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the Lake Edward Trail is fairly straight Sunday, June 16 2024
location: 940 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
After drinking most of my coffee this morning, I resumed work on the landscaping project I'd begun yesterday. Some of the rocks I'd gathered for the wall were enormous and I was usure how I would be able to get them to where they were needed, especially with my chronic tennis elbow (which has been about the same since it first showed up back in early April). But in the end, I didn't actually needing any of the huge rocks. The resulting landscape (which I filled in with sand from beneath the east decks, where I have much more sand to get rid of) was noticeably higher than the original landscape. There's a walking path along the north side of the cabin that used to end up under the east decks. But now with this new terrace, the step one has to take is too big for normal human comfort. I'm thinking at some point later, once plants set down roots and the terrain stabilizes, I can build a proper set of stone steps into the wall.
Later I gathered some clumps of fern and planted them in the sandy soil of the new terrace. I also lay down a linear pile of sticks along the east end of the north wall to break the fall of water overflowing the gutters overhead (when that problem inevitably returns). There had also been erosion problems in the "bicycle path" I'd built to connect (on grade) the under-east-deck space with the south end of the dock trail. I dug out a trench where the erosion had been, lay down a bowl of landscape fabric, and filled it in with sand. I then added more sticks to a wall of them designed to prevent erosion, one of several measures that the overflowing gutter water had managed to overcome.
Early this afternoon I set off down the new Lake Edward Trail, this time using a phone app called CalTopo to track my route. (I've been wanting such an app for years, though none of the ones I'd tried really did what I needed such an app to do. Some, for example, stop working the moment they lose a cellular connection!) Once I arrived at the Lake Edward shoreline, I could see the track I'd laid down was surprisingly straight. It had a fair amount of jitter on a fine scale, but otherwise it looked to follow a trajectory that was almost exactly east-west (which is surprising given that I'd laid down the original corridor it follows by simply heading toward magnetic west using a compass).
I'd lost track of the dogs within minutes of leaving the cabin, but Charlotte showed up again soon after I reached Lake Edward. The trail terminates in one of the lake's east bays, which doesn't make for a great swimming spot (one of the main reasons Gretchen would want to walk on this trail). So I headed northward along the coast until I came to a little cape that seemed to jut out better into the lake proper. As I emerged from the woods, I (or, more likely, Charlotte) frightened a pair of loons way out on the water. Usually loons aren't so easily spooked, but I don't have much experience with nesting loons (and there are islands ideal for loon nests in Lake Edward). The cape seemed like a pretty good place to launch a swim from; there were only a few pond plants along the shore and the water looked to be at least two feet deep and not full of hiding places suited to leeches (Gretchen's big fresh water lake phobia).
I continued northeastward along Lake Edward's east shore, noting that the terrain there was a bit more rugged than expected. There were even a few low cliffs here and there. At some point in all this, Neville finally made an appearance. (The dogs must be able to track me by smell alone, since there is no other way they can know that I've gone so radically off-trail.) I continued walking until I got to the creek carrying water from Woodworth Lake and Virginia Pond. (I should probably call it Virginia Creek, since that branch of it seems strongest.) I then followed the creek up into State Park land, at which point I decided to go orthogonal to the contours in an uphill direction, knowing it would ultimately take me to the cabin. Ultimately, though, it took me back to the Lake Edward Trail about a third of the way between the cabin and the lake. Along the way, I noted that the border with state land of the parcel belonging to the redneck camp had been heavily posted with no trespassing signs, though there were no such signs along the border between that parcel and its private-land neighbors.
When I got back to the cabin, the dogs weren't there, though they arrived not too much later. When they did, I was off in the nearby woods cutting out the rest of that white ash block I'd started salvaging yesterday. Back at the cabin, I cut away some of the roundness to make the block more rectangular and then proceeded to cut out the blocks of wood around where the four six-inch legs would go. The result was a heavy block on spindly little legs, but there is much more to do. I'm hoping to make a second stool that's a bit less rustic than my first, and to help with that I was actually taking measurement and making marks on the block.
Somewhere in all this, I cooked up a whole bok choy, which made into something of a stir fry with tempeh, onions, and old desiccated mushrooms. Most of that ended up going home with me when I left the cabin at something like 6:45pm. Amazingly, there was good light in the sky for the entire drive back home to Hurley.
The stone wall I built from the cabin's northeast corner today. Click to enlarge.
Lake Edward, viewed from the "Swimming Cape." Click to enlarge.
Flecks of crayfish parts, probably puked up by a blue heron on the "Swimming Cape." Click to enlarge.
Charlotte near Lake Edward. Click to enlarge.
One of the Lake Edward loons staring skyward. Click to enlarge.
There are generally no oaks at all in the Adirondacks. But this is a massive northern red oak on the southeast shore of Lake Edward. Sadly, it is completely dead. Click to enlarge.
A large beaver lodge in Lake Edward's Virginia Creek inflow bay. Click to enlarge.
Virginia Creek near where it runs out of Adirondack State Park. Click to enlarge.
A second split rock several hundred feet north of the big one along Lake Edward Trail. Click to enlarge.
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