The Greenough Land

Carlisle, the "city in the woods", is extraordinarily well endowed with open space.  That was certainly one of the major reasons we came here, and I suspect it's true for many if not most of our fellow Luguvalians*.

Those of us living in the Eastern part of town are especially well provided for.  Almost all of the land between Maple Street and the Concord River is permanently protected.  Some of it is part of the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge but the rest is town land, including the town's largest acquisition at 242 acres, the Greenough Land.

We spend a lot of time there walking or jogging with our dogs and we never just take it for granted.  It's truly a wonderful place.  The pond and its margins change every day, throughout the seasons and at different times of the day.  The wildlife is always interesting: herons, ospreys, wood ducks, just to name a few.

Incidentally, although I've said it here before, I'll say it again: pick up after your dogs!  We go armed with little colored bio-degradable baggies that your can buy by the thousand on eBay for just a few dollars!  There's no excuse for leaving a mess.  Glad to have gotten that little diatribe out of the way.  The only other minor irritations that we run into there are from the insect and arachnid families: mosquitoes and ticks.  That's one of the reasons we like it there so much in the winter!

But, if we need a change of scenery, we can go to Great Brook Farm State Park at 900 acres or Estabrook woods (around 800 acres, if I recall correctly, most of which is in the town of Concord).  In fact, by going down Brook Street, across Bedford Road and navigating the Davis corridor, we, like the 18th century citizens of Billerica, can walk all the way to Concord.  Indeed that part of the permanently protected Greater Estabrook Woods within the town of Carlisle, including the Davis corridor and various other parcels, adds up to 322 acres, although some of this is still privately owned. I think we've walked on most of the larger tracts of conservation land, but there are still plenty of places we have yet to visit.

How does Carlisle compare to other comparable towns?  One way you can get an excellent visual look is by visiting the Massachusetts Open Space Viewer.  This shows, in different colors, the protection status of the land – permanently protected land is in dark green.  It's easy to spot that the communities through which the SuAsCo river system passes tend to be well-off for protected open space.  Lincoln and Wayland are especially fortunate in this regard.  But you can see that Carlisle is also very well off by comparison with most of its neighboring towns.

While I was researching this, I also came across another fascinating resource: the Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas Viewer.  I note from this that the Eastern Bluebird is marked only as "possible" in the Carlisle square.  I'm sure that they are breeding but I'll have to see if I can prove it in the spring.

Having pointed out how lucky we are to have so much open space, the Massachusetts Audubon Society estimates that over forty acres of the commonwealth's open space is lost every day!  Given that the total land area of Massachusetts is only about 5 million acres, this certainly is no time to feel complacent!

I should end by congratulating the Conservation Commission, especially in this its 50th year, and the Trails Committee for doing so much to enrich our town with its wonderful woods.

 * I'm not sure what the proper name for a Carlisle resident is but this seems appropriate, given that the Roman name for Carlisle, UK was Luguvalium.