The Large, the Small, and the Hidden

We spent the early part of a hot Sunday afternoon at a friend's pool and had planned to stop on our way back to our Burns Park home for a short and leisurely stroll around Bader Park, in adjacent Ann Arbor Hills, to ease back into our park walks. We had in hand our Ann Arbor parks list -- worn and weathered but still readable -- which came in handy when orange barrels on Washtenaw chased us southward, through a little community we believe is known as Pittsfield Village, in search of Plan B. The Village contains a number of parks (and a lovely community pool) but the parks are private and thus weren't on our list -- which of course disqualifies them. But in a city with 157 parks (have we mentioned that?), we needn't have worried that we'd find another one soon.

Almost immediately after we left the Village and turned westward onto Packard, Patti spotted a partially hidden Ann Arbor Parks & Rec sign on the southwest corner of Pittsfield and Packard. We made a quick left past the sign, beyond what appeared to be a miniature construction site consisting of a half-dug trench and a large Lego-like plastic pipe, and beyond that into another neighborhood of homes, which made us think we had missed the turn into the park -- or that while the sign was on this corner the entrance was on another. But no. We turned around, parked at the corner, and walked toward a lone picnic table. Then we walked back to Packard to read the sign: Pittsview Park. There was also a sign for Swift Run, a Huron River tributary, and we followed it as closely as we could, around the tree line, but within 100 feet we ran into private property -- though through the brush you could glimpse the nearly bone dry branch of the river. But that's all there was.

We snapped a few pictures and giggled at our luck: we not only found a new park but traversing it took even less effort than a short Bader Park walk would have required. A ridiculously small park, we thought, and who could know it's there, other than those who live around it? Could it be that the park extends along the tributary but we just didn't know how to access it? We hoped not, since we liked our quirky little park just the way we found it.

We could have stopped there -- we had intended to visit only one park on this first day back -- and we might have done just that if Patti hadn't also spotted yet another sign on the south side of Packard, just a few blocks west of Pittsview. We turned left again, toward a huge "Marybeth Doyle Park and Wetland Reserve" sign and into a small gravel parking lot, both of which seemed excessive given the one little single-track path we noticed trickling from the far end of the lot, barely beckoning us forward. But we took the trail, lined with black-eyed susans, and we were very glad we did.

Patti saw a rusted metal structure in the distance and wondered if it might be a bear trap. But it turned out to be a well-fortified bridge, enabling hikers to cross the Swift Run tributary -- much more than a trickle of water here, and serene and scenic. Soon enough we came to the proverbial fork in the road, with intersecting paths of raised boards designed to protect against erosion, as a hand-made sign explained. The sign was constructed by the same Eagle Scouts who have been working on this surprisingly elaborate trail, which continues out and around and beyond anywhere we could have imagined it might take us when we first spied it out on Packard Road.

We were deep into wooded terrain, and Patti mentioned that a compass might be nice since she navigates by visual cues, which are difficult to depend on in a forest. She wondered aloud if we were walking parallel to Packard and Randy said he thought so but then rattled off a number of other questions without taking a breath -- or waiting for an answer: How could there be this much land back here? Who knew this was here? Is that a meadow out beyond those trees? Is that distant freeway drone from 94 or 23? Where in the hell are we, anyway? We had no idea how we could suddenly be heading into such a large and isolated area when just moments ago we were standing in a parking lot, eyeing a vague path that seemed to lead nowhere. It was inconceivable that this sort of wooded wonderland could exist this close to the Packard Road congestion, and we were hardly prepared for it. About 15 minutes into our walk we realized we could easily wander around until dark, so we vowed to return for further exploration and started focusing on our path back. We trekked along the crisscrossing dirt routes and the myriad semi-finished elevated paths, with the boardwalk occasionally stopping and then starting again, but we followed our instincts and more or less completed a large loop, arriving finally at the hand-made sign and walking back over the fortified bridge and through the black-eyed susans to the heat of our car still parked in the roadside lot.

So we'll be back. And one thing we'll want to know on our return is whether one can hike along the tributary from quirky little Pittsview into the wide and wondrous Marybeth Doyle.

P.S. When we got home we looked at the city web site. Marybeth Doyle was until recently called Brown Park, which at more than 81 acres is one of the city's largest, and the woods we hiked comprise only a tiny, newly developed portion in its northeast corner, with the vast majority of the park consisting of an open disk golf course, baseball field, basketball courts, and numerous picnic, play, and other recreational areas, with a bike path connecting them all. Who knew?