After Shannon had broken camp and we enjoyed a quick breakfast together, she dropped me off where we'd finished our day yesterday. The terrain subtly began to change: I set out through rolling hills, fording streams that were a mere trickle of what I imagined they must be in the springtime. The Trail took me across Thirty Mile Creek and through marshes thick with dew, cattails and tall grasses waving gently in the breeze. Then it followed a road for a short distance, where I noticed a chipmunk's tail lying on the shoulder. The lucky fellow appeared to have escaped narrowly with his life.
I walked past a plum orchard and admired the dark purple globes hanging from the branches. They looked to be ripe for the picking. Then I began to hear the loud reports of bird bangers: propane-fired cannons designed to keep our feathered friends from eating vineyards' profits. The noise would stay with me intermittently until I ended my hike in Queenston a few days later.
The Trail meandered through a vineyard where workers toiled, weeding rows of grape vines. Then it brought me along a snowmobile trail and back into the woods of the escarpment. Huge rocks made up the path, and I found I needed to practically jump from one to another. It was here where I noticed the air was becoming stiflingly hot and humid. I am not normally bothered by high temperatures and humidity, but I was noticing it on this day.
The Trail came out to an attractive park with a set of wide steel steps leading down the escarpment. Three girls were using them as a stairmaster, ascending and then descending. I sat for a while on a park bench and rested, because the heat had begun to make me dizzy. After a bit, I rose and started descending the steps as well, arriving at the second landing before I realized the Trail actually stayed on top of the escarpment. Back up the stairs, and I was on the Trail once more.
In Cave Springs I managed to startle two raccoons, causing them to take off quickly through the trees. The Trail follows along a ridge here, with trees growing thickly below; one can almost touch the treetops. I heard many blue jays scolding me as I passed through, and even saw a great gray owl leave his perch and soar off into the sky as I drew too close. Everything was overgrown and green, every hue of green imaginable. Even the boulders were cloaked in greenery. For some reason I kept thinking of my friend Kim, a motherly sort who would be admonishing me to stay away from the edge, so in my state of increasing dizziness I heeded her advice. A tiny snake crossed my path as I finally came out to the busy Victoria Avenue, where I was treated to views right across Lake Ontario.
The Trail then followed a laneway where I passed someone's rabbit colony, and then a pasture full of goats. It turned into a wagon trail and then to a single path. I watched what I thought at first was a Monarch butterfly, but it wasn't behaving like a Monarch at all; I found out later it was actually a Red Admiral. It perched on the bark of a tree at eye level, and kept flexing its wings. I began taking pictures, trying to get one with its wings fully opened. Creeping closer and closer, I got within eight inches of it before it started to fly off. I shrieked when it flew right into my face.
The buildings at Balls Falls were open, so I took some time to look through a few of the doors. I was feeling a lot better by now, and managed to descend the rickety escarpment stairs safely. Because there was so little water flowing over the Falls, the gorge at the bottom was free to show off its rocks with all their erosion patterns.
Then it was out to the road, through the historic town of Jordan, and to my campsite for the night. As I sat at my picnic table writing notes about the day, a woman from an adjacent site joined me, wanting to hear about my hike. We sat together for a while, as it grew dark. The days are getting shorter.
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