Many lessons to be learned on trail

We didn’t call it a hike. We called it a walk. But our teen’s friend would need boots, I texted their mom.

I packed extra gloves and an extra hat, just in case, as well as a couple handwarmers. But despite my best-laid plan ....

“My back is cold,” Friend complained when we stopped for lunch before our not-hike. They pulled their long hair out from under their jacket hood and showed it to us: not soaking wet, but very damp. I almost groaned in frustration. All our preparation and Friend had taken a shower just before we picked them up and hadn’t dried their hair.

I suspect we’ll hit many more similar snags as we try to get out with more of our teen’s inexperienced friends.

We hiked after lunch despite the wet hair. We wanted to check out Woods Hollow Nature Preserve, which has been in the news lately. In a Feb. 4 article, Times Union writer Wendy Liberatore reported the village of Ballston Spa, which owns the 130-acre preserve off Northline Road, plans to log it soon. Locals are upset with the number of trees marked for elimination with slashes of blue paint (which will add up to 211 truckloads of logs, the article said), and the town of Milton hopes to buy the land to prevent the logging.

My husband, Herb, and I had last visited the preserve more than a decade ago looking for Karner blue butterflies. Most of the land is wooded, densely shaded by tall trees, but part of the southern end, closest to the main parking lot, features sandy soil and is home to blue lupines, which attract the butterflies in spring and early summer. We didn’t find the butterflies on that long-ago visit, but did find a wide variety of spring wildflowers.

There were no wildflowers on this visit, but plenty of ice on the well-packed-down trails. Woods Hollow is obviously a popular destination, especially for dog owners. We met quite a few dogs during our trip (often unleashed, but all friendly), and the kids fell to their knees and enthusiastically greeted a golden retriever, a pug and a variety of mutts.

Friend had never hiked with us before — perhaps never hiked at all — but gamely embraced the experience. They climbed on huge, snow-covered logs with our teen (and fell off ), stomped on iced-over streambeds, slipped and slid across the icy surface of Woods Hollow’s reservoir, hugged a few of the trees with blue slashes, and took a couple hits off their asthma inhaler. Then the two teens combined forces to pelt Herb with snowballs.

Watching the kids balancing on the fallen logs and seeing the huge number of live, large trees marked with blue slashes, I wondered what the woods would look like if the tree harvest goes ahead. Not great, to my eye. I’ve hiked through logged areas before, and have never enjoyed it. There’s typically lots of mud on truck-damaged trails and lots of stumps. It can take years for the woods to recover their former beauty.

In the article, village officials claimed they were removing deadwood or trees that couldn’t compete for sunlight. Yet many of the trees at Woods Hollow with blue slashes seemed to be the ones with the largest trunks. Regardless, dead trees, whether standing or fallen, provide a variety of benefits to a natural area, including food and shelter for wildlife and insects, and fertilizer for future growth. I love to discover “nurse logs” while walking — fallen and decayed logs that now serve as a nurturing bed for new seedlings.

It’s unclear whether the efforts of local residents and the town of Milton will prevent the logging from going ahead. If it does, trail users will have years as the forest recovers to contemplate the value wild spaces offer their community, and hopefully do more to protect them in the future.

In the meantime, we hope to be taking our teen’s friend on more hikes. We need to be patient, though, and remember that it can take years to grow an outdoor adventurer. So far they’ve learned one important lesson: to save the shower for after the hike.