It's been almost a month since we last hiked the fall line. We set out today from the parking lot at Pennyfield Lock Road and headed south on the towpath. Winter has set in with a vengeance. Just the cold, not snow like last winter. This season the storms have spared us, the jet stream guiding them to the south, the east or the north. Richmond, Philadelphia, even Ocean City have had snowfalls. D.C. has had only a couple inches all winter.
There's plenty of ice. We got an inch of snow Tuesday, and much of it is still around, particularly in shaded spots on the towpath. The water in the canal this far north of D.C. is shallow, either drained for the winter or by a break in the levee downstream. Most stretches are less than a foot deep and completely iced over. Small game tracks - mostly rabbit - criss cross the snow-covered ice in random patterns. There are pools of open water where a brook or creek empties directly into the canal and keeps the canal water in motion. Sometimes the tracks go directly into the open water, as if the animal had gone for a swim.
The landscape here is flatter than downstream. There are a few bluffs on the Maryland side with 50 to 75 foot rock faces carved or blasted by the canal makers, but nothing to match Mather Gorge below Great Falls. Long low islands block most views of the Virginia side, which appears to be flatter than the Maryland side.
The Pennyfield Lock area is home to dozens of animals and birds (if you want a sense, see here), but the cold has made most scarce. We didn't see any deer or small animals on our walk, and few birds other than the occasional crow. Near the end, the winter silence was broken by three loud honking flights of Canada geese that glided in for landings on the river and then swam in circles as the sun dropped behind the trees on the Virginia side. Our dog Dakota, on her first walk on the towpath, showed no interest in any of the birds. She did, however, approach every human with her tail wagging. Such a social butterfly.
