I followed the yellow-blazed trail past Split Rock and the pool below it and found myself in a mature forest where hemlocks were interspersed with the trunks of large white ash and yellow birch. The stillness was intensified by the snow, and the burbling of the stream as it flowed over small waterfalls and smooth stone shelves was the only sound other than the lisping calls of chickadees. I did not hear the hammering of pileated woodpeckers, but did see several snags with sets of the distinctive elongated holes they had drilled. One of these, a big yellow birch, had an especially large excavation revealing a core riddled by carpenter ant tunnels, a rich trove of food for this woodpecker.
My snowshoes were less helpful in negotiating the single plank that formed the trail’s footpath among boulders for much of the way, but I worked my way downstream until I reached a sign put up by the Preserve warning that I might encounter nudity should I go any farther. This gave me pause for a moment, but I decided to take the risk, and kept going. Sure enough, I shortly arrived at the large pool with its broad rock ledges ideal for sunbathing that is indeed a popular swimming hole in the summer. On this particular day, though, the pool was half frozen- over, and the only nakedness I encountered was that of bare rock and leafless trees along the stream bank.
It wasn’t long before I reached the end of this one-way trail, at a large clearing near the Mohonk Preserve boundary line. On my return, I noticed a yellow birch snag with several large shelf fungi, the kind called “artist’s conch.” I wanted to break one off, and record some of my impressions of the spare wintry beauty I had found on this walk by scratching its smooth underside with a sharpened twig: the stream with its stones fringed with ice, or peaked with snow like a village of small huts, the purling, rippling water flowing over its stone bed, the snow-dappled hemlock and mountain laurel, the filigree of bare twigs silhouetted against the sky and so much more. But the artist’s conchs were too high up to reach, so I had to make do with words, and with photographs.
Split Rock and the yellow trail along the Coxing Kill can be reached from Mohonk Preserve’s Coxing Entry parking area on Clove Road, off Route 44-55 just west of the West Trapps parking area. If the Coxing Entry parking lot is closed due to snow, park at West Trapps and use the Shongum path to reach the Old Minnewaska trail close to Split Rock.
