May 5, 2020 - Hapgood Wright Town Forest

May 05, 2020

Welcome to Susan's Bay Circuit Diary! This blog follows my adventures with my dog Sulu hiking the Bay Circuit Trail. Feel free to subscribe (see the little "subscribe" oval above). The rest of the past posts can be found using the little menu on the left. If you are curious how this all started, go here.

I was saving today’s destination, Concord’s Hapgood Wright Town Forest, for a weekday because it’s mobbed on weekends during the pandemic. Concord has banned off leash dogs recently during the pandemic, although I didn’t see anyone paying attention. However the trails were busy enough that Sulu got very little off-lead time and was mostly on the long line (I have a 30 foot long biothane long line for occasions just such as these). I parked on the edge of a giant mud puddle in the last available non-resident space. For this section of the trail, the BCT is concurrent with the Emerson Thoreau Amble. This is said to be the trail by which the two friends visited one another during Thoreau’s time at Walden Pond. It runs from Emerson’s home in Concord Center to the cabin site near the pond. I picked up where I had left off on Sunday at the edge of the forest and followed the trail across the woods, across the top of Fairy Pond and all the way to Route 2. There is a section between the town forest and Route 2 that is managed by the Walden Woods organization as a sort of woods shrine to Thoreau. Not to come across like a whiny old person, but the letters on their monuments are too small! I figured we would go right up to the part where dogs are prohibited, as the trail continues through Walden Pond State Park where dogs and bikes are banned. How do I pick a day to leave Sulu home? Maybe one that is too hot for him? On the return trip I got to see a little more of the Walden Woods display. A bit too hagiographic for my taste.