Sunday Walk on the Saw Whet Trail

I was talking about the Saw Whet Trail at a birthday party the other night and realized that I haven’t gone out there for a walk in over a year. Time to do something about that, I thought, especially on a beautiful late-summer day like today. So I drove out this morning and went for a walk.

 

The Saw Whet Trail is part of a group of three trails (the others are the Lumsden Trail and the Deer Valley Trail) that run from Lumsden to Deer Valley. (You can find a description of these trails, and a map, here.) Added together, the three trails are 17 kilometres long. But the walk out of Lumsden is a dispiriting slog along a paved road (the trail is supposed to run through the ditch on the north side of the road, but in my experience that means hacking through waist-high thistles), and the trail through Deer Valley is usually overgrown because it’s rarely used. I prefer the 7 kilometre Saw Whet Trail.

The trail runs across private property over the height of land between the Qu’Appelle Valley and the Wascana Creek Valley, alongside barley and hay fields and through patches of native prairie and wooded coulees. The portion that runs along Wascana Creek is less interesting, although it’s a great place for picking chokecherries. But it’s worth the walk down into the Wascana Creek Valley for the chance to climb up the hill on the way back to the parking lot.

I’ve been thinking about hills since I got back from Victoria. Living in a city that’s almost perfectly flat doesn’t give you an opportunity to prepare for going for a walk anywhere else, because almost no other place is as flat as Regina. To prepare for climbing hills, you have to find a hill to climb, and that’s not easy around here. Part of the attraction of the Saw Whet Trail is the fact that it has hills.

Of course, I was huffing and puffing on every climb, just like I was in Victoria, although the hills here are smaller and not as steep. I’m clearly going to have to spend the winter in the gym, trying to improve my fitness level. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it. But it has to be done.

I saw many abandoned bales of hay, both on the hills and on the valley bottom. I suppose the price of hay was too low when they were baled to make selling them worthwhile. I can’t think of any other reason to cut and bale hay and then leave it to rot. The creek has been eroding the cutbank, and a stack of bales is falling into the creek. Another winter or two, and they’ll be in the water. Deer are eating them. A piece of farm equipment–I don’t know what it is–has fallen into the creek because of erosion, too. It’s almost completely submerged now.

One of the reasons I like this walk so much are the bits and pieces of remnant native grassland. I saw some of my favourite late-summer bloomers: coneflower, dotted blazingstar, asters, goldenrod, blue grama grass. Some hills are covered with purple stands of little bluestem. When I see these plants, I feel like I’m greeting old friends.

I got to the end of the Saw Whet Trail and ate a sandwich. Then I turned around and headed back. The return journey is always shorter, except on a long walk, when it can seem to take forever. Luckily, this was a short walk–only 14 kilometres in all.

It was a great way to spend the afternoon, and I plan to make this walk again before another year passes.