Ecologist’s Hiking Adventures

May 19th, 2009

By Guest Bloggers Bill Hamilton and Deborah Sillman, authors of Between Stones and Trees

My family and I have spent the last 25 years exploring and enjoying the hiking trails of Western Pennsylvania. Every hike reveals something new. There are an infinite number of ways to see Nature, and an infinite number of things to see. It is important to try to experience as many as possible in a lifetime.

When we go hiking we carry field guides, notebooks, hand lenses and binoculars. We have pencils and a digital camera ready to sketch and note and capture images. We are set to explore the very small and the very distant. Each hike reveals something new and unknown, to be admired and identified. Putting a name on something is a compelling process that connects us not only to the plant or animal but also to those people who came before us and who, often so very long ago, studied and named these species.

Two of the Trails in the Laurel Highlands:

Grove Run Trail

Grove Run Trail is located in the Linn Run State Park on the western side of Laurel Hill in the southeastern corner of Westmoreland County. The trail runs through land that was clear cut in the late 1800’s and was among the first land to be purchased by the state (in 1909) as a part of its Ohio River watershed reclamation efforts. The cool, wet ravine and the drier, surrounding ridges support diverse forest ecosystems dominated by hundred year old oaks, vigorous yellow poplars, and a rich array of red maples and yellow birches. Birds abound especially. For a full narrative on Grove Run Trail, click here

Quebec Run Wild Area

The Quebec Run Wild Area is a densely forested, 7,441 acre section of the Forbes State Forest located on Chestnut Ridge in southern Fayette County, Pennsylvania. The site is bisected by fast running, rocky streams (including Quebec Run, Tebolt Run, and Mill Run) all of which flow into Big Sandy Creek. The forests of Quebec Run Wild Area are young (much of the site was logged around 1940) with an abundance of red oak, red maple, mixes of chestnut and white oak, black cherry, and some hidden hollows of hemlock. It is a glorious place to hike and to get far away from the noise and clutter of civilization. For a full narrative on the Quebec Run Wild Area, click here.

For more information on hiking trails, species you may encounter and other essays, visit Between Stones and Trees, An Ecologist Hikes in Western Pennsylvania.

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