Sunday in the Arboretum

Sunday we had a nice long walk in the Arboretum, an hour and some 40 minutes, although some of that was spent stopping and looking at the map. We came in at the Martin St trail head for the hiking and ski trail. Last year we came in that way in the snow, and walked through the woods to the head of Natural Avenue, but we had only been back once since then. This time we went over the same territory we had covered in the leaves, through the Lost City Forest. The trail was a bit rough (for skiing) but pretty reasonable for boots with yaktrax, with a foot or so of snow cover. We headed in past the new teal ponds and north through Gallistel Woods, crossed the road, and then down past the Indian Mounds to Lake Wingra and the big spring, where watercress was still green in the water. The area where they had been cutting brush in the fall was all cleared up. It's interesting getting the lay of the land in different seasons.

We came back through the parking lot and around a different loop of the woods trail. It looked entirely different in the snow of course, but there's a stone building from the CCC days in the forest. I got entirely turned around looking for signposts coming back through the hollow around the stone building. We had missed out on the Sunday afternoon guided tours the staff was running from the Visitor Center, but they looked to be moving pretty slowly. We came around the other side of a field we had hiked in by, saw some turkeys in the cedar trees, and then got all the way down along Curtis Prairie past where they are cutting alder trees out to the big new settling ponds we inspected last fall, for the runoff from the Beltline Highway. A lot of trails were closed off there, just where we had come through the pine forest last fall, but we found our way back to the loop trail and our car at the trail head. My feet were pretty sore, partly from the roughness of the trail where people have been walking (and skiing) in all kinds of melting and freezing conditions. Otherwise feeling pretty good, but that may be because I'm on drugs.