Buffalo River Trail
to Arrington Creek
May 7, 2006
Whew! What a week. For the fourth time in
eight days I drove out of town to tromp through the woods after
waterfalls, this time with Joey to the Buffalo River Trail near
Boxley. Over a year ago I’d hiked this section of the
trail on a dry February afternoon, and I vowed to return on a
wet spring day to see what several small streams with
waterfalls might look like. To my surprise the first two small
streams had very little water in them. Further down the trail
we heard running water below on the right and went down to
investigate. The stream we found had just enough water in it to
form pretty waterfalls as it dropped steeply down the
mountainside. We separated and found our own spots to
photograph at leisure.
Photo © by Joey Bentley
I hate to admit this, but when we went back
uphill to find the trail, we got lost. We hunted nearly half an
hour for a trail that we knew was there but seemed to have
vanished. Finally we found it, along with an explanation of how
we misplaced an entire hiking trail: we had left the trail at a
spot where it made a U-turn. The trail was curving away from us
at both ends and we needed to be at the top of the curve to
pick it up again.
Mystery solved, we continued on down a few
hundred yards where the trail crossed Arrington Creek. There
wasn’t nearly as much water as I expected in the creek
either. I believe either the area had not gotten as much rain
as Whitaker Creek or perhaps the large amount of limestone in
the soil leads to a fast runoff. Maybe it’s a little of
both.
An interesting cluster of leaves on the
ground near the creek caught my eye; I didn’t recognize
them, and they were attractive. The dark green leaves had three
pointed lobes and had a pattern of light blotches. I looked
around and saw similar clusters in several places. I believe
now they were Hepatica, also called liverleaf.
Joey and I decided to do some exploring by
bushwhacking up the southern bank of Arrington Creek. There
wasn’t anything special directly on the creek, though we
did find a tall limestone bluff on the north side a few hundred
yards upstream. Soon we located what we assumed was the little
stream we had spent so much time at earlier, and followed it up
the hill. On the hike out I saw several gigantic Beech trees
that I wanted to get pictures of, but the white puffy clouds in
the sky above them would have ruined the photos. Guess
I’ll give them another try on my third trip to Arrington
Creek some day.
