Up The Mountain - sign of many tears

 The Ottawa Valley sits in a fault valley known as the Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben. This occurs when a portion of land falls after a significant earth quake many thousands or millions of years ago. Surrounding these ancient valleys we have ancient mountain ranges. The one near me is call the Geripy Range. The one across the Ottawa River (in the province of Quebec) is called The Gatineau. Along the old Opeongo Colonization Road are the Opeongo Hills. 

My brother in law moved up to Opeongo Road last winter. His livingroom window looks right out toward the most spectacularly wooded peak.

We popped by for a brief visit with them last weekend, then went exploring "up the mountain".

We turned on to Newfoundout Road. In the mid to late 1800s, thirteen families were given free land grants on this horror of a hill. By 1948, the town was abandoned. Just driving up this crazy road was a bone shaking experience. It twists and turns, all the while going up and up. Along the way, on the north side of the road, we saw some lovely old stone and split rail fences. There were several open fields where I expect cattle were kept. There were some derelict log structures, but no sign of life. 

These stone fences were as tall as me.  The strength of them is illustrated by the tree fallen over, which didn't disturb the fence at all!

Apparently the farmer who keeps his cattle in the fields keeps the road graded. It looks like there has been a fairly recent dump of fresh gravel. It's still quite loose and a bit hard to drive UP on.

My little point and shoot camera doesn't really capture the steep road going up. This shot is the road coming back down toward Highway 60/Opeongo Rd. 

The Ottawa Valley forests have been raped and pillaged for the lumber for about two hundred years.  There is very little old growth timber anywhere.  (Later this fall I will be writing about a trip to Shaw Woods Education Center that will tell another story.) What grabbed me about our trip up this old mountain were the outcrops of old growth trees! I guess it was just too difficult to get some of it out, or they were saved from harvest by the homesteaders as shade trees.  There were very few pine trees of any kind, but lots of hardwoods of all ages from five year old saplings to the old growth giants. We took this photo of an ancient ash tree - bigger than any ash tree I've every seen before. Sadly there were quite a few dead ash but this fellow was still very vigorous.  Emerald Ash borer is chomping right along.

Seeing the old stone fences and the lay of the land really made us realize what a hard life these folks had up here in the Ottawa Valley hills. We could imagine what a time the original surveyors had forging roads and cutting and plotting lots for settlers.  I'm sure there were many tears shed over these hills.