Sudbury Valley TrusteesConservation, Collaboration, and Community since 1953

To keep track of enemies, our vigilant species wants eyes in the sky. If you lacked satellites or airplanes, you’d post a lookout on the highest place around. For Native Americans in the Sudbury Valley, that was a hill they called Penobscot, “the steep rock place.” On its summit they built a stone platform from which, at 600 feet above sea level, they could view broad swaths of countryside in every direction.

Have you read Walden lately? I doubt it, because Thoreau’s most famous book is not exactly a page-turner. Knowing that he wrote seven drafts before he published it, died-in-the-wool Thoreauvians regard Walden as a masterful literary performance in which each word has its proper place. That may be so, but plenty of readers find Walden a tough nut.

Taking the book as a whole, I include myself in that group, but I appreciate Thoreau’s way of putting things. Of insect music on warm autumn afternoons, he wrote, “Crickets usher in the evening of the year.”

For several weeks last winter I clumped around in a cast after gravity snuck up and took advantage of my imperfect sense of balance. Although most of us lack the physical balance exhibited by athletes and dancers, everyone balances the claims of love and family with those of work and citizenship—our busy lives make us into practical philosophers, continually prioritizing and making trade-offs.

Like a huge rock staple, Nobscot Hill fastens the north end of Framingham to southern Sudbury. Most of the 600-foot hill is owned by the Boy Scout’s Knox Trail Council, which operates Scouting programs and allows, within posted guidelines, visits by the public. Walking there, you come upon several of the land’s most evocative features—cellar holes.

If your mind tends to ramble, there’s a lot to wonder about in the woods. What happened here in years past? Why does a boulder rest among the trees? Who built this stone wall, and why?

“Bears found favorite resorts among the highlands of Nobscot and Goodman’s Hill.” So wrote Alfred Hudson in his “History of Sudbury,” describing the Massachusetts country settled by English colonists in the 1630s. Perhaps he had evidence that there were b’ars in them-there hills, or perhaps he didn’t. But we know the hills harbored Native Americans, whose names for our highest places have survived the intervening centuries.

When I first heard of Puffer Pond, I supposed it was named after a fish--some species of hornpout that could inflate itself to confuse and stymie snapping turtles. Although the notion of a freshwater blowfish appeals to the imagination, there’s no such animal. The pond, which lies within Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, bears the name of former owners.

Even when separated from a catastrophe by centuries or by oceans, the victims’ suffering weighs upon our hearts. Before the tsunami caused so much pain and loss, images of far-off violence already posed a grim counterpoint to happy festivities at home.

Storied cross-country foot trails include Vermont’s Long Trail, and the Appalachian Trail, which follows the ridges from Maine to Georgia. Local walkers might know of the much younger Bay Circuit Trail, which arcs 150 miles around the Hub. But the first long-distance American footpath to bear an English name predates these by centuries. Its route, chosen by Native Americans, remains in use in several of our towns. And it makes this claim to historical significance: upon it the English began their westward journey across North America. We call it Old Connecticut Path.

Carved into the side of Egg Rock in Concord, where the Sudbury and Assabet Rivers meet to form the Concord River, is this inscription:

At the meeting of the waters
And along the banks
Lived the Indian owners of Musketaquid
Before the white men came.

A person who REALLY knows his place is George Lewis, retired professor of geography, author, and a community leader for most of his life, which now spans more than 80 years. Last spring George published “Sudbury Valley Trustees; 50 Years of Conservation.” What luck that this inspiring individual had the energy and talent to write SVT’s history five decades after he co-founded it!

In honor of his unique contributions to their town, Wayland’s Selectmen designated Sunday, September 19 as George Lewis Day.