeks in the park that we could see were dry, despite a very wet couple of weeks a few weeks back.  Rocks were strewn throughout the park - from rock faces on cliffs, to fallen rocks, to the interesting rocks cut to make a path across a creek bed and a wall of clearly hand hewn, moss covered bricks that formed a sort of small levee.  Very scenic.

This park is worth the time to wander through.  I think Kris and I will be walking all the trails in the park as our Fall weather continues.  We love Castlewood and Emmeneggar as our 'regular' parks, but there's plenty of room on our dance cards for Rockwood too!


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