As part of my rehab, I’m supposed to walk twice every day, but I get tired of doing the same old thing.  On a beautiful day last week, Tom and I went to the Gahanna Woods State Nature Preserve for a walk.  We had been to the Lynd Fruit Farm to pick up some apples and the nature preserve was on the way home.

Gahanna Woods State Nature Preserve encompasses a variety of wooded and successional habitats in an urban setting. This preserve protects perhaps the best remaining complex of buttonbush swamps and vernal pools in central Ohio. A pin oak-silver maple swamp forest surrounds these woodland pools. Mature oak-hickory and beech-maple communities occur on the higher and drier areas of the preserve.  The only known population of cypress-knee sedge in Ohio occurs in one of the buttonbush swamps within Gahanna Woods.

The preserve is leased to City of Gahanna Parks and Gahanna Woods Park is adjacent to the State Nature Preserve.  This means 99 acres is set aside in the middle of hundreds of acres of housing developments.  Both parks have trails, but dogs are not allowed in the State Nature Preserve.

When Tom and I arrived, we immediately went to a kiosk that had a very faded map.  It said, “you are here” and gave the distance of several trails.  We decided to take what we thought was the orange trail, which would have been 1.25 miles.  The trail was very clear  and mostly level, which made it a good trail for me to walk.  But all the blazes we saw marking the trail were blue and yellow.  Maybe.  The yellow was kind of orangish.  We saw another map in another kiosk, but it was totally different from the first map.  We walked about 3/4 of a mile and got back to the car.

Once back at the car, we could see the sign for Gahanna Woods State Nature Preserve at the other end of the pond.  Turns out we had been walking in the city park instead of the State Nature Preserve.  When we got to the sign, it had a different map with all the Gahanna City parks on it.  But, as soon as we entered the woods, we saw orange blazes.  Here was the orange trail we had been looking for.

We started off on the orange trail and soon got to a place where there was a shortcut.  I wanted to take the shortcut because I was starting to get tired, but Tom wanted to take the longer route.  A mile long trail has always been easy to knock out before.  As we went, however, I got slower and slower.  I hadn’t been using my cane, but I had to rely on it as we continued.  The walk was really pretty, but I was pooped.  I may have accused Tom of trying to kill me at one point.

Eventually we made it back to the car.  It was my first day with almost 10,000 steps in a long time.  After resting for a while I felt fine, but the end of that beautiful walk felt endless.

Now that we know where the orange trail really is, I would like to return to Gahanna Woods State Nature Preserve.  The trails are very nice and the woods and swamps are unique to this part of Ohio.  I’m pretty sure, given another couple of weeks, I won’t ruin the hike with my pitiful whining.