Finch Brook Preserve

Mario HiKarting
Finch Brook Preserve, Wolcott
November 2022

This trail is bonkers. Really and truly bonkers. It is a designed as a 2.6 mile go-kart track… but for hiking. You will get dizzy walking the loop. You will have visions of “cheating” by cutting corners. You will read poetry and cross into Waterbury for a bit and you will likely turn an ankle at some point.

But you will also hike the Wolcott Land Conservation Trust’s only trailed property which… has been more or less ceded to the CFPA for stewardship. Friends, I present to you the Finch Brook Preserve Trail:

The only other trails like this in the state are mountain biking trails, which are usually not too fun to hike. Now, there may be a very valid reason for this trail’s design. It could be purposeful to thwart ATVs – which are a huge problem nearby along CFPA’s Tunxis Trail offshoots in Wolcott. It may be just what the designer wanted to do to squeeze as much mileage into a relatively small 60 acre site. It may be more… emotional. With such meandering, it lends itself to the posted poems on trees. I’m guessing each trail maintainer has his or her own thoughts, but in the end, what we have is a very unique trail surrounded by suburbs, and we should be thankful for that.

According to the Trust, the preserve’s woods may be nearly a century old since the area was heavily forested in aerial photos taken of the area in 1934. The sole (official) access point is the trailhead at the end of Barbara Drive in Wolcott – which has plenty of parking. The trail meanders through a combination of wetlands and gently rolling hills, almost completely under a forest canopy dominated by oaks, hickory, maple, and birch. I do remember passing a little copse of two or three pines at one point.

And check out this noise: the trail follows a section of the Old Finch Road, a very old woods road said to have been once walked by Abraham Lincoln. What does that even mean? Someone said it and now we can say it’s been said? I guess.

I walked the loop clockwise, which put me immediately into a minefield of roots and small boulders. As this was November and it had recently rained, this first three-quarters of a mile or so was dicey to say the least. I slipped on moss and caught my fall with an ankle turning step. Oof. Be careful.

After a while I passed by my first poem. This has been a thing here for a few years and it’s pretty cool. Poems by the expected Walt Whitman, sure, but also a banger from Edna St. Vincent Millay and local poet/writer David K. Leff even gets a tree. Impressive.

After passing through a swampy section and crossing Finch brook on a long boardwalk, the trail gains a little elevation and dries out. At one point, there’s almost a view south across beautiful Wolcott, but not quite. There are several large boulders and – you know what? This is pretty much a perfect trail for kids. It’s flat, long enough to tire them out but not kill them, and the wackiness of it will delight them. They’d need to pay attention to the blue blazes for sure, and kids love that. (And ultimately, you’ll appreciate that.)

The second half of the loop going clockwise is much smoother and easier than the first half. (I guess ol’ Abraham Lincoln deserved a nice woods road after all.) There are certainly points along the way when seeing the trail, like, 20-feet through the woods to my left tested my conscience. A simple cut through would save perhaps five minutes of featureless walking.

I, however, with the spirit of Honest Abe within me, stuck to the prescribed path.

I was a bit surprised to see some ACAB (All Cops Are Bad) graffiti on a little bridge here in Wolcott of all places. Wolcott is TrumpTown and BackTheBlue Central. The idiot kid who did this better not get caught here.

The last quarter of the loop was straightforward and flat and simple. I took the opportunity to reflect on the poems and the path and Wolcott’s quirky place among Connecticut’s 169 towns. And before I knew it, I was back out at the cul-du-sac and my car and off I went.

After making sure I was no longer dizzy from the trail.