The Beginning
Since the stay at home time began I have ironically been spending more time outdoors than ever in my life. I have this dog, Sulu. He’s a miniature poodle, but a stereotype busting little dog. I got him to do agility with, and made a common newbie mistake by searching out a dog with lots more drive than my first dog.
So, yeah, he’s got a lot of “go” and also “big feelings” and I knew leash walks in the city were not going to keep him calm for the duration. So I made it my mission to seek out legal off leash areas in the greater Boston area that new not too crowded. As I was out and about I kept seeing these trail markers for the BCT.
Curious, I looked it up and found that the Bay Circuit Trail is the “outer Emerald Necklace” for the Boston area, over 230 miles of trail in an arc from the North Shore to the South Shore.
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Bay Circuit Trail Map |
On the BCT website, the trail is divided into 16 sections numbered 1-14 with a couple of As and Bs in there. Not completely randomly, I decided to start with Section 6. Why? 1) It contains some communities with liberal leash laws where I had already been enjoying woods walks with Sulu 2) It’s the closest to my house, right out Route 2.
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The first area I focused on was the Spring Hill section in Acton. I had been there a few times and it was never crowded. Besides the fact that the outer burbs have so much green space to spread out in, it is also a very wet area, at least in spring. I should have anticipated this having lived on Spring Hill in Somerville with a flow-through basement for several years. And when I say wet, I mean that I would look up the trail and what I thought was a charming babbling brook was the actual trail. At times I had to take such wide detours that I would lose the trail altogether. I went to the Spring Hill area in March and early April four times before I got the idea of doing the whole BCT.
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Yellow Trail, Spring Hill, 3/29/2020 |
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Fungus! Spring Hill, 3/30/2020 |
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Another damp trail, Spring Hill, 3/30/2020 |
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