CFPA Connecticut Trees Series LbNA #33344
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Add Location| Owner: | CT Forest & Park Assoc  |
|---|---|
| Plant date: | Jul 20, 2007 |
| Location: | |
| City: | Durham |
| County: | Middlesex |
| State: | Connecticut |
| Boxes: | 4 |
| Found by: | civilguy |
|---|---|
| Last found: | Jan 14, 2022 |
| Status: | FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF |
| Last edited: | Jun 17, 2017 |
Connecticut Tree Letterbox Series: a learning letterbox!
Updated: Feb 2012
The Field Forest is a 152-acre woods near the high school in Durham. It is owned by the Connecticut Forest & Park Association, Inc. (CFPA). These woods are available for all to enjoy, but please use caution in the fall. Limited hunting is allowed, but only with written permission from CFPA. Wearing blaze (very bright) orange during autumn hunting season is recommended. Currently, hunting is prohibited in Connecticut on Sundays.
This letterbox is to celebrate the wonderful trees in Connecticut. We hope you enjoy learning some fun facts about the trees and how to recognize a few. The information about trees will be helpful for finding the letterboxes if you don’t have experience telling one tree from another. Please note that often the important clues for finding the letterbox are in the first sentence or two of the paragraph followed by information about the woods along your pathway. These letterboxes can be done as a couple mile loop following both the blue/red trail and the orange trail starting at the Field Forest entrance behind the high school in Durham. Read carefully or look at a map and you will be able to find a couple letterboxes if you enter at the Bear Rock Rd entrance to the Field Forest.
Directions, Tree information, and Clues:
In Durham, take Rte 17 to Maiden Lane. Maiden Lane is the road going east just north of the intersection of Rte. 17 and Rte. 68. Turn onto Maiden Lane and continue east until you get to the first road on the right. Turn right onto Picket Lane and continue until you reach the high school. Turn left at the high school just before Picket Lane takes a sharp right and park in the back parking lot east of the football field and track. The trail starts in the northeast corner of the parking lot. There is a gate in the fence at the beginning of the trail.
Walk through the fence and enter the Field Forest on the blue/red trail. Immediately see large trees on your right and left. Take a moment to examine the tree trunks. How are some of them different than others? Do you see how variable the bark can look and feel on one tree versus another? Leaves are not the only clue to help you learn to tell one tree from another.
Follow the blue/red trail to a signboard. The map, when present, provides a guide to the various trails you can explore. Look to the right and behind the signboard to see many small sugar maples. As I bet you know, maple syrup is produced from the sap of sugar maples. Did you know that 40 gallons of sugar maple sap must be boiled down to get 1 gallon of maple syrup? These little sugar maples are too small to tap, but there are many bigger maples in the area.
From the signboard, follow the blue/red trail. It will soon bear left and gradually up the hill. You will pass numerous small and large American Beech trees. Unfortunately, many of the big beech trees along this part of the trail have letters carved into the bark. Notice some of the letters are narrow and others are very wide. These carvings are like permanent tattoos and have stretched out as the tree grew and the bark expanded. Beech trees are the trees that people often damage by carving into the bark because the bark is so smooth. Please don’t carve in the bark, these cuts in the bark can let insects and unwanted pests into the tree and like germs can get into a cut in your skin, the tree can get diseases.
Stop when you get to a t-junction. Can you find a tree with 4 blazes (2 blue/red and 2 yellow)? What are all these blazes (or paint marks) doing on one tree? Double-blazing like this is done to indicate that a trail turns. The upper blaze shows the direction it turns (You can pretend the blazes were places for your feet. The forward foot (upper blaze) points you in the direction to go.)
Go left on the blue/red trail (If you went right you would be on the yellow trail). Look for more beech trees. Elephant leg trees – this is what some of us like to call the larger ones. Can you see why? Beech trees feed the forest. In the fall look for the prickly nuts on the ground. The chipmunks and squirrels like to pull off the prickly husk and eat the nut inside. In the early spring when the leaves first come out they are soft and tender and you can put them in your salad. The Native Americans of the area enjoyed them as some of the first tasty greens in the spring. About a week after the leaves emerge the beech leaves become too papery to eat.
Pass an unmarked trail on the right. Just before the unmarked trail notice the log on the right side of the trail. Look for signs of life in and on the log. Is it a squirrel table? Do you see nutshells a squirrel or chipmunks left behind? Do you see bugs or holes to tell you bugs have been at work? This tree is gradually breaking down, feeding creatures and enriching the soil.
Beech Letterbox (box 1)
As the blue/red trail starts gradually down a hill to cross a stream, look on the north side of the trail for a big rock in a grove of American Beech trees large and small. Look around the rock for the Beech letterbox.
Sugar Maple Letterbox (box 2)
Cross the stream and head up the first hill on the blue/red trail (don’t take the unmarked trail on the left). Wave hello to “Pipeman”. Keep an eye out for more maple and beech trees and many others as the trail sweeps right and then left and left again. Go up a steep hill with rocks and roots at your feet. You will pass a cool beech tree on the right with two trunks that have grown together in several places. Just beyond this beech tree on the right is an ash tree. Notice the diamond or x shaped pattern on the ash bark.
As you huff and puff to the top look for a small sugar maple on the right as the trail bends sharply right just before leveling off. On the left side of the trail is a large maple tree with a blue/red blaze and next to it a large ash tree with a blue red blaze on the far side. Look into the woods for a large majestic Sugar Maple that looks like the letter Y if you look up. Follow a rotting log about a dozen steps from the ash to the Y-shaped maple. Look behind the Y tree for the Sugar Maple letterbox.
Continue on the blue/red trail past a place where there is usually a big puddle or at least a large muddy spot and curve left and up the rest of the hill. Watch carefully for blazes when you reach the top of the final hill. The blue/red trail turns right. Stay on the blue/red trail. You may have to watch carefully near the intersection with the orange trail since a triangle of trails has been formed that don’t follow the blazes (maybe this will be fixed). You may notice the orange trail heading south. The blue/red blazes zigzag east down the hill to and past a very nice vernal pool. This pool is teeming with life in the spring. It is a critical breeding area for wood frogs and spotted salamanders.
Keep following the blue/red trail avoiding other unmarked trails. After a while, you will get to an intersection with the orange trail by an old house foundation. At this intersection, there are a couple tall sassafras trees. There are many small sassafras sprouts below them. The Sassafras tree has “mixed-up” leaves…they come in 3 distinctive shapes: 1) a dinosaur footprint (or a ghost!), 2) a mitten, and 3) a football. Can you find some sassafras sprouts on the southeast corner of the intersection? The two big “mother trees” can be spotted if you look carefully for trees with deeply ridged bark. The northern of the two trees is partly dead. The last letterbox in this series is by a sassafras tree.
Turn right onto the orange trail (if you stayed on the blue/red trail you would soon come to a signboard and Bear Rock Rd.). As you walk on this level section of orange trail look left and right for Oak trees. There are two “families” of Oaks: the white and the black/red. The easy way to tell them apart is the shape of the leaves. White is a “soft” color; we think of clouds, fluffy sheep, cotton, that have rounded edges. White Oak leaves have leaves with lobes that are rounded. Black & Red are “hard” colors; we think of pointy things like fire. Black and Red Oak leaves have lobes that are pointy. Red Oak has bark that has what some call “ski tracks”, Racetracks” or sort of strips that makes it very distinctive.
White Oak Letterbox (box 3)
From the intersection of the blue/red trail and the orange trail walk about 10 steps south on the orange trail. After taking these 10 steps there should be a good-sized white oak on your right (a single trunk – 1 sister). Look up at the nice rounded lobes. Walk 20 more steps and a 2 sister black oak will be on your right (the west side of the trail). Notice the pointy ends to the lobes.
Follow the orange trail south to the intersection with the orange trail and the orange trail with a white dot. Look back and see a 3 sister red oak about 20 steps back the way you came again on the west side of the trail.
Go straight on the orange trail (don’t turn right onto the orange with a white dot trail) Continue on the orange trail south. You will see lots of Oaks, mostly black or red. Shortly before the orange trail bends to the right there will be a white oak that branches into 2 sisters about 6 feet off the ground on your left (east side of the trail). This Y-shaped white oak has an orange blaze on both sides. Walk east into the woods towards the small ravine with a stream. About 25 steps into the woods is a rotting log with some quartz rocks near where its roots once were. Look behind a trap door for the White Oak Letterbox.
Sassafras Letterbox (box 4)
Continue on the orange trail back to a trail junction. Follow the orange trail as it heads roughly west as it winds through the Field Forest. Notice all the beautiful big trees as you head down the hill. Continue on the orange trail as it curves and heads north. Cross a bridge over a small stream flowing west. Follow the trail up the first small hill after the bridge. After the trail levels off look for a tall, sassafras stump on the left where the trail curves to the left. Notice the many sprouts that show the distinctive “mixed-up” leaves (football, mitten, and dinosaur footprint) near what was once a majestic sassafras tree. This stump was part of a tall snag before the rest of the trunk blew over during tropical storm Irene in 2011. Follow the trunk with deeply ridged bark to the end and find your last letterbox in this series.
The shortest way back to your car is to continue on the orange trail until you reach the blue/red trail again and retrace your steps.
We encourage you to explore the rest of the trail system within the Field Forest. Connecticut Forest and Park Association (CFPA) was given the property as a generous gift from Howard Brigham Field, Jr. in his will. Mr. Field was a conservationist and a longtime resident of Durham. The Forest had been in the Field family for some generations. The forest creates a rich habitat for many trees, such as the Oak, American Beach, Sassafras and Sugar Maple, as well as for wildlife and other plants.
CFPA: Connecting People to the Land. Conserving Connecticut. Since 1895, we have been conserving CT to protect forests, parks, walking trails, and open spaces for future generations. Join us for our monthly family rambles, teacher workshops, hiking trails, and conservation efforts. WWW.CTWOODLANDS.ORG
Happy Trails!
Updated: Feb 2012
The Field Forest is a 152-acre woods near the high school in Durham. It is owned by the Connecticut Forest & Park Association, Inc. (CFPA). These woods are available for all to enjoy, but please use caution in the fall. Limited hunting is allowed, but only with written permission from CFPA. Wearing blaze (very bright) orange during autumn hunting season is recommended. Currently, hunting is prohibited in Connecticut on Sundays.
This letterbox is to celebrate the wonderful trees in Connecticut. We hope you enjoy learning some fun facts about the trees and how to recognize a few. The information about trees will be helpful for finding the letterboxes if you don’t have experience telling one tree from another. Please note that often the important clues for finding the letterbox are in the first sentence or two of the paragraph followed by information about the woods along your pathway. These letterboxes can be done as a couple mile loop following both the blue/red trail and the orange trail starting at the Field Forest entrance behind the high school in Durham. Read carefully or look at a map and you will be able to find a couple letterboxes if you enter at the Bear Rock Rd entrance to the Field Forest.
Directions, Tree information, and Clues:
In Durham, take Rte 17 to Maiden Lane. Maiden Lane is the road going east just north of the intersection of Rte. 17 and Rte. 68. Turn onto Maiden Lane and continue east until you get to the first road on the right. Turn right onto Picket Lane and continue until you reach the high school. Turn left at the high school just before Picket Lane takes a sharp right and park in the back parking lot east of the football field and track. The trail starts in the northeast corner of the parking lot. There is a gate in the fence at the beginning of the trail.
Walk through the fence and enter the Field Forest on the blue/red trail. Immediately see large trees on your right and left. Take a moment to examine the tree trunks. How are some of them different than others? Do you see how variable the bark can look and feel on one tree versus another? Leaves are not the only clue to help you learn to tell one tree from another.
Follow the blue/red trail to a signboard. The map, when present, provides a guide to the various trails you can explore. Look to the right and behind the signboard to see many small sugar maples. As I bet you know, maple syrup is produced from the sap of sugar maples. Did you know that 40 gallons of sugar maple sap must be boiled down to get 1 gallon of maple syrup? These little sugar maples are too small to tap, but there are many bigger maples in the area.
From the signboard, follow the blue/red trail. It will soon bear left and gradually up the hill. You will pass numerous small and large American Beech trees. Unfortunately, many of the big beech trees along this part of the trail have letters carved into the bark. Notice some of the letters are narrow and others are very wide. These carvings are like permanent tattoos and have stretched out as the tree grew and the bark expanded. Beech trees are the trees that people often damage by carving into the bark because the bark is so smooth. Please don’t carve in the bark, these cuts in the bark can let insects and unwanted pests into the tree and like germs can get into a cut in your skin, the tree can get diseases.
Stop when you get to a t-junction. Can you find a tree with 4 blazes (2 blue/red and 2 yellow)? What are all these blazes (or paint marks) doing on one tree? Double-blazing like this is done to indicate that a trail turns. The upper blaze shows the direction it turns (You can pretend the blazes were places for your feet. The forward foot (upper blaze) points you in the direction to go.)
Go left on the blue/red trail (If you went right you would be on the yellow trail). Look for more beech trees. Elephant leg trees – this is what some of us like to call the larger ones. Can you see why? Beech trees feed the forest. In the fall look for the prickly nuts on the ground. The chipmunks and squirrels like to pull off the prickly husk and eat the nut inside. In the early spring when the leaves first come out they are soft and tender and you can put them in your salad. The Native Americans of the area enjoyed them as some of the first tasty greens in the spring. About a week after the leaves emerge the beech leaves become too papery to eat.
Pass an unmarked trail on the right. Just before the unmarked trail notice the log on the right side of the trail. Look for signs of life in and on the log. Is it a squirrel table? Do you see nutshells a squirrel or chipmunks left behind? Do you see bugs or holes to tell you bugs have been at work? This tree is gradually breaking down, feeding creatures and enriching the soil.
Beech Letterbox (box 1)
As the blue/red trail starts gradually down a hill to cross a stream, look on the north side of the trail for a big rock in a grove of American Beech trees large and small. Look around the rock for the Beech letterbox.
Sugar Maple Letterbox (box 2)
Cross the stream and head up the first hill on the blue/red trail (don’t take the unmarked trail on the left). Wave hello to “Pipeman”. Keep an eye out for more maple and beech trees and many others as the trail sweeps right and then left and left again. Go up a steep hill with rocks and roots at your feet. You will pass a cool beech tree on the right with two trunks that have grown together in several places. Just beyond this beech tree on the right is an ash tree. Notice the diamond or x shaped pattern on the ash bark.
As you huff and puff to the top look for a small sugar maple on the right as the trail bends sharply right just before leveling off. On the left side of the trail is a large maple tree with a blue/red blaze and next to it a large ash tree with a blue red blaze on the far side. Look into the woods for a large majestic Sugar Maple that looks like the letter Y if you look up. Follow a rotting log about a dozen steps from the ash to the Y-shaped maple. Look behind the Y tree for the Sugar Maple letterbox.
Continue on the blue/red trail past a place where there is usually a big puddle or at least a large muddy spot and curve left and up the rest of the hill. Watch carefully for blazes when you reach the top of the final hill. The blue/red trail turns right. Stay on the blue/red trail. You may have to watch carefully near the intersection with the orange trail since a triangle of trails has been formed that don’t follow the blazes (maybe this will be fixed). You may notice the orange trail heading south. The blue/red blazes zigzag east down the hill to and past a very nice vernal pool. This pool is teeming with life in the spring. It is a critical breeding area for wood frogs and spotted salamanders.
Keep following the blue/red trail avoiding other unmarked trails. After a while, you will get to an intersection with the orange trail by an old house foundation. At this intersection, there are a couple tall sassafras trees. There are many small sassafras sprouts below them. The Sassafras tree has “mixed-up” leaves…they come in 3 distinctive shapes: 1) a dinosaur footprint (or a ghost!), 2) a mitten, and 3) a football. Can you find some sassafras sprouts on the southeast corner of the intersection? The two big “mother trees” can be spotted if you look carefully for trees with deeply ridged bark. The northern of the two trees is partly dead. The last letterbox in this series is by a sassafras tree.
Turn right onto the orange trail (if you stayed on the blue/red trail you would soon come to a signboard and Bear Rock Rd.). As you walk on this level section of orange trail look left and right for Oak trees. There are two “families” of Oaks: the white and the black/red. The easy way to tell them apart is the shape of the leaves. White is a “soft” color; we think of clouds, fluffy sheep, cotton, that have rounded edges. White Oak leaves have leaves with lobes that are rounded. Black & Red are “hard” colors; we think of pointy things like fire. Black and Red Oak leaves have lobes that are pointy. Red Oak has bark that has what some call “ski tracks”, Racetracks” or sort of strips that makes it very distinctive.
White Oak Letterbox (box 3)
From the intersection of the blue/red trail and the orange trail walk about 10 steps south on the orange trail. After taking these 10 steps there should be a good-sized white oak on your right (a single trunk – 1 sister). Look up at the nice rounded lobes. Walk 20 more steps and a 2 sister black oak will be on your right (the west side of the trail). Notice the pointy ends to the lobes.
Follow the orange trail south to the intersection with the orange trail and the orange trail with a white dot. Look back and see a 3 sister red oak about 20 steps back the way you came again on the west side of the trail.
Go straight on the orange trail (don’t turn right onto the orange with a white dot trail) Continue on the orange trail south. You will see lots of Oaks, mostly black or red. Shortly before the orange trail bends to the right there will be a white oak that branches into 2 sisters about 6 feet off the ground on your left (east side of the trail). This Y-shaped white oak has an orange blaze on both sides. Walk east into the woods towards the small ravine with a stream. About 25 steps into the woods is a rotting log with some quartz rocks near where its roots once were. Look behind a trap door for the White Oak Letterbox.
Sassafras Letterbox (box 4)
Continue on the orange trail back to a trail junction. Follow the orange trail as it heads roughly west as it winds through the Field Forest. Notice all the beautiful big trees as you head down the hill. Continue on the orange trail as it curves and heads north. Cross a bridge over a small stream flowing west. Follow the trail up the first small hill after the bridge. After the trail levels off look for a tall, sassafras stump on the left where the trail curves to the left. Notice the many sprouts that show the distinctive “mixed-up” leaves (football, mitten, and dinosaur footprint) near what was once a majestic sassafras tree. This stump was part of a tall snag before the rest of the trunk blew over during tropical storm Irene in 2011. Follow the trunk with deeply ridged bark to the end and find your last letterbox in this series.
The shortest way back to your car is to continue on the orange trail until you reach the blue/red trail again and retrace your steps.
We encourage you to explore the rest of the trail system within the Field Forest. Connecticut Forest and Park Association (CFPA) was given the property as a generous gift from Howard Brigham Field, Jr. in his will. Mr. Field was a conservationist and a longtime resident of Durham. The Forest had been in the Field family for some generations. The forest creates a rich habitat for many trees, such as the Oak, American Beach, Sassafras and Sugar Maple, as well as for wildlife and other plants.
CFPA: Connecting People to the Land. Conserving Connecticut. Since 1895, we have been conserving CT to protect forests, parks, walking trails, and open spaces for future generations. Join us for our monthly family rambles, teacher workshops, hiking trails, and conservation efforts. WWW.CTWOODLANDS.ORG
Happy Trails!