When we think of town conservation areas, we usually think of large tracts of protected land, places like the 1200-acre West Barnstable Conservation Area, or perhaps somewhat smaller tracts like the 44-acre Wiley Park in Eastham. But over the past couple of decades there have been dozens of other, smaller conservation areas created on the Cape and Islands, all of them less than twenty acres in extent, and most under ten.
These “neighborhood conservation areas,” as I like to call them, have usually been set up by town conservation trusts in cooperation with the owners, often named in honor of family members. Local conservation groups create walking trails and manage these properties, which keep a low profile and offer unexpected pockets of solitude to those who know how to find them.
One such recently-established neighborhood conservation area is the Charles and Adelaide Walker Conservation Area off Coles Neck Road in Wellfleet. It’s an 8.6-acre property that was transferred to the Wellfleet Conservation Trust by the Walker family in 2013.
When I first walked this property in mid-September, it was a pleasant surprise. I had expected a rather dinky little footpath winding no more than a few hundred feet through ordinary woods. Instead it proved to be a substantial trail, over a half-mile in length, with a loop trail at the far end. The trail basically winds along the edge of a substantial maple swamp, passing through fairly steep and uneven terrain.
Like many hardwood forests that abut wetlands, the vegetation along the trail is at once lush and wrecked. Several large oaks, some nearly three feet in diameter, dot the path. One giant trunk is completely blasted and barkless, struck, perhaps, by some long-forgotten bolt of lightning. These trees do not grow tall and straight as they do on the mainland, but, struggling against the Cape’s winds and salt air, they seem to have reached a scraggly but impressive bulk through sheer cussedness and determination to survive. In places the canopy opens up, and the lush, low tangle of vines, shrubs, and saplings give it the feel of a clearing in some Amazonian jungle. All it needs is some tropical bird calls.
Along the first part of the trail the trunk of a large oak, nearly two feet in diameter, hangs out over the path. A section of the trunk has been cut out for passage, and the exposed cross-section serves as a kind of natural almanac. I counted 90 rings on the cut face of the downed trunk, indicating that the tree probably sprouted around 1920. There are two distinct bands of tightly compressed rings, which suggests that three suffered from drought during those years. If indeed the tree began to grow around 1920, then these compressed bands likely occurred from 1930-1935, and again from 1950 to 1960 or so. It would be interesting to go back and check the meteorological records from those years to see if they were, in fact, periods of dry summers.
Though small, the Charles and Adelaide Walker Conservation Area contains a wealth of such intriguing details, and I have only just begun to get to know its full character, but since it’s “in my neighborhood,’ I expect to get to know it much better over the coming years and seasons. If you drive by it, you may not even notice the sign marking its entrance, which is fine. Because with a little digging, chances are you can find one of these modest but rich refuges in your own neighborhood, only a short walk or bike ride away.
