Bay Circuit Trail: Terra Incognita Part 1. Easton MA.

Hockomock Swamp.

The southern stretch of the Bay Circuit Trail between Sharon and the coast may well be the most mysterious and an acquaintance who is far more familiar with the trail system than I describes it as "terra incognita"

I'll use the directional flow indicated by the Bay Circuit Alliance and begin with Easton. Sharon has an array of quality on line resources to alert the interested to its participation.   

Borderland State Park is an outstanding place to start. A walk along the Bay Circuit Trail from its northern entry point to its exit point in Easton is a striking encounter with transition.

Borderland State Park Easton Section.

In addition to crossing such legal jurisdictional boundaries as town and county lines, you are also walking a geology cross section. You begin at the near back side of a moraine edge with all the stark and evocative remains of fast glacial melt, exposed ledge, substantial and long boulder trains and an overall landscape little changed since the glacier left beyond a wonderful adornment of mixed forest and wetland.

Bay Circuit Trail: Concord and the Spirit of Thoreau.

Henry and I go way back. I like to think I appreciate him as he actually was rather than as the wretched plaster saint he's become.

"I'd rather sit on a pumpkin and have it to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion", is one quote that comes to mind when I end up stuck on the T at rush hour. Henry is like a founding mentor for my American appreciation of this living world and his works form the footing for it. 

The Bay Circuit Trail section of Thoreau country might begin at Concord Center. I usually start at the train station. The first noteworthy open space parcel is the Hapgood Wright Town Forest. 

Bay Circuit Trail: The Common Wealth of Town Forests.

Town Forests make up a significant part of the Bay Circuit Trail. I've been poring through web searches trying to get a sense of their history and origins here as they appear to be a fairly unique thing.

Veterans Memorial Forest Hanson MA

My best guess is that they are the essence of the Commonwealth design in a time when wood was a core element of the colonial culture as a material and as a fuel. Towns set these tracts aside to provide fuel in winter for town facilities and to provide lumber for town building projects.

Eventually, other fuels replaced wood and lumbering operations were scaled up to the point where dimension stock market lumber was a better value than milling your own. The things entered a long phase of benign neglect until recently revived as the principle open space property a town is likely to have. 

Despite this, they are still mysterious as there isn't any directory of them such as you would find for Commonwealth DCR properties, Federal things like National Wildlife Refuges or the many privately owned properties such as Audubon Sanctuaries or Trustees Reservations.