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The Bills game was coming too slowly so I looked at the eager puppy and said “let’s go.”
Last Sunday was the second consecutive week for heading down the Whirlpool stairs. Of course I let him off leash again this time. It was a nicer day, a bit warmer and drier than last week. Warm weather took away the snow. Today will be different.
The Bills are 2-0 in games played on days in which Gord and I walk the Whirlpool Stairs. Today, he will be in 4-paw drive. I will be on snowshoes or microspikes. Let me know if you want to join us. We will leave about 11 a.m. I have one extra pair of snowshoes and one extra set of spikes.
Last week I wore my Bills buff tucked under a knit-cap, a sort of football team Hijab. Can I call it that without offending anyone. As-Salaam-Alaiku (peace be with you).
On this day, as we hiked on, we admired some bittersweet berries along with the ancient cedars. I have been looking for mountain ash because, at this time of year, the frost makes them sweeten. I think I have to go to Lewiston for that and hike under the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge.
Between early January and last week, workers from State Parks had visited and cleared some blowdown along the trail we had to climb over 3 weeks ago. There were also fresh cut saplings along the trail. At first, I was torn about what cut them, suspecting a machete-wielding human but then I thought about it and decided the trees were river birch, not the invasive buckthorn. There was bark damage down low. My conclusion? Beaver.
Beavers can’t build a dam in a river as big as ours but they can survive because there is sufficient food and they adapt to live in burrows rather than a lodge, becoming “bank beavers.”
Gord stayed closer on this day, almost never leaving my sight and doubling back enthusiastically to be certain I was following.
It’s amazing to walk a section of the Great Gorge railbed and suddenly have to go 8 or 10-feet up the trail across a gravel hillside, knowing the railbed was swallowed by a rockslide. If you didn’t know you wouldn’t see it.
A remarkable thing on the path is the trail itself because in several places, rock stairs have been created but they look to be more naturally occurring than manmade.
The main Whirlpool staircase was rebuilt four years ago. Last year I talked to someone from State Parks about it.
“It seems like since you guys rebuilt the stairs they are shorter,” I said.
“That was by design,” was the answer, “by making them more uniform, they are easier.”
I thought about that as I visited Niagara Falls Library recently. The stairs there are brutal. Literally.
The essence of trailbuilding is just that, to leave the person using the trail feeling like the trail just happened to be there, not that it was constructed. That trail succeeds.
