Bioreserve Big Walk 2017

Join the Friends for the BIG WALK 2017 – May 6, Saturday, 9 a.m.

Meet: Parking Lot of the Hampton Inn, Route 6 at Old Bedford Road (across from White's of Westport), Westport MA, at 9 a.m.

Length of this year's BIG WALK: 14 miles.

Cost: $5/hiker, $15/family Fee

The Friends usually send at least half a dozen hikers to this annual walk. Last year, we stayed together for the entire hike and were able to enjoy a post race drink at a charming pub near to the finish.

Detailed info from the organizers:

On Saturday, May 6th, join us to experience the vastness of the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve at the 20th Annual BIG WALK. This year’s hike follows a 14-mile marked route starting at the Hampton Inn in Westport, Mass. and finishing at the 1873 Water Works building on the North Watuppa Pond in Fall River. (As I understood it, the plan was to walk around the entire North Watuppa Pond, shown in the lower left corner of the Bio Reserve Map.)

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Get a detailed map of the BioReserve. (http://www.thetrustees.org/assets/documents/places-to-visit/trailmaps/Bioreserve_trail_map.pdf)

A shuttle van will return hikers to the parking area from the finish point or from selected van stops along the way. BIG WALK begins at 9am.

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Every few years at BIG WALK time we run the following article so new readers and new BIG WALK enthusiasts can see how the BIG WALK began and how it helped create the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve. Over the years many articles on the BIG WALK have been written. The best BIG WALK news article came from a reporter that actually came on the walk. Her article helped immeasurably in “selling” the large-landscape, unfragmented forest, “bioreserve” concept to state officials and the general public:

Here is the wonderful 1999 article by New Bedford Standard Times Opinion Page Editor Monica Allen:

A BIG WALK IN THE WOODS

Environmentalists lead 18-mile forest trek, from Fall River to New Bedford, to draw attention to area's dwindling green spaces.
By Monica Allen – Standard-Times

When I first heard about the "Big Walk" from Fall River to New Bedford, it appealed to my desire to connect these two SouthCoast cities. But as I investigated, I quickly learned it would be an 18-mile walk. This seemed long. Was I willing to give up my Sunday to make this connection? As Sunday approached, I could feel my anxiety growing. I tried to convince a friend to accompany me. But when this hearty hiker said: "No, are you crazy? It's supposed to be 90 degrees that day", I felt a mixture of resolve - a sort of macho personal challenge - and self-doubt.

The alarm went off at 6:30 AM and I stuffed the ham sandwich I'd made the night before, bug spray, sunscreen, notepad, bottled water and camera into a small knapsack. Then I drove to the headquarters of the Fall/Freetown State Forest where cars were gathering and people in hiking boots were milling about. The moment I stepped out of my car, a swarm of tiny black flies surrounded my face and began to nip. It's going to be along day, I thought as I smeared on bug dope.

Although I thought we would be hiking from the ranger station off Slab Bridge Road, I quickly learned we would all drive in a long caravan of cars to our actual starting point, the American Legion Hall in Assonet Village on South Main Street. Everett J. Castro, one of the hike organizers and a longtime member of the Green Futures environmental group, said this was the beginning because it was the closest he could get us to the shores of the Taunton River. The idea of the hike is to walk from the Taunton River to the Acushnet Cedar Swamp in New Bedford and retrace some of the woodland paths that Wampanoag Indians once took as they left their river bank summer encampments in the Fall to go into the uplands for winter. The "Big Walk" began four years ago to protest what environmentalists see as the latest aggression by the current culture, a culture of conquest that has been transforming the New England landscape since the first Englishmen arrived in the 1600s.

The city of Fall River, anxious to increase its space for industry, had requested that the Commonwealth turn over 1,000 acres of the state forest for an expanded industrial park. Promising jobs for a growing population, the city leaders had a great deal of support for their proposal. But a small band of avid hikers decided this was an outrage and they would fight it. Already the forest was surrounded by manmade structures that were threatening what was left of one of the last sizable green spaces in southern New England, one of the few forests big enough for many native plant and animal species to survive. So Mr. Castro, Al Lima, and Tim Bennett, to name only a few, organized the first "Big Walk" to show the public what they were in danger of losing. The walk drew more than 100 people and helped to convince the state to turn down Fall River's expansion plans.

Winning one battle has not lulled this group into complacency. In fact, they know the battle is never really over in a state and region committed more to industry than to forests. Over the next few years, Green Futures, the non-profit environmental group, learned that the portion of the state forest in Fall River was zoned for heavy industry. No other state forest had such a zone. Most communities had zoned these parks for open space and recreation. So, Green Futures worked to get the zone changed, hoping this could give some future protection. But Mr. Castro says even this victory was not enough to allow him and the others to breathe easy. "There are people in the city that are still trying to get 200 acres of the forest for industrial use", he says. “We have to keep ever vigilant".

Back at the American Legion Hall, about 90 hikers are readying for the walk on the morning of May 7. Chief Windsong of the Wampanoag Tribe gathers the hikers in a circle and says a prayer for a safe and healthy ramble through the woods. Then he blesses the hikers with the scented smoke from a bundle of burning sprigs that he fans onto us using a wild turkey feather.

Then we break up into groups. The first group will do an abbreviated walk. The intermediate group will walk the entire 18 miles, stopping often to talk about the forest sites and to sip water. The third group will go straight through. A part of me wants to go with the fast group. My thought is I'd finish an hour or two earlier. But after casually polling a few hikers, I decide the intermediate group makes more sense. Later, I am glad of the decision when we learn one member of the fast group collapses and has to be pulled out of the woods.

It was about 10 minutes to 9 when we strolled briskly up Copicut Road and took a right turn into the state forest. For the next six hours, our group would be in the woods and would not see a single house. I would never have believed this if you had told me in advance that I could hike for six hours in the woods in congested southern New England. The 50 people in the intermediate group soon form a long necklace of walkers on a narrow pine needle trail that wends through tall white pines and down to a rushing waterfall called Rattlesnake Brook. The brook runs entirely in the state forest and is considered one of the cleanest streams in the region because it draws rain and groundwater only from forested land.

Tom Athearn of Fall River leads the intermediate group at a brisk pace. He confides that he usually leads the fast group so he likes to keep a steady clip. Along the early stretch, we hike through an old white pine grove with 100 feet high trees that were a favorite among colonists for ship masts.

The first major site along our hike is Assonet Ledge, an abandoned granite quarry operated by the Fall River Granite Company into the early 1900s. Rock from the quarry was used to build Fort Adams in Newport, R.I., the Taunton State Hospital and the state house in Albany, N.Y. among other buildings. The quarry closed sometime after stone cutters tapped into an artery of groundwater below and the quarry filled with water. We hiked up a rocky path to the ledge that overlooks the pool of water. Over the years, graffiti artists have painted giant hearts and scratched names onto the smooth granite walls. "They haven't reached the age where they understand how beautiful this would be without their words", one hiker says.

By now the temperature has climbed into the high 80s and many of the hikers welcome a chance to flake out on the cool granite and sip from water bottles. Others try to see how close they could get to the edge of the granite before fear drives then back. Mr. Athearn notes that over the years people have pitched trash into the quarry - items as large as cars have been pulled from the waters.

We hike back into the pine and oak trees. Al Lima of Green Futures says this was part of a section of the city wanted to turn into an industrial park. The land is flat and an old stone wall marks places where farmers had long ago kept their livestock. But over the last century, the woods have returned to fill these ghost pastures.

After some steady walking, I begin to detect a sour smell in the air. When I ask about it, Mr. Lima says it must be the Browning-Ferris Industries dump, the largest landfill in the commonwealth. The Fall River area suffers from many of these landmarks. The region is host to the largest and dirtiest coal-fired power plant in New England. It has this dump which accepts construction waste from throughout the state and, until recently, it had the oldest, most polluting trash incinerator in the state, placed snugly in a typical city neighborhood of triple deckers. Protest finally led the city to close the trash incinerator last summer after years of violating state health guidelines and spewing high levels of mercury, cadmium and lead into the air. As we hike closer to the dump, others start noticing the sour smell of garbage.

Soon we can see a high earth-covered mountain just beyond the forest. "It's a horrible location", Mr. Lima says. Not only that, an unlined portion of the dump has contaminated Mother's Brook, appropriately named because it was once used by farm mothers to gather water for washing and cooking. Today it would make any mother or child sick because of high levels of toxic metals that have run off the dump into the brook and eventually flow into the Taunton River. On this 90-degree morning, the smell is particularly strong and I think everyone is glad when we get out of wind shot of the dump. As we get farther from the dump, the pine scent returns to fill the warm, muggy air.

The flat land gives way to a gentle hillside and we climb onto the back of Hogs Rock, a smooth granite outcropping that offers a lookout over the treetops. While most of the hikers, who've been walking for more than two hours in the sun and heat, welcome another chance to sit on the rock and sip water, some are anxious to push on. Isabelle Hart of Tiverton, one of the oldest hikers on the trip, has no interest in stopping. "I wish the breaks were shorter and we could keep going", she says, unwilling to sit. Much younger hikers have begun to ask when we will reach the first dirt road where they can get a van ride back to their cars. Green Futures carefully organizes the long walk so that hikers can quit at four evenly spaced spots along the trip. A van waits at these points where the dirt roads cross the forest path. When we reach the first road, more than half the hikers decide a three and a half-hour walk is plenty. But, Scott Hornsby, 31, of Fall River says the walk has convinced him to return to this trail. "I've lived here 31 years and I've never been out here", he says.

A hearty crew of about 20 pushes on through what is perhaps the most difficult section. The path turns to black mud and puddles and the brush closes in on us from both sides. Few large trees provide any shade as we walk in stifling heat for close to a half hour. Everyone is pleased to reach a dry, pine needle forest floor. Soon we leave Fall River/Freetown State Forest and pass into land acquired from the Forbes family in 1996 by the Greater Fall River Land Conservancy. Forbes, like many wealthy publishing families, controlled large holdings of forest to insure a steady supply of pulp for paper.

These woods are open with a mixture of trees that allows for a comfortable, shaded walk. The final wooded stretch of the day takes us into land owned by the Acushnet Saw Mills Company, a firm controlled by the Hawes family. The Hawes land has even more open spaces beneath the trees, a clear sign that it has been logged for many years. Green Futures gets permission each year to take hikers across this private property. "We're hoping eventually that this property will be acquired by the state or the land conservancy," Mr. Castro says.

At another road crossing, a few more hikers decide to take a van ride and now we are down to about nine. I have no desire to quit at this point, especially knowing we are well beyond halfway. By now the conversations are flowing among our small group. Hike leader Athearn urges us on to reach boiling spring, assuring us it's not a boiling hot spring. Curious, we walk on. Just before we reach the spring, we happen across a band of trespassers drinking beer beside a raging fire. These four large men have parked their souped up trucks in a grove and are playing loud rock music. Mr. Athearn is clearly disappointed to find this crew, but decides to say nothing to them and hike past.

The nearby natural spring is surrounded by an old concrete enclosure that allows the clear water to bubble up through fine white quartz sand and form a deep pool. Nanci Lown from Assonet is the first to dip her empty water bottle into the spring. Then she and most of us pull off our socks and shoes to cool our feet in the nearby stream. Tim Bennett of Green Futures explains that a farmer found this spring a long time ago and built his home right next to it. But the land was not suited for farming so he eventually left. The spring fed stream is actually the source of the East Branch of the Westport River. The water bubbles up from deep within the earth, flows to the Copicut Reservoir, then to Lake Noquochoke and finally into the river. We linger for a while at the spring.

The last stretch of forest goes by quickly and we emerge onto Pine Island Road about 3:30 pm. The waiting van takes three people, leaving six to finish the Big Walk. I've been forewarned about the last stretch of 3 or 4 miles. It's supposed to be the hardest. This is a portion where no local land trust, state or federal agency has been able to acquire forest to continue the proposed path. The dream of Green Futures and the Coalition for Buzzards Bay, another environmental group, is to build a walking path over a patchwork of green spaces that would stretch from the Taunton River to Cape Cod Bay in Plymouth. "This is the last opportunity we have for a long trail that would be mostly in the woods", Mr. Castro says, "and with the kind of development going on now, we may not have much time left to create it".

As warned, the last stretch is grueling on the feet. You don't notice how tired your feet are on pine needles, but asphalt has a way of slamming into them no matter how gently you walk. I search for small patches of grass along the roadside as we pass farms on Flag Swamp Road in Freetown and Dartmouth, then pass more recently built houses along Pine Island and High Hill Roads. I notice many no-trespassing signs in driveways. Cars whiz past us as we trudge, and a few children ask what we are doing, this scraggly band of two men and four women. It's fun to see their expressions when we tell them we're walking from Fall River to New Bedford. When we finally reach the New Bedford city line, Nanci Lown and Isabelle Hart hold their arms up in victory. Ahead of us are veteran hikers, Carl Windle and Lucy Farrar of Swansea, and our fearless leader Tom Athearn.

It is just around 5 pm when Turner Pond comes into view. We linger on the gravel beach looking over at the Atlantic white cedars on the distant shore. John Ashcroft of Fall River waits in a blue gray van to take us back to our starting point. The early evening breeze feels delicious on my face as we drive back toward Fall River.

There's something about a long walk through the woods that soothes the soul.

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We have done this walk for at least the last four years. It is always run very well and people have been able to get rides back every three or so miles.

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Last year, the full hike was over 12 miles. Van pick-ups were available every 2 to 3 miles for those who only wanted to complete a portion of the walk.

What is the BioReserve?

In 2002 a unique public/private partnership was formed to permanently protect one of the largest tracts of unbroken forest in the Commonwealth. The City of Fall River, The Trustees of Reservations and Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation and Division of Fish and Game joined together to establish the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve. At over 14,000 acres, the Bioreserve stretches from Assonet Village in Freetown all the way to Hixville in Dartmouth, covering the entire eastern half of Fall River.

Protecting native biodiversity, historic sites and Fall River’s drinking water supply were major goals of the Bioreserve. However, public access for outdoor recreation is what draws most people to the Bioreserve today. Every year thousands of children, adults, and families are introduced to the Bioreserve through guided nature programs, hikes, bike rides, and volunteer projects that connect people to the wilderness right in their own backyard.

The Big Walk takes intrepid hikers across the Bioreserve to experience its immensity by the soles of their shoes.

The Big Walk costs $5 this year for an individual and $15 for a family. It is open to all ages including canine companions. Participants should wear comfortable walking shoes or hiking boots and bring insect repellent, sunscreen, a water bottle and a bag lunch. Water refills and trail snacks will be provided along the way.