Walk 23: Block House Point, Muddy Branch Greenway

Back to Block House Point Park and since I have written up the rich history of the park a couple of times, I'm going to skip right over that.

This morning's walk, the Muddy Branch Greenway Trail, started off with everything going against it. The trail paralleled River Road for a quarter-mile and high speed cars and scenic walks go together like sand in your bathing suit. But then the trail shifted and plunged into the woods and everything changed.

The woods along Muddy Branch are beautiful

At risk of being arrested and sentenced to wear Birkenstock sandals and drink celery juice for the rest of my life, I think every patch of forest has a different character even if they are made up of the same trees and what not. And the forest in this stretch of the park was on the best stretches of woods I've been in for a while. Of course, not everything can be conveyed in a photo. You don't hear the Mourning doves or the Barred owls calling. You can't know it was 68 degrees this morning which is about as good as it gets for walking. But this is one great trail. Also, not another soul on it since it is across River Road from the main section of the park.

Or, if I wanted to be supernatural about it, this is also where thousands of Union troops camped and since twice as many soldiers died of disease as in battle, this is a section of woods with a lot of souls.

The trail links River Road and Ellsworthy Road, a distance of about a 1.5 miles, and meanders along side Muddy Branch before veering off to follow the edge of the Colonial pipeline cut. The track is always either uphill or down which, in my view, makes it more interesting than just a flat walk.

Portions of the trail skirt the flood plain connected to Muddy Branch giving you a chance to see some nice wetlands as well.

This morning's surprisingly excellent walk came about as a default. I had tried to find a good walk somewhere in the Silver Spring to Bethesda arc, but there aren't that many.

As I walked, I thought about this and realized they were there once, but during the 1950s and 1960s, they were lost. Yep, back then developers took one look at creeks and streams saw a problem. They ripped them out by diverting them and filling the stream beds with concrete so that they could build houses right alongside them and not worry about the flood plain issues. In retrospect, it's hard to imagine a more brain-dead, flat-out stupid approach. Building these concrete culverts must have been wildly expensive not to mention the loss of the amenity of good parks.

This was once a free flowing stream in Bethesda. Note the house right on the old banks.

This is why most of the long, great walks are concentrated along the Potomac in a large arc in what we call the Up County area which still has a rural flavor. By the time the developers got to this area of the county, the environmental movement or just plain common sense forced them to leave the creeks as they were.

The 1950s and 1960s had a lot going for them, no doubt. But not when it came to building and development. Sadly, it's probably not possible to restore these lost creeks.

What should be flowing through Silver Spring and Bethesda.

Of course, like anything else, there are exceptions such as Rock Creek and Sligo Creek. But having seen what a good washout does to these creeks during a hurricane, the only thing that preserved them is their ability to rise and really flood the surrounding land.

Leave the woods and leave out the sidewalks. It only makes sense when it comes to the creeks and their flood plains.