For each city I explore, I always make sure to look for its parks, gardens and green spaces. De San Diego is beautiful Balboa Park At the best parks in the city of London, I always find remarkable jewels. So when I planned a weekend in the Hamilton region to hike in the wild region of Spencer Gorge, I decided to also consult the royal botanical gardens, I did not know how large the gardens were and that I also hike in its Hendrie Park valley.
After checking a little gardens and a fairly thoughtful swimming pool in front of the tea house, we went to the Cherry Hill door, the front door to the paths of the Hendrie Valley sanctuary to escape the heat and humidity of more than 30 degrees and a direct sun in the afternoon in the canopy of the forest. Leaving, we immediately met a group of small sweet Tamias. Their cheeks were filled with the acorns that littered the trails, cries of excitement if another approached too closely and that you could say that they were fairly used to visitors, not even rush when we dreamed to take their photo and dare enough to check the seeds that we had in our hands made them even more entertaining.
One of my favorite games on hiking is the chance of meetings with wildlife, from birds to mammals and to look at their lives in the woods. The connection with nature and its creatures brings a tranquility of centering and peaceful that is like nothing else and I want more people to take the time to go out and explore. They would be surprised by the effects he can have on your emotions, your confidence and your sense of self.
We continued, through the wooded trails with the cries of Tamias and the poetic melody of bird songs as an original band and we are headed for the first walk. The canopy of the forest has given way to a clear sky while we crossed the marsh with a spare sparrow whipped among the reeds below and cross the North Bridle trail which tightened us in the shaded forest. The North Bridle Trail is more steep in parts and follows the north side of the stream. There are a few sections where the trees separate on the side of the stream to offer picturesque views of the marshes. From such a point of view in the way we saw two large birds perched in the trees, binding. With the lack of twins and the sun that shines on them, almost illuminating them, they were difficult to identify, but thanks to the zoom on my faithful camera, I could see that they were great blue herons.
Just before reaching the second walk that would bring us back to the stream, I saw another heron, this one a green heron – a magnificent bird if it is caught in the right light, you can see their superb range of greens, yellows and violets, but this guy was wisely out of the sun today, trying to stay cool like the rest of us. And just as we crossed the marsh, with an ideal bench to sit and look at the serene landscape, I have seen another bird floating among the reeds in the shade along the shore in the distance. I could say that it was a wooden duck and when I told my friend that she was ecstatic, it was her first time seeing one in the wild. We have lingered for a long time by the water hoping that it would come out of the shadows. Our patience has borne fruit and the male, with its majestic colors and marks, as well as his wife with her huge circle for white eyes, came out in the open air and a little closer to us to look with admiration.
When we finally snatched ourselves and reached the south side where we were greeted by sweet little girls and a magnificent white chest trigger which, I am almost sure, had a contract with the park because it seemed enough to continue to put for our cameras. And as wildlife encounters seemed to be the theme of this hike, we laughed at our fortune when a little further, I saw a muskrat swimming in the water next to the path. Curiously, he even seemed curious and came to the edge to look at us more closely. My friend and I were curious, was he nourished? Was it a rescue and reissued? The two would explain his lack of fear of humans. I was later impressed to learn that the royal botanical gardens had recently released more than 100 turtles, some of which were banding turtles, an endangered species, in their Coots paradise and even Grimestone Creek (where we were hiking).
I couldn’t help but ask myself, Did we fall into a hole and we found ourselves in Wonderland? Or did the fairies sprinkle us with a kind of elf dust to attract wonderful fauna? That it was never more than satisfied with our endless meetings on the enchanted trails of Hendrie Park Valley. Since we even entered the paths where we have spotted a majestic monarch butterfly which was labeled in the inchletal fauna that we met on the trails, I must admit that the hike in the trails of Hendrie Park Valley was an impressive surprise and one of my favorite hiking days.
Have you ever traveled the Hendrie Park valley?
