Not in My Backyard

The watershed defined much of the street layout of our immediate neighborhood, with houses on the relatively high ground and behind the houses uninhabitable greenspace that usually includes a deep or shallow ravine.  Behind our house there are tall trees and dense undergrowth and a steep slope down and then back up.  When it rains, gravity takes the water down to the bottom of the ravine, but more gradually than immediately, since the rain doesn't run off the deep beds of leaves that cover the ground the way it runs of the pavement.  The gushing water in the creek at the end of Wessyngton last Sunday morning came from the street and driveways and any gutters that dump into the street, not from the wooded areas behind our houses.  The water ends up in storm drains and creeks and ends up in the South Fork of Peachtree Creek.

Sunday morning it was cool (at least for Atlanta, in June) and raining when I took Bullwinkle for a walk.  We started on our usual walk, up Wessyngton Road toward Highland, right on Highland, then right again on Morningside.  We headed back into the grounds of Morningside Presbyterian Church and then headed down the path into the woods toward the foot bridge.  That morning it was cool enough for the dog to enjoy the walk so just before the bridge we took a right turn onto the trail that headed into the wooded area between Morningside and Wessyngton, back toward Cumberland.

The last time I walked on this trail, it ended at a timbered semicircle, with two benches made from rough-hewn logs; restoring the trail and either constructing or restoring this stopping place had been an Eagle Scout project for one of the boys in Iain's Boy Scout troop a few years ago.  I also knew that another boy had recently had another Eagle Scout project in the same area -- Iain had spent a weekend afternoon or two there, helping out -- but I hadn't been there since the recent work.  Now the trail was extended farther down, so Bullwinkle and I continued into woods, toward a place we'd never been.  So we walked on.

At the end of the new path I was astonished to find the remains of a large fireplace -- the kind used for outdoor cooking  -- on a concrete pad at the end of the trail.  This is just across the street from me, and I had no idea it was there; I felt like I had stumbled onto an archaeological site. Tom told me, later in the day, that he thought there had formerly been a cabin there, left over from the days of a very large Boy Scout troop at Morningside Presbyterian at some point in the distant past.

This reminded me of the discussion at the Park Pride meeting I attended last month, about the South Fork Conservancy's proposal to develop trails along the South Fork of Peachtree Creek, and the staunch opposition from many of the people present.  Some of the arguments had to do with private property rights and some with privacy and some with fear of crime, and the discussion got me wondering how I would feel about a trail through the greenspace behind my house.  But there is a trail through the greenspace across the street, and as best I can tell, nothing catastrophic has happened.  There aren't homeless people living there, there was no trash, and no flat screen TVs that were abandoned by thieves who had entered unlocked backdoors.  There was just a path through the woods, and a wonderful place to walk with the dog on a rainy Sunday morning.