Can’t Rave About This One Either
Ravenswood, 0.5 miles, Wallingford Land Trust
January 17, 2015
As regular readers know, I’m a completist. For better or for worse. The entire website; this massive decades-long undertaking is nothing more than a bunch of lists that I feel compelled to complete. From our state’s seven-hundred plus museums to all the little trails maintained by all of our land trusts and such.
This makes me tick and I love it.
It’s what brings us to places like Ravenswood in Wallingford; a small tract of woods between a suburban neighborhood and a field, a mile or so west of I-91. Again, as with almost every Wallingford Land Trust property, there’s really no reason to hike this place.
And yet, for me, there is.
People put time and energy into securing the legal property rights to these small plots. Way more than you can imagine. Signs are built and erected. Trails are cut and maintained. In the case of Ravenswood, there are maybe one-hundred yards of raised two-by-four planks that had to have been bought, built, and laid down. The WLT has a website to maintain and meetings to hold. All of that should be appreciated.
My way of appreciating it is to seek out the properties and do my best to hike them, photograph them, and ultimately write about and share them.
And sometimes, certain properties just aren’t all that exciting. The WLT seems to own and manage a high percentage of unexciting properties, but that’s not really the point. The point is that they exist; as wildlife corridors, as buffers against further development, as quiet spots away from the hustle and bustle – all of that.
The 16-acres of Ravenswood reminded me of the woods behind my parent’s house in Delaware. Eastern hardwood forest with some wet spots, never out-of-sight of colonial suburban houses.
This trail is basically a cut-through from Johnny’s house over to his friend Bobby’s. Or, since this is 2016, it should be from Liam’s house over to Mason’s.
And that’s good enough for me.
Wallingford Land Trust
CTMQ Hikes the WLT properties
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