By Brandt Mannchen

 

It was a full house at the Sam Houston National Forest District Ranger Office parking lot.  We had 18 people, a combination of old timers and first timers.  Rose, Gary, Lynn, David, Nancy, Yong, Darrell, Phyllis, Samson, Luis, Allen, Beverly, Tisha, Cindy, Eva, Weiping, and Irina were all bundled up and smiling, glad to be out of the city and in the woods.  We all decided which cars we wanted to carpool in, the caravan formed, and off we went.  The sun was out and then everything went dark as the clouds took over.

 

We went through the new rotaries on FM 1375/Interstate 45 North in New Waverly and then tooled up Interstate 45 and got off at the Huntsville State Park exit, turned right and drove to U.S. 75, turned right and then left onto Evelyn Lane and – Whoa Nelly what are we seeing!  Green was all over the road.

 

The road looked like a grassy promenade.  We all stared in disbelief.  Eventually David said, “it must be the hail”!  The night before, a windy, rainy, and apparently hail-laden storm passed through Houston and Southeast Texas.  We now saw the results as many pine tree branches littered the road.  We picked our way along the road, including a muddy area that we had to bull through.

 

We parked at the Lone Star Hiking Trail entrance on the Phelps Section of the trail, and hiked about one-half mile in, attempting to avoid the pools of water and wet, squishy soil.  We topped a ridge and then started down.  We were in a beautiful hardwood-dominated cove with large White Oak, Southern Red Oak, Black Hickory, Shortleaf Pine, and other trees scattered across a several hundred yard area.  It is rare to see an upland hardwood forest like this in Sam Houston National Forest.  Most were cut down from the 1940's through 1960's for timber stand improvement – in other words, make room for more pine trees.  

 

Some people found golf ball sized hail still on the ground.  The tall hardwood and pine trees protected us from the wind.  It was a great place to hike and talk about the forest (Yong kept asking good questions) but we had a lot of territory to cover so we hiked back to our cars and took off.    

 

We drove down U.S. 75, FM 2296, and turned onto Four Notch Road and drove until we came to Forest Road 206, and drove across Boswell and Briar Creeks.  We parked our cars along the side of the road and walked about 100 feet into the forest.  We were on the lower slope of a 330 foot ridge, where it met the floodplain of Briar Creek.  

 

We appreciated the large White Oak, Sweetgum, American Holly, and American Basswood (a tree that is rarely seen in SHNF).  Black Walnut were scattered in the forest and Switchcane (the cane in “canebrakes”) was thick in growth with large grape vines that hung from trees.  It was truly an impressive forest and reminiscent of descriptions of the “Big Thicket” from the 1800's as related in Del Weniger's “The Explorers' Texas, The Lands and Waters”.  Christmas Fern was on the floor of the forest and lichens and mosses lined and covered the bark of trees.  Again, we had to go.  We were over an hour behind schedule and still had our longest hike in front of us.  

 

We drove a few miles further north and parked our cars at the trailhead for the Lone Star Hiking Trail in the Four Notch Area.  We began a long downward walk, with water draining on the trail, and Red Maple standing in silent watch as we headed to the bridge over Briar Creek.  We crossed the bridge, paralleled the creek, and continued, covering a mile in all.

 

We finally left the creek and climbed up a slope, down a slope, and then up another slope before we crossed a small ephemeral stream and found ourselves in a concave bowl with many large hardwood trees.  As we stood on the trail I heard a calling and said, “The frogs are calling!”  We walked slowly to a vernal pond, that dries up in the summer, that was full of calling frogs.  This is the time of year when frogs mate and our pond was full of vigorous activity.  We also heard far in the distance, the spooky call of the Pileated Woodpecker, a crow-sized bird with a great, red crest and white on its wings. 

 

We admired the large Black Gum, Winged Elm, and other upland hardwood trees.  We also viewed the beauty of wet, bright green, spore-laden, Resurrection Fern which covered the trunk of a large tree.

 

I looked at my watch and started!  We needed to get into Huntsville if we wanted to eat at Fiesta Taqueria by 2 pm.  We doubled back and made our hike in record time.  We drove for about 20 minutes and made it to the taqueria just in time, before they closed.  The folks at this restaurant took good care of us and we had a  late lunch with great conversations.

 

We finally wound our way back to the District Ranger Office and dropped everyone off so that they could pick up their cars.  While we got cold, got wet, got muddy, and the wind blew and chilled us, we saw some fabulous hardwood trees in the uplands and along creeks.  I felt tired but refreshed and recharged.  I waved to the woods and look forward to visiting them again along with all my Sierra Club friends.