The Middle Path
A summer on the Towpath Trail helps a dedicated walker find her place among the bikers, birders and cicadas.
This summer I took daily walks on different stretches of the flat, straight Towpath Trail that runs between the Cuyahoga River and the Ohio & Erie Canal. Built in the early 1800s, the canal allowed merchants and manufacturers to ferry their goods on mule-drawn boats up and down the Cleveland-Akron corridor.
Hand-chiseled stone ruins of the old canal locks hyphenate the trail like subterranean dwellings of an ancient civilization, a constant reminder of endless change. The railroad’s dominance in the early 1900s effectively rendered the waterway obsolete.
I wonder sometimes about the ghosts of the canal era observing the strange inhabitants now traversing their route. Who are these half-naked people? And why are so many of them running?
Those of us on the Towpath seem to fall into a handful of tribes. The runners range from the lanky veteran and the occasional high school cross-country team to the determined new recruit.
Birders hang out around Beaver Marsh with telephoto lenses, identifying the feathered creatures from the flash of a wing.
Most visitors are bicyclists — families toting babies in those little tents on wheels, seniors, friends, couples, kids. I love the deeply ribbed tunnel I’ve dubbed Jonah’s Whale that runs under the railroad tracks, because without fail, every child (and the occasional adult) whoops and hollers as they pedal through it — reassuring echoes of innocence.
Zooming past all of us are the ultra-serious cyclists in Lycra and neon logo shirts. Intermittent park signs remind everyone that this is a shared trail and to give an audible signal when passing. Maybe it’s their pace or their singular focus, but the fastest riders seem the least inclined to comply.
Then there is my tribe: the walking minority.
My fitness level lies somewhere between my husband, an 800-meter silver medalist in the National Senior Games, and a good friend, who after a year of intense physical therapy following surgery, is still trying to retire her walker.
Like this trail bordered by a running river and a quiet canal, I occupy the middle path.
What I sacrifice in speed and mileage, I gain with immersion in the forest-clad surroundings. I look for the silent landmarks peeking through the trees. South of Peninsula, a light glows in the attic window of a house across the river, a tiny beacon signaling, You are not lost. At mile marker 20, the skeletal hulking remains of the old Jaite Paper Mill, draped in climbing vines, looms like a dystopian haunt.
There is the pleasure of knowing flower names and the way they roll off the tongue, lyrical enough to inspire paint colors or the street names of suburban developments: meadowsweet, Angelica and chicory. Sweet pea and iris and Queen Anne’s lace. As a woman might change accessories with a little black dress, the trail refashions itself again and again with fresh colors accenting a sheath of green.
Merging with the river’s steady melody are the bullfrogs’ banjo twangs and birdsong. Fish and muskrats splash, families of ducks swim single file, sunbathing turtles wear fuzzy green vests of algae. The patience of stoic blue herons is a study in tai chi grace.
In a perfect ecosystem, every creature works in sync with every plant. But invasive species are a constant threat to that delicate balance. The park system battles endlessly against the renegades: garlic mustard, honeysuckle and the runaway multiflora rose.
Still, I admit enchantment with that wild, perfumed rose, arching over the trail like extravagant wedding flowers framing the aisle.
Perhaps no other creature captured my attention here this summer quite like the cicadas. Most people seemed to loathe them. To me, a cicada is the ultimate model of surrender, a Buddhist embodied in a bug.
After 17 years of preparing for life above ground, they’re given a few weeks to live. They lurch around in flight as nimbly as their heavy bodies allow, raising their voices so raucously they cannot be ignored. They mate, decline, fall to earth and die, leaving behind the eggs of a future generation and an exoskeleton, an existence both here and not here.
They make the most of the time they’re given.
And given the time that I have logged here — more than 500 miles by now — it feels like my trail, my park, my turf. I know the best bathrooms and can recite the historical markers by heart. Every time I step foot on this path, there is a sense of arriving at a place I belong.
This spine of land that runs through the forest is knit into my bones now. The crunch of finely crushed gravel is built into my gait, and the beauty of the river fuels my breath. I’m grateful for these legs that move me forward, mile after mile after mile.
Yet I am a blip on the trail’s timeline, both here and not here. I walk the middle path between the relics of commercial history and a river that carried Native Americans in canoes.
This is and always has been a shared trail. I try not to be invasive.
commentary
10:00 AM EST
September 14, 2016