Koenig Trail

Every blue diamond you’ve followed all day on the Wildwood — every little navigational nail-head telling you you’re still on the trail — traces back to one person, and this quarter-mile of dirt carries her name. The Koenig Trail honors Fran Koenig (1912–2008), the measuring-wheel surveyor who devised Forest Park’s blue-diamond marker system. It’s a lovely bit of trivia to walk on: the woman who made sure nobody got lost out here gets, fittingly, one of the park’s easier trails to miss.

Because the trail itself is a workhorse — a steep connector dropping off the Wildwood Trail near its 14¼-mile post, crossing Leif Erikson Drive, and continuing down toward the Maple Trail near Saltzman Creek. Figure about 210 feet of descent packed into a quarter-mile, most of it in a steep upper pitch before the grade relaxes near the bottom. Take it to drop from the ridge to Leif Erikson without backtracking; don’t come looking for it as a destination.

What it does give you, in season, is thimbleberry — dense stands of it lining the tread, broad maple-shaped leaves crowding the trail edges the whole way down.

Forest Skill Learn the thimbleberry. Those big, soft, five-lobed leaves — no thorns, unlike its blackberry cousins — hide a berry that ripens deep red in mid-to-late summer. It’s more delicate than a raspberry and falls apart the instant you pick it, which is exactly why you’ll almost never see it in a store and will taste it only if you’re standing right here.

It’s foot-only and brief — a runner folding a north-slope loop will be across Leif Erikson and gone before the climb registers. But it’s worth knowing whose name is on the sign, and worth remembering the next time a blue diamond keeps you honest at a junction.