On a 70-degree day in January, about a dozen people gathered for the grand opening trail walk of the Smith Conservation Land. This land is a link in Sudbury Valley Trustees’ (SVT) High Ridge Initiative’s effort to conserve and protect natural resources along this glacial ridge, which runs from Great Elms in Harvard to Oak Hill in Littleton. At this intersection of contiguous conservation land, you may begin to visualize and experience how the chasms and ravines, eskers and hills, marshes and ponds connect throughout the ridge. You get a feel for the “lay of the land.”
We met SVT staff members Laura Mattei and Dan Stimson at a kiosk on Whitcomb Avenue in Littleton (Littleton County Road in Harvard) near the Harvard-Littleton line, which was apropos because the purchase of the 60-acre property was the result of a collaboration of the Harvard and Littleton land use boards and the SVT, as well as private donors.
Steve Smith, of the Smith family that owned the land previously, was in attendance on the walk, having traveled from his home in California. He recalled seeing dairy cows in pastures during the 1950s and ’60s on this now-forested land. Crisscrossing stone walls and some rusted farm implements, silent and dignified like sculptures, testify to its agricultural past.
Near the kiosk stands a magnificent old black walnut tree with broken branches and drooping limbs, its base littered with cracked-open nuts. Its sprawling shape is evidence of its growth on formerly cleared land that allowed its limbs to reach outward, uninhibited by other trees competing for space and sun. Black walnut trees are usually found around houses and, indeed, at one time the Smith family house stood near this specimen. The tree and the kiosk are at the intersection of the red, yellow, and blue trails.
We crossed Whitcomb Avenue on the red trail, to an area that was a plantation of non-native red pine, Norway spruce, and European tamarack that Smith recalled his family planted by hand to sell for Christmas trees, unintentionally creating a monoculture susceptible to disease and insects. Mattei and Stimson noted that these tall red pines, draped in curtains of Oriental bittersweet, are dying. Mattei pointed out that transition zones (the edges of fields and forests) tend to invite invasives. The pines and invasives will eventually be removed.
Beaver Brook Marsh
Beyond and between the tall pine tree trunks was a shimmering light that, as we proceeded on the trail, we saw was the broad Beaver Brook Marsh. We detected several great blue heron nests atop some dead trees on the far side of the marsh. Bobcats and coyote have been seen skirting the edge of this marsh.
Following the trail uphill, we saw, at a greater height, two white goats standing on a fallen red pine tree trunk and two children playing and running with them. After we ducked under the tree trunk, we rounded a corner, away from the path that led to the house where the goats and the children live, and walked along the side of a glacial esker. Streams that once flowed from under the terminal edge of glaciers pushed and shaped rocks and dirt into these serpentine hills called eskers.
The red trail led us back across the road to the black walnut tree, where we then followed yellow trail markers up the hill to a small meadow, passing a tree with claw marks and places on the trunk where the bark had been removed. Stimson said these signs were evidence of porcupine activity. Porcupines particularly love to eat hemlock pine needles and bark. The rock crevices, caves, and abandoned mining holes that are all over the Smith land provide dens. I had hoped to see a porcupine, since they don’t run away when spotted but sit still. One of the walkers said he once stood next to a porcupine in a tree for several minutes before he noticed it, practically at his shoulder.
Before diving into the forest, we looked back from atop this higher elevation, across the road and into the distance for a nice view of the shiny marsh. Then, turning our backs to the marsh, we passed through an opening in the stone wall and entered a shady pine forest, walking on a soft, thick carpet of dark orange pine needles.
Faultlines
Soon we saw the first of several frozen vernal pools frequented by breeding wood frogs and salamanders in the spring, and huge isolated boulders, known as glacial erratics. Here and there bedrock outcrops rose from the ground of pine needles.
The trail meandered a bit and then went over and along a ridge where open trenches exposed huge tilted blocks of stone. Stimson mentioned “faultlines” and said that limestone had been quarried here. We would see more excavations into the ridge as we walked along the yellow trail.
After going over the ridge, we descended on a narrow section of trail. From here we looked down on cattails and grasslike tussock sedge in Black Pond Ravine. Stimson said that ducks, geese, mergansers, and otters have been spotted there. Then after a generally uphill walk, we arrived at a worn area in the trail overlooking Black Pond, now white with snow and ice. There, we turned off the yellow trail at an acute angle and onto the blue trail. (If you continue on the yellow trail, a popular Harvard walking trail, you will follow the hilly ridge for a while longer and end up on Littleton County Road in Harvard in about .8 mile.)
After passing a giant boulder and picturesque rocky outcrops, we were walking on an old woods road lined on either side with stone walls of angular sharp-edged stones, rather than rounded fieldstones. We came upon an upright hollow tree trunk standing beside the wall, looking like something out of a fairy tale. Surely, someone must live there.
We emerged from the forest, into the meadow, and there was the black walnut tree.
About the walk
Difficulty: moderate
Distance: 1.5 miles
Map: www.svtweb.org/Smith
