Nature Face

Recently, my friend Maryann introduced me to the William Way Center, an LGBTQ community center with a fantastic library and a great schedule of events for the Philadelphia area: http://www.waygay.org/. I was particularly excited when I found out that they have a hiking group that gets together on the last Sunday of each month to walk the Wissahickon trail. Living in the big city, I’ve been craving some time outside, away from the urban jungle.

Maryann and I joined the hiking group this afternoon outside of a pizza place on Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill, which is generally an area considered part of the “suburbs”, but – as we found out – is actually within city limits. We also learned that the area that we hiked in is considered part of the Fairmount Park System, and that (according to one of our fellow hikers) Fairmount Park is the largest municipal park in the United States. This old map shows the park in its entirety:

Without knowing it, apparently, I explored two ends of the same park on two separate weekends: Fairmount Water Works, which I wrote about discovering in the last post, is located at the far southern end of the park, and the Wissahickon trail consists of the long, skinny northern section, shaded in with a darker color on the map above. One of our fellow hikers told me that the park was made possible in part because of the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, when development along the Schuylkill River and its tributary, the Wissahickon, was halted in an effort to prevent the spread of disease by maintaining a clean water supply for Philadelphia. I did a little bit of online research and didn’t find any information that corroborated that particular claim, but it is certainly true that the one of the purposes in creating the park was to protect the city’s drinking water.

From Chestnut Hill we walked down a few residential streets until we entered the park in the valley, which seemed like a totally different world. It is certainly a beautiful area, and we were lucky to have a day when the sun was shining and the bitter cold of the past week was somewhat broken:

Though I was expecting a more challenging hike, and this outing was more what I would call a leisurely walk, it was wonderful to be out in the open, walking in the woods along the river. The water is crossed by some beautiful old stone bridges along the way:

…and the trail itself also has some beautiful stone work:

These structures give the park a somewhat cultivated feel, like New York’s Central Park, but they are few enough that they don’t intrude too much on the sense of walking in the woods. It was certainly different than a mountain hike at home in New England, but did manage to temporarily satisfy my craving for nature.

Aside from getting in a lovely walk and learning more about Philadelphia and its history, I was also happy to meet some new people. Maryann and I were the only representatives of our demographic in the group this day, being the only women and the only people in our 20’s present, but it was admittedly quite refreshing to have the chance to talk to people from other walks of life.

I think I’ll be re-joining this group another month!