LUCAS — Here at the edge of Appalachia, spring begins with a trickle. Melting snow on the ridge tops turns to water and runs downhill. Thousands of rivulets course over the forest floor, turning past roots, dripping over the edges of curled leaves and coming together.
The spring run-off creeks are running now, swelling the year round watercourses into which they empty. This is prime time for a trip to Malabar Farm State Park for a hike back to Ferguson Falls.
The falls are seasonal, the source being a spring run-off creek. It is a geographical feature familiar to outdoor enthusiasts throughout hill country in Ohio, a recess cave with a low volume waterfall at the top. Shaped by glacial activity and millenia of erosion, this sandstone waterfall is the remnant of a long distant time.
Views here can be spectacular when winter returns in the midst of a spring thaw. A cold enough blast will cause running water to freeze in midair and the frigid wind will sculpt the falling water into myriad shapes, until it is one piece stretching from the lip of the falls to the pool down below, a full twelve feet or better. Whether frozen or in torrent, Ferguson Falls is well worth the moderate hike.
Pam and I prefer to hit the trail from the equestrian parking lot above the picnic area, but that area is closed today after an ice storm hit the area two nights prior. Instead we park at the Pugh
Cabin parking lot and head up the equestrian trail from there. It’s a short hike to the falls, somewhere around a mile. The first portion of the trail is wide, heavily washed by many years of spring runoff. Running parallel to the trail is the original road that led up to the old Ferguson Farm, a place described in Louis Bromfield’s book “Pleasant Valley.”
With the temperature hanging right around freezing, there is plenty of ice on the wide trail.
Water courses down the path. As we walk I can see it running beneath patches of ice. I am aware of the questing call of a cardinal, sending its single note twice through the chill air.
Automatically, I call back. There is a red tailed hawk that I notice as it turns toward me on its perch some thirty yards away.
We emerge from the trail at the edge of a meadow, crossing over it and into a utility right-of-way with a grove of tall, straight pines off to our left. Their branches droop from their burden of ice. I step onto the carpet of needles and walk into the grove a short distance. A crow caws as it wings by overhead. A soft wind sighs and the ice tinkles in the boughs of the pines. The sunlight is diffused, falling pale golden upon the rust colored needles that cover the ground.
Sound disappears into the needles, both on the ground and trees.
I have always felt that a pine grove is a sacred place, sharing the silent stillness of a chapel or shrine. Here is a place to be still and to listen. For several moments I am silent and do not move until I rejoin Pam on the path. We follow it into the woods below the grove.
Ice crunches underfoot, startling a small herd of white tails downhill from us. I count 14 as they run away. As the last deer vanishes from sight I notice I am holding on to an ice coated limb wrapped round and round by a thick vine. I take a picture of it then move on.
We now notice the sound of the waterfall. Below us the path diverges and we descend toward the steady sound of falling water. On the far side of the right hand path, I see a small watercourse and follow it downhill to the edge of the cliffs that surround the falls in a great horseshoe. At the center is a small gorge, maybe four feet deep and twice as wide, carved through sandstone boulders.
Through it runs a small creek that carries only the runoff from thaws and rains.
Today it runs in a narrow stream, less than a foot wide and less than an inch in depth as it tumbles from the lip of the falls. Beside the tumbling water stands a tall ice formation that must have been made as falling water froze solid. To my eye, it resembles the great red sandstone formations in New Mexico. Beside this great curtain of ice are stalagmites, some of them open tubes of ice through which water drips from the overhanging walls of the cave.
I can see all this from the rim of the falls. In front of me is a jutting outcrop of sandstone that I think of as “Turtle Head Rock”. It’s slick with ice and I’m disappointed to not be able to step out onto it. I snap a few pictures before following a run off stream to the floor of the cave.
Beneath the entire north side of the falls there are ice formations. From the front of the cave where the water drips heaviest, to the far recesses beneath, they stand from the floor of the cave and reach for its ceiling. Some are so thin and fine and curved that they resemble a flame that has been frozen. Another appears to be some misshaped vase.
I can see that the ice is very thin and the formation is hollow. Water flows through it and down to the pool beneath the falls.
Both Pam and myself are enthralled. We take pictures and videos. We study the small details of the formations beneath the falls with wonder. I hold my camera in a small niche to take a picture and feel the heat rising from the sandstone in the small crevice. I place my hand against the stone and feel the damp warmth.
We climb back to the rim of the falls and stand silent for a few moments. Surely a place such as this has been known by many souls throughout thousands of years. How many travelers have come to be in this place? How many feet have trodden to the edge of “Turtle Head Rock?”
It is a natural pulpit, as well as an eyrie from which to survey the terrain below. I can easily imagine that Mr. Ferguson himself, the namesake of these falls, has certainly stood upon that outcrop. I cannot imagine that Bromfield would have stood any other place as he observed the falls below.
As we climb the hill away from the falls, I recall that Bromfield wrote of Ferguson that he was not a farmer. He was, instead, a hunter and trapper that had settled down to farming, who valued solitude and beauty over order and crop yields. If this were so then, surely, John Ferguson was a contented man.
We emerge into the meadow where the trees and grass sparkle under their thin coating of ice.
We stand for long moments and take in the full sight of it, hearing the wind high and lonesome in the trees, the chuckle of water running all around.
Crows fly overhead, winging west to east over the frozen meadow. The sky is gray and sullen.
From a stand of small trees comes the song of a cardinal. I can see him, vivid red, as he flits through the frozen branches. This is the last memory I will bring home today from down Ferguson Falls.
