[Journal entry for April 21, 2018; Maple Park Conservation Area, Mansfield Massachusetts] Dallas and I are in Mansfield for the NEFFA folk dance festival, which is held at the high school on East Street. In the afternoon, I take a few hours off from dancing and walk to the Maple Park Conservation Area. It’s a wooded area through which flows the Canoe River. I first walk to the canoe launch, which is off of Pratt Street just west of Franklin Street. The launch is by a low dam that impounds the river, creating a small pond fringed with bushes, beside uplands of White Pine. I follow an informal trail that parallels the east bank of the river. The woods are a couple of weeks behind New York, but some of the trees and bushes are leafing out and flowering, and the Skunk Cabbage is up. I pass numerous patches of Princess Pine, a club moss. The hiking is fine beneath the pines but is much more tedious in the lowlands, for the ground is very muddy and occasionally flooded. I manage to make my way to a point where I have a good view of the river above the pond, but further progress is impossible, owing to the tangle of bushes (including the thorny Common Greenbrier).

I cut through St Mary’s Cemetery to Franklin Street and take it north, and then headed west on Maple Street, which crosses Maple Park. I make a short excursion north of the road to the dam of a small impoundment, this one with some houses on its shore. I then made another longer excursion south of the road, following the Canoe River for about a quarter mile, until it entered a broad wetland, full of tangled bushes. The river is narrow – perhaps ten feet across – and shallow, but is running strongly, with a few small cataracts.

On my walk back to the High School, I stopped at Cousins Pizza, on Pratt Street just east of Franklin Street, for a pepper and sausage pie.

About two and a half hours of hiking.

[Journal entry for April 22, 2018; Great Woods Conservation Area, Mansfield, Massachusetts] Once again, I take a break from dancing and drive to the Oak Street entrance of the Great Woods Conservation Area, Mansfield Massachusetts. This tract of wooded land is larger than Maple Park, which I visited yesterday, but though full of streams lacks Maple Park’s large impoundments. The parking lot is adjacent to a large hay field. I walk through the field and picked up the Scott/Goyea Trail (blazed in orange), near a small pond. The trail takes me through mixed woods of White Pine and hardwood. The land is crossed by many rock walls, some with stones so large that farmers must have needed machinery to move them. I take a short detour into an open, sunny field beside the trail. Pine samplings are starting to take it over; in a decade or so it will be woods again. I intersect with the Schoolmaster’s Bride Trail (SB, blazed in red) and take it back to the parking area. An old rusting piece of farm equipment lies abandoned by the edge of the field. I then retraced my path, taking the SM Trail to the Codding Farm Trail (blazed in green). I pay a quick visit to the site of Codding Farm. Only a few stone foundations remain. Unfortunately, several of the White Pines have been toppled by the wind and their fallen trunks obscure most of the ruins.

I encountered a few small lavender butterflies.

I continue on the Codding Farm Trail, passing a power line right-of-way, and connect with the Chase Trail (blazed in white). It takes me through a damp section of the woods, with many small rivulets and lots of standing water. The trail, itself, is flooded in many places. I guess the flooding is a common occurrence, for well-established detours provided easy ways around the wettest spots. The trail crosses a small brook via a puncheon and eventually rejoins the SB Trail. I take the SB trail to its terminus at Great Brook. The brook doesn’t really deserve its name, for its shallow and only about six feet across, yet it is pretty enough. I then headed back, taking SB all the way to the parking lot. It crosses what the map says is Blueberry Brook via a long puncheon. I cannot spot the brook’s channel; the whole area was flooded swampland. I make one last detour, to Hodges Brook (which runs along the western edge of the Conservation Area) just before I returned to the hay field, following a tributary that crosses the SB Trail. It is the widest and deepest of the streams that I visited today, and has steep banks and overhanging trees.

I stopped at Great Woods Pizza, on Elm Street at Coach Road, for a pepper and sausage pie.

About two hours of hiking.