Arlington Land Trust

Protecting Open Spaces in Arlington

Other News

Annual Meeting Recording

The Land Trust held its 20th anniversary annual meeting via Zoom on Tuesday, January 19. This recording includes the brief business meeting, reports of recent activities and board member elections (about 20 minutes).

View the January 19, 2021 Annual Meeting video

The highlight of the program is a richly illustrated talk by Bob Wilber, Director of Land Conservation at Mass Audubon. He addressed the topic “Land Conservation in the Time of Climate Change,” focusing on the dramatic freshwater ecological restoration of a former cranberry farm in Plymouth, now known as Mass Audubon’s 480-acre Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary. 

More Walking Routes

In our May 2020 post “Walking in Arlington” we presented a number of maps and ideas for walking routes in and around Arlington. In this post we are pleased to suggest some additional routes and resources. Remember to wear a mask, practice social distancing, and follow other relevant guidelines as indicated at each site.

Arlington’s Great Meadows

Arlington’s Great Meadows (AGM) is a 183-acre parcel of land owned by Arlington but located in East Lexington. It is the largest nearby area of undeveloped open space with numerous looping trails and several boardwalks. The Minuteman Bikeway on its southern border provides access at several locations. Other parking and access points are shown on the AGM map.

 Note that the parking area behind the former Golden Living Center nursing home complex is now closed. Demolition has started to remove the buildings and construct a number of town-house units. When the work is completed, a new parking area and public access trail will be provided from Emerson Gardens Road to AGM.

For more information, visit the Friends of Arlington’s Great Meadows website at www.foagm.org

ACROSS Lexington

ACROSS Lexington is a network of marked trails and paths for walkers, runners and trail bikers, including access from the Arlington Reservoir path. The routes use existing public ways to connect the town center with various historic sites, schools and conservation areas. Several ACROSS Lexington trails loop through a number of conservation areas, most of which have their own networks of trails.

The Trail Guide  to Lexington’s Conservation Land includes color trail maps for Lexington’s 26 walkable conservation areas. (Note that some of the maps may be-out-of-date. Please refer to the maps located on the kiosks at trail entry points.)

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Mass Audubon and Trustees Sites

Mass Audubon Society and The Trustees have many properties in the greater Boston area, although some of them remain closed during the pandemic. Consult their websites for further information about which sites and walking trails are open.

https://www.massaudubon.org/get-outdoors/wildlife-sanctuaries

http://www.thetrustees.org/places-to-visit/

Walking in Arlington

We hope you and your family are staying safe and healthy during these difficult times. While social distancing guidelines remain in place to protect us all from exposure to Covid-19, we also know how important it is to be outdoors and enjoy the bounties of spring in New England.

Arlington residents have two excellent resources for local walks.

  • Arlington Open Space Committee’s Take A Walk maps.
  • Arlington resident George Stephans’ Circumnavigate Arlington maps.

Take A Walk Maps

We wrote about the Talk A Walk initiative in last January’s blog entry. The Take A Walk maps, linked in that entry, will help you safely explore less traveled parts of Arlington that you may never have visited before and may reveal some surprising discoveries, including beautiful front yard gardens, and bears and other creatures in house windows. Have fun! 

Circumnavigate Arlington Maps

Circumnavigate Arlington

An initiative developed by Arlington resident George Stephans offers a walking route that follows the town’s boundaries. He was initially inspired by suggestions to honor Marathon Monday on April 20 by doing a special running/walking event with some charity component. This idea expanded to consider routes that avoid heavy traffic areas such as the bike path and Mass Ave. As it turns out, one can travel very close to the entire Arlington border on roads that are reasonably safe for walking or running and typically are not very busy.

The Circumnavigate Arlington main page explains this project.

Chamberlin Woods: A Lesser-known Hike in Concord

For many of us in Arlington, going for a walk is one of the best antidotes for pandemic self-isolation. I live off of Pleasant Street near Route 2, and hiking up to and around Menotomy Rocks Park is a regular routine. On good days I go all the way up to Robbins Park and around the water tower. These are my standards, and plenty of my neighbors are enjoying similar outings, but I also like to escape a bit further west for a change of scene.

I’ve visited Concord’s Punkatasset Woods for many years, but these days my usual parking spot on Monument Street has been full. For help finding alternative access to my favorite woods, I turned to the AllTrails smartphone app and discovered a lovely “back door” access via a Concord Land Conservation Trust parcel called Chamberlin Woods.

On a very beautiful, and busy, first Sunday in May, my wife and I parked at the trail entrance on the north-bound side of Lowell St. While many of the better-known trail parking lots were packed, there is room here for about 20 cars and we found a free space. 

The path leads gently into tall pines, occasionally crossing muddy bits of swamp and slow streams, and then crosses into the Estabrook woods and some private land for less than a mile to a stunning outcrop overlooking Bateman’s pond and the back side of Middlesex School. 

We sat and enjoyed a strong southwest wind coming across the pond before looping back to the trail head. Fiddlehead ferns were just starting to uncurl along with skunk cabbages in the swamps. The pine-needle-carpeted trail crossed many different kinds of mosses, and nuthatches, red-bellied woodpeckers, blue jays and red-tailed hawks kept us company. On another day, we’ll bring provisions and hike further in past the overlook to join up with the main Estabrook and Punkatasset trails to the east.

I recommend the app, which does a good job of showing the profusion of available trails. Just remember to charge your phone battery.

Peter Belknap

ALT Board member

Take A Walk

Take A Walk  is another project of the Arlington Open Space Committee. This project is designed to encourage residents to get outside and walk to Arlington’s diverse parks and recreational facilities. The Open Space Committee has developed a set of seven suggested and overlapping walking routes across town. The maps indicate safe walking distances linking open spaces, conservation lands, playing fields, playgrounds, and other points of interest.

A town-wide map shows all seven routes, or you can download or print any of the neighborhood maps – East Arlington North, East Arlington South, Arlington Center South, Arlington Heights South, Arlington Heights North, Arlington Center North, and Arlington Center Central.