Lincoln Land Conservation Trust (LLCT) is located in Lincoln, MA only about 25 mins from downtown Boston. It is a couple of trails that go around the Sandy Pond water reservoir. There is a biking trail and several hiking/walking trails. This location is where the great Henry David Thoreau went when he wanted a peaceful retreat from the busy Boston life.

The trails at LLCT are mostly well kept, but are also mostly poorly marked. The trails have changed from what most trail maps say due to changes in the watershed and the makeup of the land, and in a few spots we were unsure where to go. This isn’t a huge problem though since the area is not particularly large, so I would be unlikely that you would get lost. One thing to make sure to bring is bug spray. The area is mostly wetlands and in the humid summer months there tends to be a plentiful amount of mosquitos. We forgot ours and paid the price the whole hike.

The trail we went on was the one that does a 3.7m loop around the entire pond. It starts on the Black Gum Trail and then switches to several other unmarked trails as it snakes its way around the water. The one downside to this spot is that there isn’t really a great spot to look out over the pond. The trail runs relatively far away from the water and the area is heavily wooded.

The trail itself is pretty much flat for the most part with a change of elevation of about 300 ft. You can see my GPS track on my EveryTrail page. One thing to not about this is that we used the Appalachian Mountain Club book to find this spot, but the book told me that we could park at the DeCordova Museum to enter into the trail, but the museum has since changed its policies and they now charge for admission into their grounds so you can’t park there. If you continue down the road you will see a place to park on the side of the road and a trail entrance. This is the start of the Black Gum Trail.

As we started to walked along the trail we immediately noticed the silence that was present.  being removed from any main roadways, made the trail a very quite and peaceful place.  The sound of the forest bugs in their ecosystem is very relaxing.  About a half mile into the trail we came across the first picture in this post.  It was a fireplace from an old house.  I couldn’t help but wonder if I was standing in what was Thoreau’s weekend getaway.

After this interesting find, we continued on our route around the pond.  Every now and then the water would peek out from behind the thick woods to remind us of the course as well as to why the area was so buggy.  After about a mile and a half we came across a memorial for a girl who’d died falling into the pond.  As erie as it was, it was a good reminder why their was fence around the entire thing directing people away from the water.  There was a clever poem on the stone that was sweet and urking at the same time.  It read:

Shiver to think of her light, her warmth.
Fovever frozen in the clear cold pond.
May its glimmer give your pause.
For ice broke hearts the day she drowned.

The trail ends in the parking lot of the Decordova Museum and to get back to your car, you have to walk along the road for about one mile. While still interesting in its own right, not quite the same with cars driving by every now and then. We noticed that there is a continuation of the trail on the left side of the road that enters into a field and exits right across from the parking area, but having been bitten so much, we decided to pass. and save it for another day.

You can check out more photos of this trail on my flickr stream and you can also download and follow the GPS data on Everytrail

Related posts:

1. Middlesex Fells Reservation
2. Middlesex Fells: Rock Circuit
3. Ponkapoag Pond Walking Trail