Mr. Write's Page

The State Botanical Garden of Georgia, located in Athens along the Middle Oconee River, is a terrific place.

The Garden features a variety of well-tended public display gardens — flowers, herbs, ground cover, conifers, and so on — and it’s a research facility for UGA and other universities. It also has a soaring tropical conservatory. A very neat facility.

The Botanical Garden is a little over 300 acres big, and about five miles of nature trails meander through it.

Most of the trails are short loops close to the visitor center. I’ve always considered them sissy trails, mainly used by school kids and old people. Older then me, even.

The one trail at the Garden worthy of the name is the White Trail, a 3-mile loop that takes a pretty good tour of the 300 acres.

Although the White Trail is not a sissy trail — it’s long enough to get your attention and fairly steep in spots — I always tended to underestimate it.

Not any more. Not after my misadventures there one Sunday last month.

My day began on a rather sour note. I parked at a point where a connector trail leads down to the river, a convenient place to pick up the White Trail. As soon as I started down the connector, I saw two college-age girls coming in my direction.

They were walking at a leisurely pace and chattering happily — until they saw me. Immediately, the conversation ended. They speeded up, walking side by side in silence, heads down, gazes locked on the ground in front of them, until they got past me.

If I were better at thinking on my feet, I would have pointedly said hello, or asked for directions to watch them squirm. Or spat an obscenity.

Instead, I just shook my head in dismay and kept going.

When I got to the river, it was 10:00 AM and already hot. Oppressively hot. We’ve had that kind of summer.

But the trails are 100 percent beneath the forest canopy, and the day was otherwise pleasant. I wiped my face with a bandana and turned north along the river bank.

For the first half mile, the trail proceeds north along the river. The footpath there is only about a yard wide, and the vegetation is dense.

Privet and other fast-growing plants line the bank. The trail would quickly disappear if it were not maintained regularly. As it is, the undergrowth is on both sides and above you, creating a walk-through tunnel.

Then I came to a spot where a small tree was down across the trail. The tree was green, so probably had been uprooted in wet weather. Its branches, thick with leaves, completely blocked the trail. Going around it was not possible.

I had no tools with me, but I managed to break off a few strategic branches and ease myself through the barrier.

As I did, my left wrist scraped on a broken branch. I looked down and saw a quarter-size bruise.

Damn. I already had a quarter-size bruise there. I earned it a week earlier while moving landscape timbers.

A word to you younger people about bruises. As you get older, you become much more susceptible to bruising because your skin is thinner. And, in your mounting geezerhood, you’re probably clumsier, too. The slightest thump is likely to leave a mark. Which won’t go away for a month.

You just wait. You’ll see.

Anyway, there I was, with two large, ugly bruises. I was perspiring heavier than ever, but was pleased to be past the fallen tree. I continued up the trail.

Less than 50 yards later, I came across a second fallen tree.

This one blocked the trail, too, but below it was a crawl space about three feet high. I dropped down on all fours and clambered under it.

In mid clamber, I felt a sharp pain in my right knee. A thorn got me.

On the other side, I stood up and looked at my knee. A few drops of blood were welling up and trickling down my shin. Not wanting to stain my bandana, I broke off a piece of privet and used the leaves to mop away the blood.

The bleeding stopped, and I continued on.

Another 50 yards down the trail, I came to a third fallen tree. This one was huge, and the trail appeared to be completely blocked. It looked hopeless.

Nobody wants to give up and go back 10 minutes into a hike. I studied the tree closely to see if somehow I could get past it.

There was, indeed, a possibility. The tree was so large that some of its branches held the trunk up off the trail at an angle. The leafy smaller branches made the barrier look more impenetrable than it really was.

Again, I set about breaking off branches. It took a while, but I managed to create a small opening. I turned sideways and squeezed through the barrier.

In mid squeeze, my face full of leaves, I felt a sharp pain in my left forearm.

On the other side, I was shocked to see blood, lots of it, running down my forearm. Apparently, another broken branch got me. But this time, it was a money shot. The phrase, “Like a stuck pig” popped into my mind.

I wiped the stream of blood away with a forefinger, then pressed the finger onto the wound to stop the bleeding.

It didn’t work. I broke off more privet, wiped the new blood away, and continued pressing on the wound. I continued walking briefly, but decided to stop. Exertion was not a good idea at that point.

Every 10 or 15 seconds, I checked the wound, but the blood kept coming. For several minutes, I repeated the process — break off privet, wipe away blood, apply pressure. I held my arm in the air, wondering if I had a situation here.

In spite of all the bleeding, the cut in my forearm was only the size of a pea. It even had a convenient flap of skin that would become a nice lid when the bleeding stopped.

And really, I’ve been punctured like that on the trail a few times in the past. The bleeding had always stopped. So far, anyway.

As long as I pressed on the wound, the flow of blood was stopped. Sooner or later it would coagulate. I stood in the trail holding my arm aloft, wondering what I would say if someone came down the trail.

Finally, the bleeding stopped. My arm looked awful — smeared with dried blood, flecked with pieces of privet, sporting a fresh wound that looked ready to gush forth at any moment. But the emergency was over, and I was greatly relieved.

I resumed the hike. I was half a mile into a three-mile loop.

Somewhere near the halfway point, the White Trail emerges from the forest and crosses a powerline right-of-way. Because the right-of-way is kept free of trees, the undergrowth is free to go crazy.

The power company doesn’t care what grows there, as long as the lines aren’t affected. The Garden people probably do trail maintenance twice a year, tops.

In that particular spot, in this particular summer, the undergrowth that went craziest at populating the easement was blackberries.

Blackberry plants are ubiquitous in the South, and they grow quickly into dense thickets. Their two key features: delicious fruit and very sharp thorns.

The trail across the right-of-way was not impassable, but it was tricky and unpleasant. I crossed slowly and carefully, trying to avoid the long, arching, prickly blackberry stems.

A good idea in that kind of situation is to carry a walking stick. You can use it to whack the stems, which are delicate and collapse easily, thus clearing the path.

But I didn’t have a walking stick. I opted for Plan B, which is to (1) place your foot at the base of the shoot that is in your way and (2) stomp down while pushing it away from the trail.

The procedure worked fine a few times, but soon, the odds caught up with me. During a stomp, I felt a sharp sting near the sock line of my right leg.

I looked down, and I had another gusher. A sticker had punched cleanly into a blood vessel. Blood was streaming out and quickly soaking the top of my sock.

My doctor warned me about this. The veins in my legs are not varicose, but they’re prominent. Knowing that I’m a frequent hiker, she recommends long pants on the trail. I didn’t listen.

Quickly, I pushed the top of my sock down and applied pressure to my latest wound. With the other hand, I grabbed a handful of sticker-free greenery and used it to swab away some of the blood.

But the flow wouldn’t stop. Three or four times, I applied pressure for 30 seconds, then checked the wound, only to see blood pouring out again.

Part of the problem was the location of the wound — low on my shin. I needed to find a place where I could sit down and elevate my leg. I let go of the wound, stood up, and hastened a few yards ahead to a wider spot in the trail, leaving droplets of blood behind me on the dry clay.

I sat down in the middle of the trail, elevated my leg on the higher bank, applied pressure to the wound, and snatched up another handful of greenery to mop up blood.

As I sat there mopping, I wondered again how this scene would look to a passerby. I assumed the person would stop. I wasn’t sure if I would say, “No problem, I’m fine” or “Help!”

Finally — finally — the bleeding stopped. For the second time, I was mightily relieved and anxious to get going. At this rate, I wouldn’t finish the hike until sundown.

I was about to stand up — carefully, so as not to jostle my leg too much — when a runner, a kid in his late teens, came into view.

He was quite surprised to see me sprawled across the trail with my leg propped up.

“Sir! Are you all right? What happened?” he said in alarm as he loomed over me.

“I’m okay,” I said. “The blackberry stickers got me. My leg was bleeding pretty bad, but it stopped finally.” I pointed to the spot on my leg.

“Are you on a blood thinner?” he asked.

“No, nothing like that,” I said. “The sticker just got me in the wrong place.”

He helped me to my feet. We both studied my leg, waiting to see if the bleeding had truly stopped. It had.

“Do you feel okay?” he asked. “I can go for help, or I can walk with you.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I’m fine,” I said. “You can get on with your run.”

“Well, I’m running to the end of the trail and then coming back this way. I’ll check on you in about 20 minutes.”

I thanked him, and he proceeded down the trail, and I set out behind him.

Fortunately, I received no more wounds that day. And the second half of the trail is higher, dryer, and cooler then the first, which was a nice change.

One of the features of the White Trail is the remains of an old homestead, located about half a mile from the end, 20 yards off-trail.

Hikers have worn a side trail to the old place, and I usually stop for a visit. Not much is there. Just a brick chimney and a scattering of rotted wood and old metal.

While I was off the trail at the homestead, I caught a glimpse of my runner friend passing by on the main trail. As promised, he was headed back, expecting to encounter me along the way

“Hey!” I shouted, but he didn’t hear me.

That’s great, I thought. He’ll probably think I was delirious from loss of blood, and I crawled off into the undergrowth and died. But there was nothing I can do about it.

A short time later, I arrived back at my car. I tossed my bandana, cap, and water bottle onto the front seat and got behind the wheel.

As I was backing out, my friend the runner emerged from the connector trail that goes down to the river. He trotted over to the car.

“Well, here you are,” he said. “I’m glad to see you’re okay. I was afraid you crawled off into the undergrowth and died.”