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An Obsession

A couple of years ago, I signed up as a trail maintenance volunteer for the parks department in Athens.

I’m in charge of two trails, the Screech Owl and the Swimming Deer. My job is to walk them once a month, trim back the undergrowth, remove fallen branches, and report what I can’t handle, such as downed trees that require a chainsaw.

I walk those trails anyway as a civilian, so I might as well be useful.

The parks department (they call it Leisure Services) operates about 20 parks and rec facilities around Athens. The largest of them, Sandy Creek Park, is 750-plus wooded acres surrounding a 280-acre lake.

The Swimming Deer Trail meanders three miles along the west bank of the lake.

Sandy Creek Park offers the amenities you would expect: fishing, boating, swimming, camping, picnicking. It has basketball and tennis courts, disc golf, and a dog park.

But to me, the real attraction is the beautiful lake and the sprawling oak and pine forest around it. The lake is great for paddling. The forest has miles of beautiful trails, most of it with views of the lake.

Now, it’s a fact that some trails are better than others, and the trails at Sandy Creek Park are of notable high quality. They are exceptionally well-designed and well-constructed, and they blend in nicely. Very scenic and unobtrusive.

The reason for that is a retired University of Georgia forestry professor named Walt Cook.

Walt is a nationally-known trail-builder. Trails are his thing. For decades — in Athens, in Georgia, and around the Southeast — he has been a go-to guy for advice and assistance with new trails, especially trails through sensitive environments.

Governments and organizations know that a Walt Cook trail means high quality and low maintenance, maximum scenery and minimum erosion.

Walt’s trail-building obsession grew out of a long commitment to sustainable forests and environmental protection.

After Sandy Creek Park was built, Walt and some friends came up with the idea of creating an environmental education center in Athens. They found a site on Sandy Creek, five miles downstream from Sandy Creek Park, secured the funding, and made the necessary deals. Sandy Creek Nature Center opened in 1973.

Walt laid out and helped to build the network of trails at the Nature Center. He also built a trail along Sandy Creek that links the park and the nature center. Cook’s Trail is its name.

Allow me to toss out a nature factoid here: the State of Georgia has no natural lakes. None. All the lakes in Georgia are man-made.

Lake Chapman at Sandy Creek Park exists because a dam was built on Sandy Creek.

Like all man-made lakes, Lake Chapman has a wetland at the upstream end — the transition zone between creek and lake. There, the water backs up, spreads out, and makes the land boggy and yucky.

For years, the parks people had wanted to extend the Swimming Deer Trail around the top of Lake Chapman and link it with trails on the east bank, thus creating one continuous loop around the lake.

But that pesky zone of wetlands frustrated them. A trail across the Lake Chapman wetlands would require long stretches of elevated boardwalk. The cost was too prohibitive.

Then last year, an anonymous donor stepped forward and offered to pay half the cost of the boardwalk.

Free money. That got the immediate attention of the mayor, the council, and the parks people.

More about wetlands and trails in my next post.

Lake Chapman at Sandy Creek Park.

Upstream end of Lake Chapman.

Walt Cook at work on the Benton McKaye Trail in the North Georgia mountains.