One of our favorite stretches of the Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail is along the River from the Scuppernong Springs to the Hotel Springs.  To the East is a steep slope covered by Oak Savannah.  To the West the views of the River and Wetlands were obstructed by a lot of brush including Buckthorn, Honeysuckle, Willow, Aspen and the witch’s brooms from charred stumps of Cherry and Red Oak.  The area in question is marked in white on the map below.

On Wednesday, October 17th I spent the day working in area between signposts #7 and #8 above.  Here are some before pictures.

After a little effort with a brush cutter and chain saw…

I still had a little energy left so I put on my chest waders and grabbed my shovel.  There were a couple of places by the Emerald Spring, where the observation deck is, where the River was spilling over its banks.  On his last visit with us, Ron Kurowski suggested we get some bio-logs from the DNR to shore up the banks and keep the River in a narrower channel.  I contacted Ben Heussner and found out there were no more bio-logs at the moment, so I decided to just try a low tech solution for now.  Here are some views of the areas in question before I started and after.

And two blisters later…

On Thursday, October 18th, Lindsay joined me and we worked on the area just North of where I had left off on the 17th and made it all the way up to the boardwalk leading to the Emerald Spring.  In addition to the brush mentioned earlier, we cut a huge patch of Phragmites.  Here are some before shots.

And after…

Here is a view of the work area from the bridge over the Scuppernong River down by the Hotel Springs.

We still have some brush piling to do but the views into the Wetlands along the River are much improved.