Through the Landsford Looking Glass

Landsford Canal is perhaps the most beautiful state park imaginable.

Idyllic.

I kept looking around and wondering if I had indeed stepped through the looking glass and been transported into Wonderland.

A great majority of visitors were families taking advantage of Landsford's picnic shelters.  A few were preparing their kayaks to tame the slow moving river.  We passed all these and chose to explore the Canal Trail.  We had just begun our walk when we saw a beautiful girl in a flowing dress along the greenery and flowering trail.  She smiled and ushered us on.  Real life emulated fairy tale.  We did a double take.  The princess was certainly there.  She was posing in her prom finery before her proud mother and her fussy photographer.

I felt under dressed in my hiking regalia but tramped quietly past the young beauty and her entourage knowing my hiking boots, t shirt and backpack seemed oddly out of place on this trail.

There had to have been a magic portal.  This was a whole world of beauty.

The girl had been lovely but she could not compare to the ornate simplicity of Spring's canvas as displayed at Landsford Canal.  The early afternoon sunlight illuminated the greenery around us  and breathed ethereal radiance onto the trail itself.  Butterflies flitted all around us.  I'm not being dramatic.  Butterflies literally danced and flew before, beside and behind us guiding our way down the trail and making us stop to marvel at the overall beauty enveloping us.

Amidst all of nature's finery, we stumbled onto a repository of stonework.  The Irish stonemasons from the early nineteenth century had left their marks in the form of locks and walls and bridges.   Their work had once conducted the river along this trail before the waters shifted and left this trail to us.  The stone masons' work still stood.  The stones were beautifully eerie and had seemed to have grown naturally among the grass and the trees.  You can almost hear the shouts of the masons and the groans of the laborers as you walk between the high walls where the water once passed.

Landsford is a poetic, romantic place.  Alas, I am a mom with four kids and we were all hiking together.  Reality can sometimes snuff the romantic glow.

Wetfoot was not in the best of moods.  Her teenage angst clouded the glories of nature in favor of the trials of tweendom.

Thoreau was quiet and observant.  In a most everyday voice he said, "There's a snake."  And so there was.  A shiver ran down my spine but luckily this serpent was small and slithered on its way through the undergrowth by the trail.

Ben kept track of the time and was happy to be pressing forward following the line of the trail.

Little Legs grabbed me tight as she heard Thoreau's casual identification of the snake.

We kept walking guided by the trail which was deserted that day save our little party.  Nature did not seem to mind.  She welcomed us and winked as we kept exploring this beautiful juxtaposition of natural wonder and human craftsmanship.  Landsford is the best of both.

Landsford is the repository of the elusive Rocky Shoals Water Lily- a rare flower which graces this river for only a few weeks in early may.  I'm sure the lily in bloom is beautiful.  The flower pridefully displays herself in the river beckoning visitors crowd a viewing stand and admire her bloom.  Meanwhile, the rest of Landsford smiles and sighs and is grateful to give the Landsford Lily her due.  Landsford's trail, her native animals, minerals, mosses and trees lie back in the luxury of the anonymity.  To the odd visitor who explores Landsford more deeply, the park shyly opens and allows herself to be known and appreciated.  We surprised Landsford with our off season visit before the lilies were in bloom.  We pushed past her trail head and urged her to become known to us.  We were rewarded and transported by her sweet serenity and idyllic beauty.  Landsford kissed our spirits and changed us.  She surprised us with her beauty and grace.  She took our admiration and respect for the South Carolina State Parks to a new level.  It was at Landsford that we fell in love.