[Journal entry for September 8, 2013; Lily Pond, Harriman State Park, New York]. I the late afternoon, I walk in Harriman State Park, visiting Lily Pond and a wetland located across the road from it. I Route 106 from the hamlet of Willow Grove, across the park, to an informal parking lot near the intersection of Lake Welch Drive and Seven Lakes Drive. This route takes me across a causeway that crosses an arm of Lake Welch, giving me a nice view of the fall foliage along the lakeshore. Most of the woods are still summer green, but the blueberry bushes along the lakeshore, some vines and a few trees are fall red.

I take an unblazed trail from the parking lot. It follows Old Turnpike, a woods road that roughly parallels Lake Welch Drive. It is grassy and pleasant, with many overhanging trees, some in their fall colors. The land drops off into a steep ravine on the southeast side of the trail. This, I suppose, is the outflow of Lily Pond. I pass several large boulders; one is at least ten feet in diameter. The trail leads to the southern end of Lily Pond, a small, elongated body of water perhaps a fifth of a mile in its longest dimension. The southern end of the pond is a marsh, with a beaver dam at the outflow. I am expecting to see a human-made dam, but none is evident. Perhaps a low earth-fill dam is buried below the beaver-laid debris. I walk along the lake shore, admiring the many lily pads growing in the water, the amber hummocks of grass along the shoreline, and the blueberry bushes at the forest’s edge. Like at Lake Welsh, the surrounding woods are still mostly green, but with some hints of fall colors. I pick up Old Turnpike again at the north end of the Pond, passing a meadow with some nice fall foliage.

I cut over to Lake Welsh Drive and walk back along it, admiring the many wildflowers, some still in bloom but others gone to seed, growing on the road’s edge. I make one detour, bushwhacking down to a wetland set well below the road level, on the opposite side of the road from Lily Pond. I wet my feet finding a vantage from which I can see the wetland, for its edges are thick with bushes, some growing out into the shallow water. The wetland is fully of uniformly knee-high grass and has a few inches of standing water. Fall red blueberry bushes grow along its margins.

About forty minutes.