A Walk in the Woods

 After several delays, I arrived home on Wednesday to find the pond leak and liner problems solved! It was a wonderful start to my 5 day break. Instead of looking out at a muddy, brown water bog (which made frogs very happy), I can now hear the sound of the water moving and see it as it rolls along the stones in the stream. So nice!!

I went on a hike yesterday with a few people from the hiking club I joined. We went to Clinton Nature Preserve which I had never heard of. It was an easy walk through surprisingly mixed terrain. Parts of the walk were very wooded, while other parts were across great slabs of granite, much like Mount Arabia or Stone Mountain. Still other parts of the walk were paths mowed through tall grasses. 

I didn't take a lot of pictures because I only had my phone camera, and I find that pictures of woods here all look sort of brown against brown and indistinct. However, there were a lot of ruins in these woods, remnants of a by-gone community. When you walk in the woods here, and you see piles of stones and lots of daffodils, you know that once upon a time there was a house and garden here. Sometimes even the chimney is left.  On this walk, some of the houses have been preserved (see the tin roofs) although they are still mostly falling in. 

This last picture is where slaves used to live. It was the smallest house and set apart from others. 

Isn't it astounding to think that people made and assembled these houses with hand tools? And isn't it beyond comprehension to think of the normalcy at one time of slaves and slave ownership??

I saw this hawk and got this rather poor picture of him because I didn't want to get too close. He was a beauty!