The Easy Mile — Kitchen Creek

Enjoy this stretch, because it's the easiest walking you'll get all day. You've got better than a mile of gentle trail ahead of you before the first waterfall, and I want you to spend it warming up your legs and slowing down your head. That's Kitchen Creek running beside you. Everything you're about to climb drains into it, so you're walking the whole story backward, from the quiet end to the loud end.

Now look up. Those dark, soft-needled evergreens are eastern hemlock, Pennsylvania's state tree, and they're doing a job. Their shade keeps this water cold, and cold water is what native brook trout need, and the brook trout happens to be the state fish. So the state tree is quietly keeping the state fish alive, right beside your boots. Some of the big trees around the Route One Eighteen lots are old growth too, and you'll walk deeper into those ancient woods as the day goes on.

Those hemlocks have an enemy, and it's about the size of a pinhead. It's called the hemlock woolly adelgid, an insect from overseas that drains the life out of these trees. Look at the underside of a low branch, at the base of the needles. If you see little white cottony dots, that's it. Foresters around Pennsylvania are fighting back with tiny predatory beetles that eat nothing else, which may be the strangest conservation crew in the state.

There's no hurry here. You've got four to six hours on this trail, and your legs will thank you for every easy step now. Just follow the path up the creek, and enjoy the sound of it while it's still this gentle.