September 2017
On a visit home to my "address of record", my sister/cousin EHJ indulged me to go for a walk nearby, "someplace new". I found Boyd Big Tree Preserve on a google search and was intrigued by the name alone.
Boyd Big Tree Preserve Conservation Area is a 949.49-acre Pennsylvania state park in Lower Paxton and Middle Paxton Townships in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. The land for the conservation area was donated to the state by real estate developer Alex Boyd in 1999. Boyd Big Tree Preserve Conservation Area is a sanctuary for mature trees and an environment education study area. The park is on Blue Mountain just off Pennsylvania Route 443.
(Wikipedia)
We parked, located one of the trails, and walked into the forest. Basically, the preserve was the north flank of part of the Blue Mountain ridge and the trails inside made loops around it. We chose something "medium" as neither of us were into a massive hike, nor did we know much about the terrain.
The walk was lovely, but the "big trees" remained elusive. From my perspective, the trees all looked "big" to one degree or another. I think we had some expectation of an old-growth forest tucked away on some forgotten section of the ridge. That did not seem to be the case, but the walk through the forest was pleasant nonetheless. Since I was living in Saudi at the time, just walking through a forest seemed absolutely decadent and luxurious. All that green!!
While we walked I had two thoughts:
One, PA's forests were largely "second growth". The mountain ridges used to be covered in giant hemlock forests and they were all cut down during America's "Industrial Revolution". The amount of deforestation that took place was staggering to me. Everything that has grown back is actually not the like original - the primary forest is extinct. No one talks about that in terms of "extinction events".
Two, Saudi Arabia has no forests and all my friends there never walked through what I was experiencing. I should add that most of my friends and family in PA never strolled along an escarpment edge (like in Abha) plummeting down several thousand feet either, but that was "findable" in the USA. There were no forests in Saudi (at least any that we would recognize by North American standards). I felt lucky that something I used to take for granted in my growing up years was actually precious and beautiful.
To add to the experience, I was in sandals and got chigger bites (which I had got the previous summer with my sister/cousin on another walk - I was hoping it would not become an annual event!). The itching that persisted even back in Abha reminded me of my lush forest walk. Even if the trees were not "big", it was worth the visit- insect bloodfest notwithstanding.