A State Park in the Middle of February

The drive south

The four-lane south out of Charleston is the fastest road I take on a regular basis. It runs about fifty-four miles through cuts and long grades before the town of Logan appears. The surface was good, with fresh patch work in the passing lanes and a lot of grit. Winter leaves that grit on the shoulders down here, and a hard rain moves it into the lanes.

I pulled out at a quarter till eleven and made the town in one hour and five minutes, about normal for a weekday. From there a state route runs north up the hollow for a little under four miles. That stretch is narrow, with a creek on one side and a rock face on the other. Two coal trucks passed me going the other way, and both took more than their half.

The park entrance is easy to miss because the marker sits back behind a stand of trees. I turned in at fifty-eight miles and one hour and fifteen minutes from my own driveway. The main lot holds a great many cars in season and held almost nothing on this day. Puddles had ice skins on them at noon, which told me the ground had not thawed.

What was shut

The picnic shelters were closed in the way that shelters close, which is to say partly. Tables were stacked under the roofs and the water spigots were capped and wrapped. Grills stood cold with last season's ash still in them, and nobody had swept the slabs. You could stand under a roof out of the wind, and that is all a shelter owes you.

The pool was drained to a foot of green water with leaves floating on the surface. Fencing around it was locked, and a chain ran through the gate at the deep end. The campground loop had a gate across it and a notice about seasonal opening dates. The restroom building near the main lot was closed, though one unit stayed open nearby.

The wildlife exhibit area kept short hours and was not open on a February weekday. The amphitheater sat under a winter's worth of leaves with its stage boards bare. Nothing about any of this surprised me, and none of it changed my afternoon much. A park in February is a set of trails with a parking lot attached to it.

What was open

Every trail I tried was open, and none of them had a gate, a rope, or a closure notice. The lower path along the creek runs mostly level on packed dirt with gravel patches. I walked it for twenty-five minutes out and twenty-two back, which is about a mile and a half. Water was up from the last thaw and ran loud enough to cover the road noise above.

A second trail climbs the north side on switchbacks cut into the slope years ago. That grade was greasy in the shaded stretches where sun does not reach until March. I got fifteen minutes up it, decided the mud was winning, and turned back without complaint. Boot tread packed with clay is a slow problem, and I had no scraper in the truck.

The main park road was clear and dry with grit swept to the edges by the plows. Side roads to the picnic areas were open, though nobody had driven them in days. One trail marker was down and leaning against its post, which I set upright by hand. Blazes were fresh on the lower loop and faded to nearly nothing on the upper one.

The hollow in February

A hollow in February is a place with almost no color and nothing but bare shape. You see every stone wall, old road grade, and drainage ditch that summer hides completely. Hemlock and pine hold the only green, and they sit in the coldest draws by habit. The rest is gray trunks, brown leaf litter, and the pale line of the creek below.

Sound carries in a way it never does in July, and it carries from a long distance. I heard a chainsaw working somewhere up the hollow for most of the first hour. A pileated woodpecker went through twice and made more noise than anything with wheels. Deer moved on the slope above the trail and did not bother to run from me.

Temperature read thirty-nine degrees when I arrived and forty-three when I left, with no wind to speak of. The ceiling stayed low all afternoon and never turned into the rain it kept promising. Light was flat, which is poor for photographs and fine for looking at ground and grade. I would take that trade in February and never think twice about it.

What it came to

The whole thing ran four hours and forty minutes from driveway to driveway on a Tuesday. Driving accounted for two hours and twenty-five minutes and 116 miles, a little quicker coming home. Time on the ground came to two hours and fifteen minutes, most of it walking or standing. I was home with about two hours and forty-five minutes of daylight still in the sky.

This one does not suit anyone who wants a building open at the end of the walk. There is no place to sit indoors and no drinking water available anywhere in the park. Mud is the real limit in February, and the shaded grades stay soft for weeks. Bring boots you can hose off and a plan that never depends on a gate being open.

If you need shelters, a pool, or staffed exhibits, wait until the middle of May. If you want the hollow to yourself with every trail open, February hands it over.