We pressed on, from Cedar Drive and Spring Farm Road, to the Table Rocks Trail, listing more harbingers of the season as we went. Dozens of sap buckets hung from sugar maples where the trail headed into the woods from the farm road, another welcome sign. We each caught a drop of sap as it fell from a spile to taste its faint, but distinct, sweetness. After a few minutes walking on the Table Rocks Trail we came to brook running over stones. We paused here to turn over some of these stones, and were rewarded by two finds: a tiny mayfly larva, and several half-inch long tubes made of sand grains neatly fitted together, like micro-masonry. These tubes were the protective cases of caddisfly larvae, held together by silk from glands in their mouths. Peering into the end of one of these tubes, I could see just the head of this curious caterpillar-like aquatic insect.
The mid-19th century farmstead at Spring Farm remains in the form of a large red barn, farmhouse and Spring Farm Road, which we followed back to the parking area, enjoying views of the Catskills beyond the Rondout Valley to the west as we walked. These vistas are all versions, some glimpsed through still leafless trees, of the famous “million-dollar view” we had admired near the junction of the Table Rocks and Crag trails. But we had scarcely tapped the riches of this part of Mohonk Preserve for wandering and exploring. Other walks have brought me to the rocky battlement of Bonticou Crag, and around its base on the Northeast Trail, returning via the Cedar Trail, which traverses a small wetland and another lively brook, swollen now with snowmelt. Here I found the locally uncommon prickly ash, or “toothache tree,” with its paired thorns and fuzzy red buds, whose bark native people chewed or boiled to treat toothache.
