The Cure for Spring Fever in the Mud Season: Harold Parker State Forest:
Photo by Samantha Turnock.
Understanding that “big” is a relative term when it comes to parks (Yosemite, 750,000 acres), we’re still going to go ahead and apply it to the 3,000 acres called Harold Parker State Forest.
Because when 3,000 forested, pond-dappled acres touch four towns (North Andover, Andover, North Reading, and Middleton) and sit sandwiched between a pair of high-volume state roads (Route 125 to the west, 114 to the east), it means lots of people have unusually convenient access to lots of undefiled outdoorsiness. Crammed into suburbia, three grand of land qualifies as huge.
It’s too big, actually, to properly give every option its due in this space. It’s obviously a great place for all the ambulatory pastimes (walking/hiking/snowshoeing/cross-country skiing). It’s horseback-riding heaven. And mountain bikers love the place, enough for the North Shore Chapter of the New England Mountain Bike Association to help maintain and upgrade trails there.
In summer, the park has a 91-space campground and the Berry Pond site offers life-guarded swimming, complete with working bathroom facilities. And there’s the standard seasonal hunting and fishing.
So if you are among those who believe in the power of fresh air, or if you just like cheap, easy-to-get-to, new experiences, the park is worth a visit. The state hopes to publish a more detailed trail map in the next year, so stay tuned.
But right now, according to the cover of this magazine, it’s the dawn of spring. Glimmers of nice weather and overeager crocus sprouts team with vicious, full-blown cabin fever to play the sick joke of inviting you outdoors—particularly if you’re a child or caretaker trapped inside with one.
Courtesy Massachusetts Deptartment of Conservation & Recreation.
Hours later, you’re cursing the wet, cold, messy, and muddy muddiness of the New England ground in March and, often, much of April.
Hence, we’re going to focus now on the antidote offered by Harold Parker, two glorious words for any parents or grandparents tending to tiny sets of restless legs: paved trails.
The eastern half of Harold Parker includes a pair of spots not far from park headquarters—Sudden Pond and Stearns Pond— accessible for free by wide, paved paths each less than a half-mile in length. You drive to the center of the forest and park—just not directly in front of the gates, please—before going the rest of the way by any means you like.
“For a family experience, going down to these ponds with young kids—it can be with bicycles, training wheels, the whole nine yards—is just a nice and simple adventure,” says Ray Faucher, manager of the Atlantic district (which includes Harold Parker) for the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.
Harold Parker is one of a handful of Massachusetts sites to have hosted the Civil Conservation Corps (CCC), a Depression-era New Deal success story that sent the countless American men with no jobs—many of them highly-skilled laborers—to all the ravaged, often deforested land that needed work. They filled campsites across the country, spending months or more building bridges, dams, and, yes, trails, that survive today.
Harold Parker is filled with old, extra-wide logging and fire roads, many courtesy of the CCC, that are ideal for anybody seeking mudless springtime exercise. Stearns and Sudden Ponds just happen to deliver particularly family-friendly payoffs.
“Sudden Pond is a very small place, nestled among trees and rock outcroppings, just one of these classic New England/Massachusetts woodland areas. It’s peaceful, tranquil, all those wonderful words you would want to throw at it that would make somebody feel kind of comfortable,” says Faucher, recalling his own family’s trips there with a verbal picture that should serve as an invitation to anyone still trying to shake February.
“It’s not like you get to the destination and there’s nothing else to do—there’s wonderful exploration,” he says. “Once we’d get there, my wife would set up the picnic table and get the food ready, me and the boys would go out climbing rocks, sticking our hands in the water, then go back and get mom and explore some of the smaller trails. Once you get to the spot and make a kind of home base, it’s just a fun place to hang around.”
Get Outside – Harold Parker State Forest – March / April 2008
The Cure for Spring Fever in the Mud Season: Harold Parker State Forest:
Photo by Samantha Turnock.
Understanding that “big” is a relative term when it comes to parks (Yosemite, 750,000 acres), we’re still going to go ahead and apply it to the 3,000 acres called Harold Parker State Forest.
Because when 3,000 forested, pond-dappled acres touch four towns (North Andover, Andover, North Reading, and Middleton) and sit sandwiched between a pair of high-volume state roads (Route 125 to the west, 114 to the east), it means lots of people have unusually convenient access to lots of undefiled outdoorsiness. Crammed into suburbia, three grand of land qualifies as huge.
It’s too big, actually, to properly give every option its due in this space. It’s obviously a great place for all the ambulatory pastimes (walking/hiking/snowshoeing/cross-country skiing). It’s horseback-riding heaven. And mountain bikers love the place, enough for the North Shore Chapter of the New England Mountain Bike Association to help maintain and upgrade trails there.
In summer, the park has a 91-space campground and the Berry Pond site offers life-guarded swimming, complete with working bathroom facilities. And there’s the standard seasonal hunting and fishing.
So if you are among those who believe in the power of fresh air, or if you just like cheap, easy-to-get-to, new experiences, the park is worth a visit. The state hopes to publish a more detailed trail map in the next year, so stay tuned.
But right now, according to the cover of this magazine, it’s the dawn of spring. Glimmers of nice weather and overeager crocus sprouts team with vicious, full-blown cabin fever to play the sick joke of inviting you outdoors—particularly if you’re a child or caretaker trapped inside with one.
Courtesy Massachusetts Deptartment of Conservation & Recreation.
Hours later, you’re cursing the wet, cold, messy, and muddy muddiness of the New England ground in March and, often, much of April.
Hence, we’re going to focus now on the antidote offered by Harold Parker, two glorious words for any parents or grandparents tending to tiny sets of restless legs: paved trails.
The eastern half of Harold Parker includes a pair of spots not far from park headquarters—Sudden Pond and Stearns Pond— accessible for free by wide, paved paths each less than a half-mile in length. You drive to the center of the forest and park—just not directly in front of the gates, please—before going the rest of the way by any means you like.
“For a family experience, going down to these ponds with young kids—it can be with bicycles, training wheels, the whole nine yards—is just a nice and simple adventure,” says Ray Faucher, manager of the Atlantic district (which includes Harold Parker) for the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.
Harold Parker is one of a handful of Massachusetts sites to have hosted the Civil Conservation Corps (CCC), a Depression-era New Deal success story that sent the countless American men with no jobs—many of them highly-skilled laborers—to all the ravaged, often deforested land that needed work. They filled campsites across the country, spending months or more building bridges, dams, and, yes, trails, that survive today.
Harold Parker is filled with old, extra-wide logging and fire roads, many courtesy of the CCC, that are ideal for anybody seeking mudless springtime exercise. Stearns and Sudden Ponds just happen to deliver particularly family-friendly payoffs.
“Sudden Pond is a very small place, nestled among trees and rock outcroppings, just one of these classic New England/Massachusetts woodland areas. It’s peaceful, tranquil, all those wonderful words you would want to throw at it that would make somebody feel kind of comfortable,” says Faucher, recalling his own family’s trips there with a verbal picture that should serve as an invitation to anyone still trying to shake February.
“It’s not like you get to the destination and there’s nothing else to do—there’s wonderful exploration,” he says. “Once we’d get there, my wife would set up the picnic table and get the food ready, me and the boys would go out climbing rocks, sticking our hands in the water, then go back and get mom and explore some of the smaller trails. Once you get to the spot and make a kind of home base, it’s just a fun place to hang around.”