For a second time,* helping my son get volunteer hours for his Boy Scout advancement has paid off in an unexpected way. On a temperate December day we went to open a new trail in the Stone Farm Conservation Area, finding a new wild place right here in Brockton. As a bonus, the Wildlands Trust workers who organized the volunteers referred to a newer, adjoining property run by Audubon. We didn't have time to visit it that day, but I found it the next.
That first visit to the Brockton Audubon Preserve was late of a cloudy fall day, so there were few good pictures. But I returned this morning--a breezy January day in the 40s, with an inch of snow in many places still. Though the city traffic was never far away, the wind covered the sound of it nicely.
Access is good but the parking lot small on Pleasant Street just west and across from Albany Street.
That first visit to the Brockton Audubon Preserve was late of a cloudy fall day, so there were few good pictures. But I returned this morning--a breezy January day in the 40s, with an inch of snow in many places still. Though the city traffic was never far away, the wind covered the sound of it nicely.
Signs inform visitors that the Wildlands Trust cares for the land, and that ATVs,
and hunting, shooting and trapping are all prohibited.
I learned a thing or two myself from the signs: the rocks that so bedeviled settlers
continued to emerge after the land was cleared due to frost heaving; fieldstone
walls made only of larger stones showed the land was likely cleared for pasture
rather than crops, since smaller stones that would have stopped a plow weren't an issue.
Wildlands Trust people had been in recently to clear a big fallen white pine.
What would have broken this big tree off so high up?
Big glacial erratics like this one convinced 19th century scientist Louis Agassiz
that ice sheets once covered much of the northern hemisphere--only moving
ice could move rocks that large so far from their starting place. This one is granite.
Three boardwalks carry walkers across stretches of swamp. This one
is over a low area that will become a vernal pool important to frogs and salamanders.
Benches built of 2x4s could handle the weight of a weary rhino, should one come along.
At its southern end, the trail connects to another that follows the route of what I think is a 50-year-old sewer line. (I don't think "BSS" would refer to a water main.) An odd piece of art beside the trail.
Stump slowly being taken apart by little bracket fungi.
*Years ago, volunteering in Blue Hills Reservation introduced me to the AMC Ponkapoag Camp, where we have stayed for a week every August since.
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