Headed to a set of trails called Grater Woods today and found myself running in loops. From the trailhead at 14 Grater Road, I took the Salamander Trail, which meandered its way back and forth so many times I was beginning to think I took a wrong turn—I felt a little like Alice in Wonderland. I kept rounding a hook in the trail only to see my truck, once again, back at the trailhead. What is going on here? On the third go-around, I wondered if I might be losing my mind.
But no, that’s just the way the Salamander Trail is designed. Like Ben Franklin’s serpent. I mountain biked these trails years ago with a buddy, and looking back, I think that was the better play. It’s weird to be hiking on something where you think to yourself, hey, this is pretty flowy. Pretty bermy. If the word “bermy” enters your mind, then you should definitely be on a mountain bike trail.
Just look at those red squiggles!
Salamander vs. Millipede
I hiked two of the Grater Woods trails today: Salamander and Millipede, both of which are aptly named. Millipede corkscrews its way up and down several times over two moderate slopes, and Salamander keeps circling the same lot of land in an outward spiral (the trail map above doesn’t depict nearly enough squiggles). These two weren’t designed for a destination, I think, but rather to maximize the playful use of the allotted land.
Millipede was more interesting because of the little hills you snake over, but I really felt that Salamander needed a mountain bike to spice things up. Even Bullet seemed confounded by its loopbacks over the same land, and would uncharacteristically stop to look at me as if to say, “Weren’t we just here?” It felt like we were going nowhere.
But we were. We just needed to stay the course. Eventually we popped out at a trail junction where the Millipede Trail sign invited us towards a new path. A new exploration. It was hard to see how we were making progress towards it for a while, but eventually we got there. Such is the way with most things in life.
But, boy, did we want to take a shortcut so we could feel like we were actually getting somewhere faster.
Too eager. Too green to grow.