The Western Greenway mentioned in the last post is just inside route 128, Boston's Beltway. Just outside, a little further west, is the town of Lincoln Massachusetts. Lincoln is locally famous for having a lot of green. With population dedicated to maintaining the rural nature of the town, it has between 40 and 50% of its area protected as open space. It must be full of greenways, and a great connect, you'd have thought.
However, it is difficult to find out about it online. To get a trail map, you have to go to the town offices, and buy the real thing on paper. I sensed a certain nervousness about being open about the trails. Was it worry about hoards of abusers arriving in town -- dog walkers with ten dogs each? For what ever the reason, the trail map is not in the public domain. That said, it is a nice map. It has contours, so you get a feel for the terrain. It has big clear lettering, and big thick red trails, useful for those with imperfect sight or caught in the twilight. Its single-sided 75cm square of reasonable paper folds into smaller squares which fit in a backpack but not a small pocket. A good three dollar's worth.
To its further credit, it also even shows trails outside the town of Lincoln itself: the town boundary is not the edge of the world. You can see where the connections go on. A map made with an awareness of being part of a larger system.
Below is a chuck of Lincoln as it is on the openstreetmap. Fairhaven hill and Walden Pond are actually in Concord. The trails in at start of 2010 are not at all complete, most of them entered by your correspondent in his travels. You can still see a lot of material for some long-distance routes.
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You could start for example at DeCordova museum parking lot on Flint's Pond, go around Flint's Pond, over Pine Hill, and around Walden Pond. The other side of the railroad, a system of trails leads down to the Sudbury River along the delightful Fairhaven Trail, and continue through to the Mt Misery area.
A wintry Sudbury River from Knacker's Point, Mt Misery.
(The railroad line is not very busy but be careful with children or animals near it. A warden at Walden mentioned he thought crossing any open railroad was a federal offence.)
That would be fair morning's walk, so a waiting friend or taxi would be an alternative to the hike back. Each of the sections, though, have good loop trails and make good separate shorter walks. The circuit of Flint's Pond is complete except for a short section at the south where the road must be followed. Pine hill has a footpath over the top and a bike trail around. Walden Pond is of course surrounded by trails. To the west of the railroad, the Wright Woods of Concord are full of trails: a possible start being a small parking lot just off Concord's Sudbury Road. Mt Misery is an interesting mixture of terrains, with lots of trails.
If you look up the history of even one small parcel of this vast quilt of green spaces, you find each one has been the subject over the decades of huge generosity by donors, and huge effort by organizers and volunteer maintainers. It is a luxury for us now to flit from one to the other as they connect the green. The pieces above are only a part of the network of green around Lincoln which is well worth exploring. But don't tell anyone...
PS: While you are getting a map, you can also pick up a copy of:
Lincoln Land Conservation Trust, A Guide to the Conservation Land in Lincoln, ISBN -9634675-1-4. Recommended.
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