"The Lake Trail was covered with trees."
That's how Park Ranger Brandon Jarratt described the scene at Radnor Lake in the days after a late-January ice storm swept through Middle Tennessee. If you live in Oak Hill and treat the park as your regular loop, you already know the broad strokes: the storm hit, the gates closed, and everyone waited to see what was left. What most regulars haven't clocked yet is that the park didn't just clean up and reopen. It used the damage to finish something it had been slowly building toward for a decade, and the loop you're about to walk this fall isn't the same one you left in January.
Two Months Faster Than Anyone Promised
Winter Storm Fern hit the region in late January 2026, knocking out power to more than 200,000 homes across Middle Tennessee and turning Radnor Lake State Park into something close to unrecognizable. Seven of the park's 7.75 miles of trail were blocked by downed trees, and Park Manager Steve Ward's team made an early call: the damage was bad enough that the park might not reopen until May 1.
It reopened March 2, nearly 60 days ahead of that estimate. The difference came down to volunteers. More than 300 people worked alongside park staff over nine days, clearing debris, hauling timber, and rehabilitating sections like the South Lake Trail. Rangers handled the more dangerous work themselves. On Ganier Ridge, Ranger Paul Schauer and a colleague found two large trees tangled together and leaning over the trail, and ended up cutting down a third just to bring the first two down safely.
Not everything the storm touched was a loss.
"As much devastation as we've had, as hard as it is to look at some of the natural areas, our bald eagle nest survived the ice storm," Ward said. The nest had already produced new eggs by the time the park reopened.
The Real Story Isn't the Storm, It's What Happens to the Cleared Ground
Here's the part that changes how you should think about your next walk. Radnor Lake has spent close to ten years quietly converting old farmland back into native grassland, a project that had already reached 154 acres by 2025, anchored by the Hall Farm Tract near the Walter Criley Visitor Center. The goal was habitat for ground-nesting birds, butterflies, and pollinators on land that used to be part of a 130-acre farm the park acquired back in 1979.
After the ice storm, park officials didn't try to simply replant the canopy that came down. They announced plans to convert some of the hardest-hit areas into native grasslands this summer, folding storm-cleared ground directly into a restoration project that was already underway. That's a meaningfully different outcome than a park quietly regrowing back to how it looked before. Sections that were shaded forest are becoming open, sunlit grassland by design, not by accident, which means the change on those stretches of trail isn't temporary storm scarring. It's the park's actual plan for what comes next.
If you haven't walked the loop since spring, a few things will look different:
- Ganier Ridge reads noticeably more open in stretches where dense canopy used to block the sky, a change trail regulars have already started noting in their own reports since the storm.
- Areas near the visitor center that were once forest floor are now part of the park's most recently expanded grassland planting.
- Sun exposure and midday heat on previously shaded sections will be higher than you remember, particularly through late summer.
Time a Walk Around the Monarchs
The grassland expansion isn't just aesthetic. The seed mix the park uses, developed with Roundstone Native Seed in Kentucky, puts milkweed at the top of a 15-species list specifically because it's the plant monarch butterflies need to breed. August and September are the park's best window for viewing them, and staff lead late-summer wildflower hikes during exactly this stretch to point out what's blooming and why.
The single best vantage point is the paved path connecting Otter Creek Road to the Barbara J. Mapp Aviary Education Center: from the visitor center, turn left onto Otter Creek Road, then right onto Hall Drive, and follow the signs. It's flat, it's accessible, and right now it's one of the more active pollinator corridors in the park. The Aviary Education Center itself is open Wednesdays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., worth building a Saturday morning around if you haven't been inside in a while.
One Night Worth Building a Weekend Around
If you want a reason to get out of the house rather than just onto the trail, the nonprofit Friends of Radnor Lake is holding its 7th annual Radnor in the Round this year at Vanderbilt's Dyer Observatory. The evening is hosted by Will Robinson with Phil Vassar and friends, and it benefits the same organization that helped coordinate hundreds of volunteers during the storm cleanup. Car passes for the event went on sale August 25. If you've been meaning to support the group responsible for getting your favorite trail reopened two months early, this is the moment.
What This Actually Means for Your Next Walk
None of this is a story about a park that got damaged and is slowly getting back to normal. It's a story about a park that used its worst month in over a decade to accelerate a plan a decade in the making. The canopy on parts of Ganier Ridge isn't coming back the way it was, and that's intentional. The bald eagles are still nesting. The monarchs have more milkweed to work with than they did last August. And the next time you park at the east lot or the Otter Creek Road entrance, you're not walking into recovery. You're walking into what the park actually wanted to become.
If watching Radnor Lake's transformation this year has you thinking more seriously about what it would mean to live even closer to it, that's a conversation worth having. Suzanne McMillan works with buyers and sellers across Oak Hill and the neighborhoods that border Radnor Lake, and can walk you through what's currently available near the park, from move-in ready properties to homes that might need a little vision. Reach out when you're ready to talk about what's next.
