Overview: Located in Orange County, near the Duke Forest, Johnston Mill Nature Preserve is a Triangle Land Conservancy property that offers a quick getaway from the urban grind of Durham and Chapel Hill. The preserve consists of two trails—Robin’s Trail (1.5 miles one-way) and the Bluff Trail (1 mile loop) on the TLC map—though they appear under different names once on the property. Robin’s Trail runs along New Hope Creek and its tributary, Old Field Creek, through bottomland forest and old mill remains. The Bluff Trail explores mature hardwood forest on higher ground.
Directions: There are two parking areas at Johnston Mill Nature Preserve, connected by Robin’s Trail, located off Turkey Farm Road and Mt. Sinai Road, respectively. According to the TLC Johnston Mill Nature Preserve brochure, you can reach the Turkey Farm Road lot by taking “NC 86 north from I-40 (exit 266) 0.1 mile. Turn right on Whitfield Road and follow it for 1 mile. Turn left on Turkey Farm Road and follow that road for 1.2 miles. The parking area is on the left.” You can reach the Mt. Sinai Road lot by taking “NC 86 north from I-40 (exit 266) 1.8 miles. Turn right on Mt. Sinai Road and follow it for 1.1 miles. The parking area is on the right just before the New Hope Creek bridge.”
My observations & ponderings: As my husband and I explored Johnston Mill Nature Preserve from the Turkey Farm Road lot on a quiet morning in the middle of the week, we were most powerfully struck by two things: (1) the amazing power of natural disturbance, and (2) the surprising density of fascinating natural phenomena that appears when one takes the time to look and listen.
The effects of natural disturbance are quite evident at Johnston Mill. As we walked along New Hope Creek, it was easy to see fresh sediments deposited as far as twenty feet from the creek by recent flooding. Although the extent of flooding is perhaps exacerbated by local land use change, the process itself is a natural one—one that replenishes the nutrients of North Carolina’s bottomland forests. In places, you can see this story written directly onto the landscape along the creek’s edge.
Other forms of disturbance are evident here too: hurricanes and ice storms. Their impacts show up in the blowdowns along the Bluff Trail, which was affected by Hurricane Fran in 1996 and a severe ice storm in late 2002. The evidence of nature’s power at Johnston Mill serves as a humbling reminder of both our responsibility to care for the earth and our vulnerability to natural phenomena.
Taking a slow walk—I’m over six months pregnant, so all our walks are slow now—gave us the opportunity to notice organisms that often go ignored. With recent rains and cool weather, mushrooms have erupted throughout the bottomlands. We were lucky to find a beautiful crown coral (Clavicorona spp.) at Johnston Mill. Fortunately, a group of mycologists and mycophiles recently found crown coral (Clavicorona pyxidata) nearby in the Duke Forest, making identification easier.
Beyond mushrooms and ornate bryophytes, we were also greeted by an abundance of insects, still active despite the cooler weather. Butterflies and moths fluttered past as mosquitoes hovered around our heads and crickets called in the distance. At one point, a katydid—startlingly present up close—pulled our attention back into the small-scale world that hums along under the canopy.
That flurry of insect activity drew our attention toward the wildflowers at Johnston Mill. Some flowers, like the small red morning glory (Ipomoea coccinea), though weedy, still managed to awe us with their vibrance. Others served as a quieter seasonal marker: downy rattlesnake plantain (Goodyera pubescens), which blooms in summer and was now reduced to basal leaves, and crane-fly orchid (Tipularia discolor), whose winter leaves were only beginning to emerge—an unignorable reminder that summer was over and autumn had arrived.
Sense of Place 