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West Rock Ridge State Park and the Pursuit of the Regicides, November/December 2025
View of Lake Watrous from the Regicides Trail at West Rock Ridge State Park The path that took me to the Regicides Trail is a quintessential example of my personal motto “Seeking Serendipity”, so please indulge me to share what happened. The Oxford dictionary defines serendipity as “the occurrence and…
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The Metacomet Trail and King Philip’s War, Sept/Oct 2025
The view from King Philip Mountain along the Metacomet Trail at Talcott Mountain State Park My introduction to King Philip came in the fall of 2022 while hiking the Metacomet Trail at Talcott Mountain State Park. I noticed a landmark on AllTrails called “King Philip’s Cave”. That sounded interesting! The…
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The Connecticut River, Part 1 – The History of American Shad, July/August 2025
(display at the Haddam Shad Museum) ALOSA SAPIDISSIMA. That’s Latin for American Shad, which translates roughly to “most delicious shad”. Despite being named Connecticut’s State Fish in 2003, I knew almost nothing about shad. When I learned that the Haddam Historical Society (HHS) was planning a grand re-opening of the…
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Repurposed Places, May/June 2025
We often think of places as timeless or static, but the truth is they are constantly changing. At one time the woods near me were abuzz with industry: colliers making charcoal, folks harvesting witch hazel, farmers clearing land for pastures or crops. Tom Wessels, who wrote the book “Reading the…
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Orienteering, March/April, 2025
Grab a compass and a map with detailed terrain features and pre-plotted points and head off into a local woods near you to find small placards nailed to trees, usually well off the trail. Sounds like a fun treasure hunt, doesn’t it? While hiking in Madison’s Rockland Preserve in January…
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Imperiled Pitch Pines, January/February 2025
Over the years I have taken joy in seeing the gnarled pitch pines growing on the ledges and knobby balds of our Connecticut hills. The sight usually meant I had reached a high point and would soon descend the other side.
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New Land Trust Trails, December 2024
When I began my Trail Talk column a few years ago I made a concerted effort to seek out new trails, and one of the happy surprises was the abundance of diverse, well-planned and maintained trails courtesy of local Land Trusts. Land Trusts are non-profit organizations dedicated to land conservation…
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Mill Villes – Hazardville, November 2024
Scantic River State Park, Enfield, Somers and East Windsor. I first learned of Hazardville, CT circuitously – while touring Fort Macon State Park in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina last September. Fort Macon was built in the aftermath of the War of 1812 as part of the Federal Government’s Third System…
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Navigating Unmarked Trails, October 2024
OFF THE BEATEN PATH. We often use this phrase when we are seeking an experience for ourselves that separates us from the mainstream. While we usually mean it figuratively, I like to literally go off the beaten path. In hiking, we use the term bushwhacking, which means hiking off-trail where…
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Tree ID Trails, September 2024
“To listen to trees, nature’s great connectors, is therefore to learn how to inhabit the relationships that give life its source, substance, and beauty.” David George Haskell, from his book, The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors. As a nature enthusiast, it should come as no surprise that…
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