Last Saturday, April 8, was a beautiful spring day for the walk around Bowers Springs/Bare Hill Wildlife Sanctuary, sponsored by the Land Stewardship Subcommittee (LSS) of the Harvard Conservation Commission. The walk was led by Wendy Sisson, Brian McClain, and Jim Gorss.
Our group of 15 people and a little terrier gathered on the Mary Abbot Trail at the brown sign indicating the entrance to the Bare Hill Wildlife Sanctuary, which is on the west side of Bolton Road. Our walk occurred almost to the day 110 years after Frank Abbot and his sister, Mary Abbot, became the proprietors of Bare Hill Farms. Next to the parking lot is a field where the Abbots tended to one of their orchards and just beyond that was their residence at 204 Bolton Road.
The two grew, sold, and shipped bushels of apples. When they bought the property, the orchards produced 23 varieties of apples. Over time, Frank extended that number to 31. They also supplied eggs to a customer in Boston, a local restaurant, and to what is now the General Store.
They were also active in the civic life of the town. Mary started the Garden Club in 1927, and both were involved in town clubs and organizations such as the Warner Free Lecture series and the Harvard Grange. Frank Abbot’s donation of their land to the town of Harvard in 1963 was the beginning of Harvard’s land acquisition program for conservation and a fitting memorial to their dedication to the town.
Bittersweet: A growing problem
Not far from the trailhead, Sisson pointed out the location of one of the LSS’s major battles with invasive bittersweet. In this spot, massive and numerous vines were attempting to bring down large pine trees and would do so if the vines weren’t continually cut down.
The group commented on the fact that bittersweet has become a much more serious problem recently, because of soil disturbances from snow plows and development. Bittersweet is practically impossible to eradicate, so the best that can be achieved is “creating demilitarized zones” and keeping it out of the trails. Someone commented that it is attractive with its pretty orange flowers and curly vines, and then someone else jokingly said that Mary Abbot herself may have made wreaths out of it, as was popularly done until a few years ago.
We stepped over a rapidly running brook, walked up a little hill, and emerged into an open hilltop field under an expansive sky, where we learned that orchards flourish with care on such hilltops, possibly due to the air circulation. In late winter and early spring, water flows downhill over the squishy ground, past a single old apple tree, to the wetlands beyond a stone wall. This field is prime pollinator habitat, a strong area of interest to the LSS.
Much of the appeal of this conservation land is its diversity of habitat. After walking across the open fields, we entered an old mixed wood forest of large pines and oaks. Here, the forest trail was shady, dirt-packed, and studded with rocks, in contrast to the previous sunny, soft, and grassy trails of the old hilltop orchards.
Three watersheds
Walking gradually downhill from the height of land, we reached the spot where a map of the Bowers Brook watershed was nailed to a tree. (The map can be viewed on the Conservation Commission’s website.) A brief discussion about Harvard’s unique position at the intersection of three watersheds ensued after a question was posed about what exactly is a watershed (a drainage basin where waters of various origins collect).
Purple/magenta skunk cabbage was emerging in the wetlands, and glints of shimmering light off water hinted that we were near the headwaters of Bowers Brook that flow from a pond in Bolton’s Vaughn Hill Conservation land, through Bare Hill Pond, to Harvard’s farthest borders in Ayer. Boardwalks and a little rock-hopping through mud and standing water enabled our passage through some particularly wet and muddy areas.
Turtles seen sunning on a log at Bowers Spring.(Courtesy photo)
After we crossed into Bolton, we arrived at the site of two ponds, created as gravel pits but now filled with water. The trees along the edge were gnawed by beavers, and beaver lodges rose from the water. Beaver sightings are common at dusk and dawn. Turtles were sunning themselves on little rocky islands and on fallen tree trunks. Dogs were swimming and chasing thrown sticks.
A rather faint trail off the path around the ponds would wend through a swampy habitat to Vaughn Hills Conservation land, a longer diversion than we were prepared to do.
Back to the trailhead
So we continued on a loop trail back to the Mary Abbot trailhead. With a number of trails weaving through this land, it’s easy to get a little confused but impossible to get hopelessly lost.
On the way back up the hill and through the forest, McClain pointed to three gray, straight lengths of wood, about 20 feet long, intentionally propped against a tree, as though waiting for someone to come back and get them. The wood was dried out, appearing to be composed of long muscle-like tendons on the outside but hollow inside, characteristics of decayed, blight-affected American chestnut tree trunks. A little farther along the trail were other large dried-out pieces of American chestnut wood, one resembling a large piece of bark.
McClain pointed out stump sprouts growing from chestnuts and other trees that have died or been cut down. As the caretaker of the American chestnut nursery orchard on the nearby Powell land, he was particularly alert to the American chestnut saplings along the trail. Of course, all will succumb to disease, but as McClain said, “It’s still exciting to find them.”
Among the chestnut saplings was one large enough that, McClain thought, might blossom if it could get enough sun through the canopy.
Further reading
- Carlene Phillips’ three-part series about Mary and Frank Abbot appeared in the Harvard Press March 11, March 18, and April 1, 2022. Mary Abbot’s diaries from 1913 to 1952, part of the Harvard Historical Society’s collection, were the source for the series.
- Marty Green’s article, “New signs and online map highlight Harvard’s waterways and wetlands,” about the Bowers Brook signage appeared in the Harvard Press Dec. 9, 2022.
- Marty Green’s article, “From sapling to forest: Harvard joins effort to combat an older epidemic,” about McClain’s establishment of an American chestnut nursery on the Powell land, appeared in the Harvard Press April 2, 2020.
- “Harvard Trails,” sixth edition, a publication of the Harvard Conservation Trust, offers beautifully drawn maps, including a map of the Bowers Springs/Bare Hill Wildlife Sanctuary.
