Kielhorn Meadow Trail

Almost everything out in Forest Park’s far north makes you earn it — Fire Lane 15 drops you into the Miller Creek gully and charges the full toll back up on the return. The Kielhorn Meadow Trail is the exception. It’s a short, nearly level gravel spur, and for once the effort isn’t the point: the destination is. That destination is Kielhorn Meadow, a genuine open clearing in a forest that otherwise keeps its ground closed and shaded.

For the curious naturalist, that clearing is the draw. Open ground this far north, ringed by second-growth timber and well away from foot traffic, is exactly where the park’s larger animals concentrate — and this is one of the better places in the whole forest to actually see them. Come for the meadow, not the walk to it. The walk takes minutes; the meadow rewards patience.

Listen For This corner of the Miller Creek watershed is prime range for deer and the occasional elk, for coyote and even bobcat, and the edges of the clearing are worked by the Pileated Woodpecker — the crow-sized one with the flaming-red crest and a call like a laugh echoing through the snags. Move slowly onto the spur, keep quiet at the meadow’s edge where clearing meets forest, and give dawn or dusk the best odds. You are far likelier to meet something large here than almost anywhere else in the park.

The spur itself is unremarkable, and that’s fine — it’s a threshold, not a walk. It branches off Fire Lane 15, which is how nearly everyone gets here (the steep gully descent and the powerline views belong to that route, not this one), and it dead-ends at the meadow with no outlet to Skyline. So stand a while at the edge before you turn back for the fire lane. Don’t scan for anything right away. Just hold still and let the clearing do the work — it’s what you came all this way for.