A stroll withMax
Jeff Holland and a curious dog explore the Bacon Ridge Natural Area
This old adage used to bemy motto: “Iwant to be the guymy dog thinks I am.” Now, I justwant to be likeMax. Max ismy latest parolee fromthe SPCA in Eastport. We went for awalk in the Bacon RidgeNatural Area this past week and had awonderful time together.
Max is mostly bulldog, a beefy 90-pound bundle of laid-back sweetness with a massive head, big brown eyes and teeny little ears. He’s bright and curious yet unfettered by any need to exert his male ego. At nearly 8 years old, he’s a gentle being all around.
I stopped by the shelter with blind-date nerves, not knowing who they’d match me with thisweek or ifwe’d get along. Then one of the staffers broughtMax out to meet me in the lobby, and itwas instant bonding. We exchanged introductory sniffs and very quickly, Maxwas pressing against me and then, in the ultimate compliment, sat on my foot. He had claimedme then and there.
We got out to the car, where I had carefully piled all ofmy stuff— duffle bags of four-weather gear, fishing paraphernalia, other detritus— the front end of the rear compartment, clearing a large space in the back forMax. I helped him up and carefully closed the rear hatch and by the time I opened the driver’s door,
Max had already made himself a comfy nest on top ofmy pile. Fortunately, I had moved the ukulele and the fly rods to the front seat.
We drove up General’s Highway to Crownsville Road and crossed over Interstate 97 onHawkins Road, where the trailhead for Bacon Ridge can be found on the
right. Bacon RidgeNatural Area is 630 acres of permanently protected land through a conservation easement between Anne Arundel County, Maryland Environmental Trust and Scenic Rivers Land
Trust.
Bacon RidgeNatural Area comprises more than 900 acres of marshes and mature forests nestled between I-97 and St. Stephens Church Road in Crownsville. The creek called Bacon Ridge Branch flows into the headwaters of the South River.
The property is owned by Anne Arundel County and managed by the Department of Recreation and Parks. Since 2010, the core 630 acres of the natural area has been protected by a conservation easement held jointly by Scenic Rivers Land Trust and the Maryland Environmental Trust.
According to the Scenic Riverswebsite, “a conservation easement is a voluntary legal agreement between a landowner and a land trust that limits future development on a property in order to protect its environmental features. The easement states what will be allowed on the property and howit will be managed. These requirements are permanent; the restrictions travel with the deed if the property is sold or transferred.”
The terms of this easement allowfor the land to be open to the public as a park for passive recreation like hiking and biking.
Scenic Rivers hosts the annualWalk for theWoods every spring to encourage families to explore the outdoors in general and the beauty of Bacon Ridge in specific. Most significantly, they approved the County’s request to create about 5.5miles of hiking and biking trails in 2015 and 2016.
Max and I parked and set off into the woods. Max is as gentlemanly on the other end of a leash as he is in all other respects. He doesn’t pull, he doesn’t yank, and he doesn’t stop at every rock, tree, post or protuberance to mark is presence like some male dogs do.
Hewas simply happy to be out on this trail on one of those cool days at the tail end of summer, and Iwas happy to be there with him.
Therewere nine other cars in the parking area, butwe only encountered two other people the whole two hourswewere there. We stepped aside to allowa mountain biker to pass us, andMax never flinched.
Wewalked the southernmost of the two loops. It’s awell-packed dirt trail that follows the top of the ridge for the most part, so there are just a few steepish bits, which is remarkable considering howhilly the area is. The hollows drop nearly straight down almost 100 feet in places. Itwould seem that this trailwas blazed artistically to let both hikers and bikers enjoy this beautiful forest.
A portion of the Bacon Ridge areawas once part of the Crownsville Psychiatric Hospital, which opened in 1911 for Black patients. Somewhere near here, there’s a cemetery where the bodies of 1,800 Black patients lie in graves marked only by numbers.
County archaeologists have documented
16 sites with intact evidence of prehistoric orNative American campsites.
Also near here, the Arundel Rivers Federation has recently completed a stream restoration project on the Bacon Ridge Branch. The Federation received grants fromMaryland Department ofNatural Resources and the Chesapeake Bay Trust to restore a stretch of this stream using innovative techniques.
But before I tell you about that, let’s take awalk back through history. The first Europeans to settle in this areawere fur trappers. The first thing they didwas trap all the beavers and send their hides back to England so gentlemen couldwear fine hats.
Until then, theNorth American continentwas teeming with beavers building dams and creating what essentially served as holding ponds for excess stormwater. Thewaterwas trapped so it could slowly filter into the ground.
With the beavers all gone, the ponds dried out, filled up and became more forest.
And with no more furs to trap, the trappers moved onwest. The nextwave of immigrants cut down all the trees to growcorn and tobacco. With all the trees gone, the stormwaterwashed all the soil into the rivers and creeks and then on into the Chesapeake Bay.
A creek off of theWest Riverwas 26 feet deep in the Colonial era, deep enough to launch ocean-going ships. Today, that same creek is just 3 feet deep.
As the stormwater flushes down narrow creeks, its force cuts a deep channel, eroding the sides of the creek bed and sending the sediment downstream. In some places along Bacon Ridge Branch, you can stand in the bottom and not be able to see over the top. This heavy erosion is known as a “headcut.”
The traditionalway to solve this problem is to haul in truckloads of rock and build small dams, orweirs, to eventually raise the level of the stream bed so that it reconnects with the surrounding flood plain. This is a very costly method and requires building temporary roads through the forest to allow trucks and other heavy construction equipment to reach the site.
With the available funds, the federation and its environmental consultants at BioHabitats could have restored about 700 feet of stream with a traditional rock-based approach.
Instead, they built beaver-dam-like structures made fromwood harvested onsite. Impact on the surrounding habitatwas minimal, and theywere able to stretch their funds to restore 4,300 linear feet of stream. This projectwas the first stream restoration inMaryland to use all-wood grade control structures.
We had a lot to contemplate, Max and I. To top it off, just beforewe reached the end of the loop, we came across an old automobile dumpsite, except that there’s a curious beauty to it. It’s not a dump so much as it is an unintentionally artistic sculpture comprising three or four 1940s and 50s vintage wrecks teetering over the edge of a ravine.
Maxwas particularly interested in one wreck that has been squeezed like an accordion between two trees that have grown up on either side of it.
Ourwalk completed, I reluctantly escortedMax back to the SPCA.
The SPCA is located at 1815 Bay Ridge Ave. in the Eastport neighborhood of Annapolis, but because of the viral epidemic, they’re open only by appointment. You can make an appointment by calling 410-2684388. For more information, log on to aaspca.org.
Bacon RidgeNatural Area trailhead is located at 1700Hawkins Road in Crownsville. It’s open dawn to dusk with no admission fee. There is a portable toilet in the parking area.
The Bacon RidgeNatural Area Stewardship Committee makes recommendations to the county on howthe parkland can be best managed to provide public access in away that promotes preservation of the area. The committeewelcomes suggestions on howthis public asset should be used.