At 9 am this morning, I joined East Quabbin Land Trust Executive Director Cynthia Henshaw at the entrance to the trust’s Patrill Hollow Preserve in Hardwick. Today is National Trails Day and since I enjoy hiking, I had decided I ought to do something to “help out with trails.”  That’s how I found myself “Walking the Walls” on this beautiful June morning. Our task, however, was not to maintain trails but to mark the property boundaries, which for the most part are delineated by old stone walls and rusted barbed-wire fences. So armed with small square signs, aluminum nails, a hammer, a tree branch lopper, a surveyor’s map, and a set of instructions on how to do it, we set out.

We decided to walk clockwise around the property, verifying the land surveyor’s iron rod markers, and nailing outward-facing signs into large living trees every 100 feet or so along the property boundaries.  I turned out to be bad at hammering nails — I couldn’t hit them dead-on at a foot or so above my head and so bent a fair number beyond usability — but I was okay with the clippers.  There are blue-blazed trails running through the property, but we were walking along the perimeter and often had to trample through thick undergrowth.  What with the poison ivy running rampant, the alarming profusion of invasives, the buzzing insects, the sneeze-inducing fern pollen, the ankle-twisting loose rocks, the unexpected water-logged patch of mud, the thorny shrubs scratching at my face and pulling at my clothes, it wasn’t exactly a stroll in the park.

But when we had circled the entire property and returned to our cars at the pull-out on Patrill Hollow Road, I was surprised to note that it was almost 1 pm.  I had been so absorbed in what we were doing that I wasn’t aware of time passing.  After we actually accomplished our task, I felt satisfied that we had done a good job, and I was none the worse for wear.  Due to my previous encounter with ticks in this area, I had sprayed my clothes with Sawyer Insect Repellent last night, which I think worked fairly well.  Moreover, the day was sunny but not oppressively hot, and most of the time we worked in the shade of the trees — some of them outstanding specimens, like a magnificent beech and ancient oak.  I’d like to return to hike here soon!

As soon as I got back home, I hurried to Hannaford Supermarket to make a donation to the tornado victims in Brimfield and Monson; later in the afternoon, I slept for a bit (it seems that four hours of work simply exhausted me).  Around 4:30, I forced myself to get up and head for Worcester.  I’ve volunteered on and off for the Greater Worcester Land Trust and thus had been invited to a hike and cook-out at the God’s Acre conservation restriction, adjacent to Goddard Memorial Drive and now owned by the Worcester Airport Commission.

I had hiked in this area a long time ago and had with me an old schematic map I pulled out of my files, so I figured I knew where I was going.  Well, apparently new sub-divisions have sprung up over the past decade, and I drove in circles for a while before I decided to park on Paris Avenue, in what looked like a cul-de-sac.  No sooner had I emerged from my car than a homeowner approached me and said that neighbors would assume I’m a drug-dealer, call the cops, and have my car towed.  He advised me to leave the neighborhood immediately.  Okay then, I’ll be on my way.  (He did give me good instructions on where I could safely park.)

I ended up off Swan Avenue, a short walk to where the GWLT friends and supporters had gathered.  The famous, or infamous, Deed Rock was mere steps away:

In 1840, Solomon Parsons Jr, a follower of the Adventist preacher William Miller, bought ten acres in the wilds of western Worcester and deeded the parcel to God.  I took a close-up of the opening lines:

You can see the words “Know All Men” and “Worcester” and “Mass.” We were given a complete transcription of the deed, and of course, I looked for it on the web. Google sent me to this page, which provides quite a bit of detail about the fascinating history of these ten acres.

GWLT Executive Director Colin Novick welcomed the gathering:

By this time I was hungry and out of sorts, but there was plenty of food, and after I chowed down on a veggie burger, macaroni salad, and an oatmeal cookie for desert, I was feeling much better:

The moral of this story is “Follow Directions”:  if I had bothered to actually read the invitation to enjoy National Trails Day with GWLT, I would have realized that the Trust had arranged parking for us off Goddard Memorial Drive and also provided an up-to-date map of the site, which includes the East-West Trail terminating at Logan Field on Mill Street, and the Tetasset Hills Trail paralleling the talus rock slope and running through the heart of the property.