Peggi still knows all the words to “Duke of Earl.” And Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-A-Lula” is still as fresh as the day I first heard it. It’s Sunday afternoon so we must be listening to WAYO’s “Up On The Roof,” all-45s show. Jason is just launching his “Fantastic Voyage” show with a Sun Ra track as I write this.
We used to take this trail all the time back when we lacked tick-awareness. It was one of our favorite walks. The park workers took a mostly hands-off approach to the old horse trails that run through the undeveloped part of the park. There was evidence of them having cleared a tree that fell across the path, but that was it. Now, blow-downs just lie there. In the past twenty years the invasive garlic mustard and then the black swallow-wort has gotten out of control. It chokes the paths. You would need a machete to get through it. With the temperature below where the ticks come out and before the green returns we thought we’d be able to work our way through.
We worked our way up the ridge overlooking the marsh and turned down the hill that takes us up to the big long ridge but found barberry bushes—another invasive, but this one with thorns—had completely swallowed up the trail. We tried a few detours but had to admit we had been defeated.
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