Raw Earth Galleries Blog

So I can’t keep myself off my bike (I handle it better than most of my dates and it’s so much cheaper after the sunk cost).  Despite the 90 degree plus heat yesterday, I took another ride up the Deckers Creek Trail to get more photos (you’ll find them in the Departures Gallery), build up my stamina, and see how far I could get before I succumbed to heat stroke (made it all the way to Masontown).  The grade isn’t actually that bad and most of the trail after Sabraton is heavily shaded.  My favorite spot along the trail is the falls area just below Masontown, where the stream takes a steep plunge through a boulder-strewn gorge before catching its breath at Greer. The Mon River Trails Conservancy site offers a very useful overview of the entire trail system, encompassing some 50 miles of trails, along with a detailed map.

Please excuse the on-going housekeeping in the galleries.  I’ve just downloaded and installed the latest version of Jalbum (8.0.8) and have been tweaking the configuration settings to get the right look and feel (as you’ll no doubt learn, I have a hard time leaving anything untouched for more than a couple days).  The Chameleon skin was revamped with the latest upgrade and looks awesome.  Jalbum is argument enough for me to trumpet the virtues of open source, and I’d highly recommend it for users who want a little more power and configurability than are typically available with other web album software.  Of course, with more configurability comes more choice, which in the hands of certain anal-retentive individuals can lead to slow death by font type and size (I finally reverted to the default settings).  In addition to my enthusiasm for software itself, the little green frog head really does it for me.

Returning to my biking exploits from the previous blog entry, I finally got around to tackling the Deckers Creek Trail, which connects with the Mon River Trail at the Riverfront Park in Morgantown, this past weekend.  Whereas the Mon River Trail offers a gentle grade with long flat stretches between Morgantown and Fairmont, Deckers Creek Trail is a bit more of challenge, gaining a thousand feet in elevation by the time it reaches Masontown.  True to its name, the trail follows Deckers Creek for most of its 19 miles to Arthurdale and looks quite wild in places, although you’re never far from civilization (Rt. 7 runs parallel to the stream for most of the trail’s length and there’s even a snack bar several miles before Masontown).  Deckers Creek is a stunning stream with continuous rapids nearly to Morgantown and a number of beautiful falls as the stream plummets through its gorge.  There are several places along the trail to access the stream directly, if you wish to stop and commune with nature among (and on top of) the enormous, sculpted boulders and swirling rapids.  There’s also plenty of history in the vicinity, including an abandoned train depot (rapidly being reclaimed by nature), coke ovens, and Arthurdale, the nation’s first New Deal Homestead Community.  I’ve added a couple of photos taken along the trail to the Departures Gallery.  More to follow.

Although the future of Deckers Creek is a bit more promising now due to the hard work of the Friends of Deckers Creek, the stream has seen its share of hard times as a result of acid mine drainage, solid waste, and storm sewer and industrial runoff.  The boulders in some places along the stream are still stained yellow-orange by iron hydroxide, a by-product of acid mine drainage, and some portions of the stream have been rendered biologically dead from continuing pollution.  It’s difficult to travel along Deckers Creek and not recognize what tremendous assets both the stream and the trail represent to the communties located along them.  Hopefully, the momentum built up over the past decade through trail development and watershed restoration will one day result in a completely restored and healthy ecosystem and increased tourism dollars for the local communities.

Speaking as someone in constant need of stimulation (I’ve been told my attention span is measurable in mere milliseconds), the past several weeks of my life have provided me with more than enough sustained sensory overload, thank you very much.  Work has been quite exciting as my office transitions into a new business operation, and I’m still holding my breath for the thrill-a-minute rollercoaster ride that’s government contracting.  Meanwhile, on the personal front, my adventures on the new trail bike continue to mount at an impressive rate.  I also managed to squeeze in a weekend trip to DC with a buddy of mine to pledge our undying devotion to Radiohead at Nissan Pavillion, including a day-long stopover in Annapolis, Maryland, where we overdosed on history, beer, and crabs.  Mother Nature did her best to wash out the weekend, but the damp, cold dreariness was no match for a heathen spirit in search of freshly steamed crustaceans and fake plastic trees.  If Annapolis wasn’t quite the highlight of the weekend (Radiohead, remember?), it was a useful opening act.  Aside from the over-priced souvenier shops (”I got crabs in Annapolis”) and seafood buffets that exist in every coastal tourist magnet, the city offered plenty of worthwhile diversions.  Highlights included she-crab soup and meditation with the spirits of ale-drinkers-past at the pre-Revolutionary War Reynolds Tavern, a brief hike through Quiet Waters Park along the South River, more crab at Cantler’s across the bay, and a sampling of the local (and not-so-local) grog at the Rams Head Tavern.  I’ve added photos of several Annapolis landmarks to the Structures Gallery, as well as photos taken at Quiet Waters Park to the Departures Gallery.

As a side note (although it’s the most important thing I’ll say in this blog entry), the Chesapeake Bay, one of our nation’s most valuable natural assets and a poster child for our planet’s deteriorating health, has been in serious decline since mid-last century due to pollution from farm and industial runoff (produced far upstream in many cases and carried into the bay by its tributaries).  Although a number of initiatives to clean up the bay have come and gone, the overall health of its ecosystem continues to decline.  This is due, in part, to the complex nature of coordinating rehabilitation and restoration programs across the Bay’s enormous watershed, which encompasses many state and local jurisdictions and impacts the livelihoods of many folks in the region.  But the ugly truth is that the Bay has become our nation’s biggest wastewater treatment lagoon.  A number of regional organizations are working hard to address this situation; as with anything else, only the grass roots involvement of people living in the watershed will bring about meaningful change.

(The author now descends from his wacko environmentalist’s pulpit (don’t worry, he’ll get back on it soon enough)). 

Segue to the music.  Despite a cold, driving rain, the Radiohead concert was as good as I’d hoped it would be.  The much-hyped light show was the best psychotronic head trip I’ve had since blowing synapses as a boy over the flashing, blinking, throbbing alien lights in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  As a certified Radiohead junkie, however, it was the music that really mattered.  The band stayed amazingly true to their studio sound, while allowing for a few of those unplanned moments that make live concerts so immediate and worthwile.  Thom Yorke’s voice was amazingly vibrant in spite of the miserable weather.  I’d sit through a monsoon to watch these guys play.  Well, actually, I did.  Some other cool bands I’ve been listening to lately: Portishead, Interpol, and The Flaming Lips (love their fuschia vomit Web site).  I’d give away someone else’s first born child and sit through a monsoon to watch any of these bands play.

Mon River Trail Notes: Yes, I’ve been a busy trail biker the past few weeks.  While breaking in the new wheels, I’ve had an opportunity to scope out the Mon River Trail in intimate detail and meet some of the local wildlife (see left), including a handful of white-tail deer, several wild turkeys, the occasional beaver, great blue herons, little green herons, and (who could forget?) many large black rat snakes basking on the sides of the trail.  I’ve also encountered another variety of wildlife drinking beer and fishing along the Monongahela River, but I’ve withheld names to protect the innocent and guilty alike.  As I mentioned in a previous entry, there are a surprising number of scenic wild spots along the river from Morgantown to Fairmont and just north of Morgantown to the Pennsylvania state line.  I’ve captured a few of these spots in several new photos just added to the Departures gallery.

What else?  Oh, in my on-going quest to promote local businesses that appeal to my heathen spirit, I strongly recommend the Thai-One-On Burrito at Black Bear Burritos, one of my favorite places to hang out in Morgantown.  Their selection of burritos actually borders on heretical (you won’t find any of them on the local menus in Mexicali); most are inspired by distinct ethnic cuisines and are engineered to arouse international flavors freaks like me.  Nice selection of beers and live music on Saturday nights too.  Plus you get a toy to play with while you’re waiting for your meal (although you have to give it back).

Let me be the first to say good riddance to winter (on behalf of those who happen to live in the northern hemisphere). I extend my sympathies (sort of) to those ensconced south of the equatorial divide.  Spring is such a liberating time for me.  Maybe not as emancipating as Newt Gingrich stepping up to save the planet from global warming (cynicism alert), but certainly on a par with Andrew Zimmern devouring a beating frog heart on Bizzare Foods.  Now as I shake off the hibernation blues and soak up the drenching spring sun I realize that I am once again in my natural element. My adventures, severely curtailed by the winter doldrums, have resumed, aided and abetted by a brand new trail bike. My butt is sore, but I can’t say that I wasn’t warned by the highly responsible owner of the bike shop about the consequences of overdosing on speed and packed gravel. I’ve got fifty miles of rail trail at my back door.  The temptation to over-indulge is simply too great.

My first adventure of the spring involved taking my camera on a bike trip down the Mon River Trail, which runs from just north of Morgantown to Fairmont, WV (erstwhile birthplace of the pepperoni roll).  The section below Uffington Bridge is quite wild and overgrown with wildflowers this time of the year. A quick detour to Nature Gallery 06 under Structures will give you some indication of the variety of blooming things to be found within easy access of the trail. Purple trillium, also known as wake robin in tribute to another harbinger of spring’s arrival, was a particulalry welcome discovery.  True to the advisories in the reference books, however, its showy flower is far more attractive than its odor, which is one of the nastiest smells in the wildflower community.  I snapped most of the gallery’s photos in a quiet, beautiful cove, featuring two picturesque waterfalls, within easy reach of the trail - one of those idyllic natural features you’re always surprised to find in an increasingly urbanized setting like Morgantown.

Sadly, among all the beautiful native wildflowers, I also discovered an invasive alien species that is threatening to displace the endemic ones: garlic mustard (see left).  While it may look attractive, it’s a noxious weed with the capacity to rapidly dominate the forest floor.  Originally imported from Europe as a food source, it’s now spread wild throughout much of the eastern US and is altering many of our native plant communities, similar to chickory, hawkweed, etc.  A number of conservation groups have undertaken efforts to eradicate garlic mustard from key wild lands but its hardiness and resiliency make this an uphill battle (one of many our eastern forests are now facing from foreign invaders, including the woolly adelgid, gypsy moth, etc.).  Don’t get me wrong - I’m no xenophobe.  But I’d rather have European and/or Asian plants and bugs infesting European and/or Asian forests than our own.

Now that spring has returned I look forward to many new adventures ahead, some on my bike and some not.  But regardless of how I get there, you’ll see the photographic evidence right here . . .