Excelsior: Moonville and beyond

Friday, June 14, 2019

Moonville and beyond

This should have been a canoeing day but my paddling partner is sick, still recovering from an upper-respiratory onslaught, and I can't lift the canoe on top of the van on my own so we decided to do something a little less taxing: a long country drive to Zaleski State Forest, where we found our way to Moonville Tunnel and Lookout Rock, two brief hikes accessible even for a semi-invalid who falls asleep every time he sits down for five minutes (a handy characteristic on this excursion as he slept through four separate road construction zones involving flagmen, heavy equipment, and diesel exhaust).

I like going through Zaleski State Forest to canoe at Lake Hope, but also because I like the name. Growing up, I never encountered a Zelesky who was not a blood relative, and so it was exciting to come to Ohio and find a whole state forest bearing a variation of my maiden name. My people, my people! Except there were few people on the trail this morning for several possible reasons: (1) roads; (2) mud; and (3) mosquitoes.

The roads outside the state forest were a pain because of construction, but inside the forest they hardly qualified as roads at all. As I drove up a one-lane gravel-and-pothole path that snaked its way up steep hills alongside cliffs and around blind curves, I fervently wished that I'd had the foresight to buy a four-wheel drive vehicle, a desire that became even stronger when it came time to park in the mud along the lovely Raccoon Creek, where we walked through damp green overgrown woods where mosquitoes arrived in droves to welcome us to Moonville.

It was a town once, Moonville, but now the only signs that such a town every existed are the former railroad tunnel and the occasional glimpse of a vine-covered telephone pole decaying in the thick woods. Moonville Tunnel draws the ghost-tour crowd because it's rumored to be haunted, and it certainly feels uncanny to be hiking through thick woods and suddenly come face-to-face with a tunnel drilled under a hill in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason, but it makes sense when you realize that the trail is a former railroad bed.

After a short hike we headed back to the car and drove just a half mile to Lookout Rock, but my goodness what a half mile that was! If we'd encountered a car coming the other way, one of us would have had to back up--on gravel, around curves, down a steep hill, next to a cliff above Raccoon Creek. The only place where the road was wide enough to pass was at the pull-off where we parked to climb Lookout Rock.

And there we found a whole different ecosystem: on the Moonville Trail we were surrounded by lush green dampness and overwhelming growth, but Lookout Rock took us into a sunny zone where low shrubs, lichens, and moss grew and where we saw some lovely wildflowers I could not begin to identify. We sat on the rock and looked into the canopy of an oak tree at eye level, careful to stay a safe distance from the edges.

It was not a particularly taxing excursion but, under the circumstances, it was enough. The forest roads alone constituted a white-knuckle adventure, and the constant need to swat mosquitoes gave our arms a pretty good workout, and if that doesn't merit an extra helping of homemade peach pie, nothing will.