Olentangy Parklands, Rambling
Many of these adventures come in batches. That’s to be expected, as each time I head out of state it’s an opportunity to pack in some activities. This particular adventure comes with the Labor Day 2022 Columbus Ohio batch. Nothing like a ramble to top off a weekend of kayaking and cycling, https://jollyroutes.com/floating-on-the-fourth/ and https://jollyroutes.com/hear-that-train-whistle-blow/.
Our first evening in Columbus my brother Morris took us on a walk around his neighborhood. He and his wife Zoey had recently bought their first home and they were eager to show us around. It didn’t take long before we arrived at Olentangy Parklands. It’s a long, narrow park along the banks of the Olentangy River.
To my pleasant surprise it was big and open enough for rambling. However, due to its pathways I had to revisit some of the age-old questions about rambling. If you walk on a trail, does it count as rambling? How about if you get off the beaten path, but everyone else is walking on the trails? These are not easy questions to answer.
Here is what Dictionary.com has to say. Rambling is “to wander around in a leisurely, aimless manner.” There you have it.
Like a deer in the headlights
That evening we walked along the pathways and were treated with a nature show. The Olentangy Parklands have a huge herd of deer. First, we saw a doe walking the path ahead of us. Later we saw a doe and a fawn eating grass in a field. A buck caused us to change our direction, and later that night we saw two huge bucks from the car. The funny thing is, it’s one of the only parts of Columbus where the deer swarm.
We walked through one area with tall, yellow wildflowers that loomed high above our heads. It was like walking through a tunnel, except instead of being trapped by rocks, it was flowers and bees. There were also plenty of trees, from oaks to maples to sycamores. Last, there were benches overlooking the river, which trundled along slowly through the forest.
A few drops of rain fell from the sky as we walked. Then, Morris showed us what looked to be a little library (those tiny wooden structures), except it housed frisbees instead of books. In addition, he said that if we rambled further down the Olentangy Parklands there’d be a disc golf course.
Olentangy Parklands, Disc Golf
Our final day in town we decided to head back down to the Olentangy River and do some disc golfing. This caused me to start thinking deeply again about the nature of rambling. Disc golf is the perfect rambling sport. Good courses will feature a bit of woods, some open spaces, and water hazards. In addition, although the course has a route, everybody takes a slightly different path from hole to hole.
I can think of several other disc golf courses that would count as rambling zones. Top on the list is Pine Nursery Park in Bend, OR. The course runs through a desert terrain, with views of the Cascades in the distance. Another is Elver Park in Madison, WI. It has tees atop a steep, grassy hill and others that cut through a dense pine forest.
We rambled down the Parklands to the Little Frisbee House where we borrowed two discs, then continued rambling to the course. This time we stayed off the path and did some real rambling, which basically just got our shoes really wet from the dewy grass. One of the main things we noticed on the ramble was that the river was flooded and raging from the last few days of thunderstorms.
The course began in the Parklands, wound through the athletic fields of the high school, and then returned to the Parklands again. It was mostly in open grass, with the exception of a few holes that cut close to the forest edge. I’ve got a bit more experience than Morris and beat him on most holes. My personal highlight was getting a par on the second to last hole.
Just what is rambling after all?
We then rambled our way back through the wet grass, so that my socks were now soaking. That’s the breaks with rambling. I shouldn’t have worn my tennis shoes. We returned our frisbees to the Little Frisbee House and then went to Raising Cane’s for lunch.
This brings me back to the big questions of this post. Just what is rambling? I have to say, rambling is not easily definable. Sometimes it’s on a path, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes there is an end destination, other times there’s not. Sometimes it’s out in the open, other times it cuts through the woods.
The best I can come up with is this. Rambling is what you do when you want something more adventurous than walking, more spontaneous than hiking, and inclusive to all abilities. The feet, eyes, and mind are free to ramble. Still confused? So am I.
