Reservoir Woods

 

Hoping that I haven't spoiled the surprise by showing pictures yesterday, and telling the tale of, my encounter with a grove of marijuana plants in the low marshlands of Reservoir Woods, I am here with millions of photos from this wonderland, yet another feral area of Saint Minneapolis.

Maybe it's not millions of photos, but there are several altogether. Brace yourself for some scrolling! The reason there are so many pictures is because I actually went to Reservoir Woods twice! One day I was in the Western portion, and on another day I was in the Eastern Portion. 

That makes these woods sound pretty big, eh? 

They're big enough.

They've got woods, swamps, prairies, cell phone towers, abandoned stone walls, and flowers. Plus, while there, help yourself to the freely growing intoxicants! Check out the ducks. Also a major road runs through the middle of Reservoir Woods, but a tunnel will take you quietly under it. It all also borders a large cemetery, if you're into that, which, who isn't this close to Halloween?

My pictures follow no rhyme really, but run randomly across the things I encountered, barring I guess the marijuana plants, which have already been so copiously covered.

Marijuana

 

This one is called:

Marijuana

or

When Your Dreams Come True After the Fact

There are legal ways to get stoned in Minnesota now, and though they are narrow and ridiculous for the most part, they work fine. I tried them. I got high. I remembered that I don't much like being high.

I kind of liked getting stoned when I was a teenager, or, I got stoned occasionally and either thought I liked it, or I wasn't very clear that I didn't like it. Or maybe I liked it in very special circumstances?

Usually getting weed was challenging and complicated and much sought after by me and my friends in our mid teens in a lifeless suburb of L.A. So what happened to me today would have been like a dream come true had it occurred back in those days.

And though it wasn't anything like a dream come true today, it was still neat, and hearkened back to that old feeling.

I was out at Reservoir Woods, a place with a lot of different, interesting, semi wild environments quite close to the library I'm at right now. I was taking pictures in the wetlands. 

Here's what it looked like:

To the right of this picture is a quarter mile stretch of water and algae, all full of ducks. So this wider area was all grassy and halfway between a swamp and a lake. When I was at the other side of the water from this picture, where a major paved trail passes along, I plunged down a small, rough trail to get a view across the water. But before I got to the water's edge I found a grove of tall plants, maybe a dozen, that, though I have heard easily grows wild, I have never before seen growing wild anywhere.

It was marijuana!

The plants were six to eight feet tall, some of them with loose, but notable buds growing on them. I love the smell of fresh marijuana buds. I even clipped off a couple of them and shoved them in my pocket. I don't know what I'll do with them, but I highly doubt smoking them will come into it.

I also took some pictures of the plants. Hopefully they are trippy enough for you.

Here are four:

All the sides of the river

 

I am conducting a long term, highly informal circumnavigation of the wildlands of the Saint Minneapolis rivers. The Mississippi River is joined by the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling, in the curiously wild center of the city, and a sometimes complicated network of trails and half wilderness lines almost all sides of these waterways, sometimes in surprising ways. On a multitude of walks over the past couple of years I have been piecing my travels together to, well, see all that I can see, and maybe, if it works out, cover all these sections.

These are some truly amazing places, old woods, bits of prairie, open lakes and swamplands right in the middle of a major metropolitan area. They are even a National Park, so to speak. They are part of, or maybe even the whole of, the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area. I am unclear as to what the actual boundaries are of this National River and Recreation Area, as it is strung out in such a wide variety of ways, across such a swath of sometimes broken up, or complicated to get to, sections.

I like every section of these river lands I've been to. I often go with my wonderful wife, and these are delightful outings. But until a trip I took this week, I had never found a place among all these feral lands that felt like true wilderness.

So let me tell you about it.

Plus, there will be a few pictures that surely can't, but nevertheless strive to do it justice.

The trailhead for this journey was a place we had been to several times before; in Mendota, in front of the oldest stone house in Minnesota, one built by the first Governor of the state in the 1830's, some time before he became Governor. In the past we had headed downriver from here, which is one of our favorite walks. This time I was alone and resolved to explore a fair way upstream instead, which, at least at first, is a less appealing and more popular walk.

It was a beautiful weekday morning and on my more than two hour walk I ended up seeing only two other people, both on mountain bikes. The trail ran wet and muddy in a narrow furrow between heavy greenery. An old railroad way, that I have never seen a train on, was elevated above me to my left. Woods and sometimes something like open, deep grass prairie separated me farther and farther from the river to my right.

Finally though, the trail departed from the bluff and train track wall, and turned in through the lovely old woods. It is late summer here, just barely before the colors will start to turn, and everything was deeply green. When I emerged back out into the light and openness at the shore of the Minnesota River it was like a whole new discovery. I looked across the water to the main part of Fort Snelling State Park. It was silent and remote here except when jets from the very nearby International airport took off close overhead. A heron flew by silently.  From here the trail walked right along a little two foot shelf at the edge of the river and at some point crossed a creek tumbling mildly into the Minnesota.

I looked up the creek. 

It was intriguing!

There was no trail of any kind heading up that stream, but the carpet of greenery was manageable enough for me to safely work my way through in that direction, so I left the trail and headed into the forest gloom.  Meadows appeared, and beams of light streamed down capriciously and with a heavenly power to them. Tangles of great trees blocked the way and I travelled around them, always keeping to the stream, which, in a bed of green and fallen wood worked its way below the level of the woods and meadows. The green wild was deep and almost somber in its magic. I thought "I would not be at all surprised to see a unicorn right now."

I didn't see a unicorn.

But it was so pretty I started to cry a little.

Pictures:

Here is a pedestrian tunnel under the road and railroad tracks. It is an auspicious start of my trip, a way for one to cross over into another world:

The rest of these pictures are from the deep woods and small meadows of the creek I described above. One might say they are almost obscenely edited, but my aim was only to bring the photos back up to how the world felt as I saw it.

If I missed any unicorns, let me know.