by Elsa Johnson

Parks play an important role in greening a metropolitan area—including the parks that are not actually within the city itself. Cleveland is lucky to have an especially rich park system close in.  But Cleveland area people often miss some cool parks that are a little further out —  close by but not real close by – and a bit harder to get to. From the eastside. It’s easy to get to Holden Arboretum; the Lake County parks that are close by Holden are hard to miss and draw a lot of visitors – like Penitentiary Glen. But way out on the farthest fringes of Lake County there are a collection of not so easy to find parks with some unique features. As a long-practicing landscape designer I have often gone to Klyn Nursery. It was easy to get to Klyn’s via Route 90 and Vrooman Road. When I would get to the bottom of the hill on Vrooman, before it passed over the bridge crossing the Grand River, I would notice a gravel and dirt road that turned right and wandered off ….somewhere.  The road less traveled.  It always intimidated me a little bit, looking  isolated and rough, as it did, and I was on my ‘getting plants’ mission anyway. So I’d pass it by. Then they (the ubiquitous ‘they’) closed the Vrooman Road bridge. So I found myself looking for other ways to get to Klyn’s, and began exploring the back roads, and In doing so I discovered a trio of interesting parks.

I’ve written before, I believe, about Indian Point Park, which is where you find yourself if you if you take that road less traveled. Paine Creek, a small tributary stream to the Grand River, enters that larger flow at Indian Point. Yes, there’s a real legitimate reason it is called Indian Point, and you can discover it via the Lake county Parks website. You can climb up to the top of the point for a view out over the Grand, an Ohio Wild and Scenic River. In the springtime the forest floor here is covered in Virginia bluebells; and in a few weeks there will be glorious fall color. Then, were you a duck you could swim or waddle up Paine Creek, pass under the I-90 freeway, and, not too much further on, arrive at Paine Falls Park. But if you are human, you will have to use your phone navigator or an old fashioned map and zig here and then zag there. The duck will arrive first.

From Paine Falls Park, if you are a duck, having flown to the top of the falls, you will continue up the Paine Creek stream and soon arrive at Hell Hollow Wilderness Area. But if you are human, you’ll get in your car and zig and zag again, and eventually, with luck, find yourself at the same place, but at the top rim of the hollow rather than down in the bottom with the duck.

The charm of the Paine Creek parks and the Hell Hollow Wilderness Area is not to be found in a long hike – there are no long trails – rather, the charm lies in the intimate exploration of Paine Creek (even though you’re not a duck, you get to play in the water). But at Hell Hollow, before you do that, you have to walk down two hundred and sixty three steps (remembering that what goes down must come back up again).

There are great views from the rim trail out over the hollow to the creek below.

The creek bed is shale, not mud, and on a warm summer or early fall day, with the water low, wearing water sneakers, we walked both along and in the water, feeling like explorers, noticing the creek side vegetation (knotweed even here!) and the tiny darters dashing from one sheltering stone to another. Nowhere was the water higher than my ankles.  A young naturalist we came across in the stream showed us a crayfish he held in his fingers, a sign of the unpolluted quality of the water.

I should note that in higher and colder water this watery exploration probably would not be a good or safe idea.

These three destinations put together would make a nice day trip for a city dweller, or someone looking for a little adventure, although I find myself wishing that somehow these three parks, so well connected by nature, were better connected by and for people, so that one could explore them as a continuous hike.

Perhaps someday.

by Elsa Johnson

I’ve been in the Appalachian mountains before – well, to be honest, mostly I’ve driven through. Nonetheless, It’s a place that always moves me — the way the ridges lie parallel to each other into infinity. Route 80 in Pennsylvania is one such route where you ride the old rounded mountains lengthwise the whole way, from one end of the state to the other. Those rounded mountains alternate with broad gentle valleys of farms and fields; one can imagine surviving in that pastoral land — possibly more than just surviving. Then there are the mountains one drives through in West Virginia, where, as I pass through, I always wonder – what do people DO in this land? How do they live? It’s so challenging. On route 77 you pass through a tunnel to enter into Virginia, where the land changes in subtle ways. It is a bit gentler. I expected Roan Mountain to be like that. But it’s not.

Roan Mountain is part of the Great Smoky Mountains, which are a subrange of the Blue Ridge Mountains separating North Carolina and Tennessee just north of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Although I’ve been in the Blue Ridge before, and thought I knew what to expect, view wise, Roan Mountain has taken me by surprise, the very blueness, the mists, the way the clouds hang in the mountains, pulling away and then rejoining, as though they cannot bear to be separated — the way the mountains seem to breathe the very clouds into being. And, of course, in fact, they actually do. I am enchanted. Bemused. Though I still am wondering, what do people DO here?

Our first hike on Roan Mountain was a short one. My sister-in-law lives on Roan Mountain, in a house with a wrap-around porch, like so many here, and the sound of a rushing stream in the near-by woods (it’s been a record wet summer). All we had to do was keep going up on the winding, twisty road that goes past her house — on up into the Cherokee National Forest, where we parked, and hiked a short flat distance to a knob that looked north over a valley in Tennessee.

From that perspective the land looks relatively unpopulated. I have learned it isn’t. Tucked away in all that so green vegetative excess are winding roads and along those winding roads are houses sheltering under all that greenery (What do people DO here?). If one could see the houses it would seem almost suburban other than there’s a vast forest right out the back door, and probably a fast running stream, and bears come by regularly to check and raid any hanging birdfeeder.  But up on top of the mountain (elevation 6,285 feet – we weren’t quite that high at the knob) you can’t see any of that. You just see trees … and mountains …. and more tree …. and more mountains …. and trees ….

We also visited the rhododendron ‘gardens’ on this first trip, growing thickly together, with White Snakeroot (Ageratina altissima) growing underneath. Altitude is the determinant for what one finds growing on the mountains. The rhododendrons grow at a high elevation in the company of Frasier firs and male ferns. 

Also growing at this elevation were Witch Hobble (Viburnum lantanoides) and fothergilla. I was fascinated by what I have learned is Mountain Angelica (Angelica triquinata), which is geographically limited, growing only in (I discovered) in a limited distribution from northeast Georgia through Pennsylvania. It grows voluptuously here on the highlands and balds of Tennessee. The ones we saw at the knob were covered with flies, but were also visited by ever moving butterflies.

On another day we almost hiked up to Grassy Bald, the high point, where you can look out in every direction. We made it past Jane Bald but pooped out on the lowest slopes of Grassy Bald. The distances here, as seen by the human eye, are deceptive. That slope that looks like an easy short climb? Let’s just say you were warned. Grassy Bald is the Roan Mt. highpoint – where the native flora is the most pristine. To get to Grassy Bald you first hike up through a meadow and then pass through a dense stand of firs carpeted underneath with ferns, and come out onto the first bald – where you discover it’s just the first one. No part of this hike was level – you were either going up, or going down.

Mountain angelica was plentiful on the balds, but – strangely, there were no flies on them.  We also found blueberries (tiny and tart), compact miniaturized ninebark, white achillea, goldenrod (I think) and what I am calling ‘mystery flower’ (looks a bit like a liatris – if anyone knows what it is, feel free to tell me).  And bear scat.

Another hike took us to Elk River Falls, where a congregation of a dozen or more yellow Tiger Swallowtail butterflies refused to cooperate for a group photo, although a Black Swallowtail did, barely.

A hike in Roan Mountain State Park, at much, much lower elevations, brought us to hillsides of towering tulip poplars underneath which grew carpets of native wild ginger (asarum canadense) as a groundcover. I have never seen anything like it! Also growing on these hillsdes were Christmas ferns, male ferns (a dryopteris species), Doll’s Eye’s  (actea), various carex species (appalachia, plantaginea, platyphylla), native bamboo (Arundinaria appalachiana), and partridge berry (Mitchella rpens),  Nearest the stream were the usual late summer meadow volunteers, but also what I believe to be Indian Plaintain (Cacalia atriplicifolia). Also a charming little orange salamander. Not so different from what grows at home in northeast Ohio, but more generous.

A final outing took us to the Chihuly glass exhibit in the Biltmore gardens where strange glass plants resided among the real plants, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so, sometimes spectacularly.