Follow the Trail with Bill Reid,
The Last Green Valley's Chief Ranger

October is here and with it comes a full month of opportunities to get out and enjoy the glorious fall season. For 30 years The Last Green Valley has been offering up a foliage season of walks, hikes, paddles, events and experiences. This year Walktober…

“October is the month for painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes around the world. As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a bright tint just before they fall, to the year near its setting. October is its sunset sky; November the later…

“Across acres of old pastures, where the goldenrod are taking over, late August and early September turn the land into a tumbling sea of the richest yellow. The fields are awash with waves of goldenrod that flow across the slopes and break against the stone…

September 22 is the Autumnal Equinox – the official end of summer and start of the fall season. Already the mornings are cooler and soon we’ll begin to see a bit of color on the leaves. The first trees to show fall foliage color are…

“All life, under the burning sun of mid-morning, seemed lying low, keeping silent, all except the cicadas.” Edwin Way Teale from Journey into Summer  “Cats may scrape leaves and grass over dead pretty to conceal it, and some wasps drag drugged but living insects into…

“For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.”  — Edwin Way Teale For almost two decades The Last Green Valley, Inc. (TLGV) has held its annual fundraising event “Tastes of the…

In preparing for this article I perused the Town of Chaplin website. A section about the town’s history starts with this sentence, “An extraordinary early 19th century building boom and a 20th century road improvement project created Chaplin, a village suspended in time.” I first…

I always enjoy hearing from readers of this column. A few weeks back Mariano Librojo from Norwich contacted me and sent pictures of three purple martin “apartments” he erected in his backyard. The structures are set up on tall poles and each has a cluster…

“Nature seems partial to the burdock. What extra pains she seems to have taken to perpetuate this worse than useless plant! Every man’s hand is against it, and nearly every animal has reason to detest it. Against their wills they are engaged in sowing its…

After a dry spell we finally had two days with a combination of passing showers, an evening of steady rain and then heavy downpours by the bucket-full for 10 to 20 minutes or so. The following day was sunny and very warm, so I took…

For several years now I have hiked a little used trail that winds along the banks of a tributary to the Quinebaug River. The river twists through a heavy canopy of trees and can be 30 or more feet from bank to bank. Every year…

On a late June morning I met up with about 25 people at the parking area of the Wyndham Land Trust’s Bull Hill Project in Thompson and Woodstock. We weren’t there just to hike to the top of Bull Hill for the view, rather we…