While we did, in fact, visit the Cole Property, we may taken a bit of creative license and embellished the details of our hike. We hope you enjoy our quasi-fiction tale that is more intended to be amusing than an accurate description of our experience.
The Cole Property in Carver, located on the border of Carver and Plympton, is a great place to get lost in nature. Seriously. We almost got lost.
Not that we didn’t know where we were. Of course we did; we just didn’t always know where we were going. And at the risk of sounding melodramatic, we felt as if something, or someone, had been watching us.
As is customary preceding an adventure in the woods, we consulted the map at the trailhead. Apparently, the Cole Property is hiding a cool sort of suspension bridge in the middle of the woods, and we made reaching the bridge our primary goal.
The beginning of the trail is a well-marked gravel road. If the rest of the forest were like this, we’d have no trouble finding the suspension bridge.
Soon we passed by Grumpy’s Brook, and Benny couldn’t help but make a wise-crack about its being named after a Bob. Thanks, Benny! We took a moment to take in the scenery, and that’s when a bizarre sentiment overcame me.
“Benny, do you hear that?”
He bristled. “Hear what?” he responded. “I don’t hear anything.”
That was exactly the point. No branches were swaying in the wind; no birds were singing to one another. The forest was as quiet as a library on a holiday. Usually woods are bursting with noise. It was unexpectedly eerie.
We soon came upon an odd, small bridge resting conspicuously on the left side of the dirt road.
“Is that the bridge we’re looking for?” Benny asked, “Do we follow the trail?”
It was certainly not the one we were looking for, but I was unsure if we should leave the clearly marked road to follow this unmarked, narrow trail. The path beyond the bridge seemed to be beckoning us to take it. Benny started walking casually down the path, and, within the blink of an eye, a screech emanated from around the corner. He darted in my direction and jumped into the backpack.
“Let’s continue down the road,” he managed to say while jittering.
“It was probably just a tree falling,” I said as I tried to reassure both him and myself.
“Or a mini troll that lives under the bridge!” he responded. Benny’s not dramatic at all.
The dirt road led us to a chain link fence and a small, nondescript building. It seemed like this was the end of the trail. There were no markings; no trail blazes to mark our way. Nothing. We were stumped. Was this all that the Cole Property had to offer?
Benny, jumping out of the backpack, started walking up to the building. A loud “WHHHOOOOOOO” sent him scampering back to the bag yet again.
“Benny, that was just an owl!”
“No, Bob! I saw a shadow over there! That was a sign that we should leave!”
I wasn’t going to let us be scared off by a loud, diurnal owl. (I tried to justify using “nonnocturnal,” but every resource tells me that it’s not a word. That’s too bad. It has a nice ring to it.)
Other than returning back to the parking lot, the only possible way to go was along an old, overgrown dirt road. Surely, this unmarked path that seems to peter out in a few yards can’t be the way? Can it? Come to find out, it was.
“Just because it isn’t marked doesn’t mean we can’t walk down it!” Benny said. While he had a point, I wondered from where he had suddenly summoned this courage. Was this the same bear who just wanted to flee?
The path didn’t disappear, but its width shrank.
We felt strangely called to walk down the path, as if a previously dormant curiousness had awoken within us. We needed to know where the path led.
Apparently, it led to abandoned cranberry bogs like the ones we saw at the Douglas S. Westgate Conservation Area, and to an old, defiantly standing pumping house residing near an equally forgotten picnic table.
“I bet you could afford that house, Bob!” Benny said gleefully. “It’s a cozy fixer upper; it just needs some sweat equity. It’s waterfront property, and it’s already connected to water! I assess it at $850,000.”
Benny’s neither an assessor nor a Realtor, but this wry bear has a good grasp of the Massachusetts real estate market.
We continued to hike, and the woods became creepier. We spotted weird trail blazes in a style we’ve never encountered before. The trail split a couple of times, and we weren’t sure which way to go.
At one point we backtracked and spotted a sign and a trail blaze marking that was most definitely not there before.
“This Cole Property is weird, Bob, and the sun is going down,” Benny said nervously. I agreed with his sentiment; we’re usually very good at navigating a forest. But here I would have sworn that trail blazes had appeared where they weren’t before or had changed colors, leading us to believe we were on a different trail.
I thought for a moment. According to the North and South Rivers Watershed Association, an ancient Wampanoag Path goes through the forest.
“Benny, Pukwudgies are in our midst.”
He thought I had lost my mind. “There’s no way these mischievous, mythic Native American creatures are here! It’s just folklore.”
Then we heard a laugh in the distance. Benny jumped into the bag, and I ran as fast as I could. We were so spooked we didn’t pay attention to where we were going. After a five-minute sprint, I stopped at a small bridge, and Benny plopped out of the bag.
“I can’t take this excitement. This isn’t even the bridge we’re looking for. We need to get out of here,” he said.
While I agreed, we had no other choice but to forge on.
The late fall sun continued to set, and the silence in the forest was punctuated with faint screeches, laughs, and howls. Following a nerve-wracking twenty-minute hike, we came across the suspension bridge that had been our original destination. Despite our trepidation, we decided that we might as well pause for a photo op.
As I snapped the photo, the wind began to howl and the laugh, now turning into snickers, became louder. I ran on the bridge to grab Benny, and the planks began to vibrate. Of course they would move; it was a small, wooden suspension bridge, right? Nevertheless, our unnerved constitutions (Benny thinks writing “unnerved constitutions” makes me sound like an old, snobby person, but I’m keeping it) caused us to run as fast as we could out of the woods, only stopping momentarily to catch our breath.
We’re not saying that we believe that Pukwudgies were playing games with us at the Cole Property, but weren’t also not saying that they didn’t.
Enjoy this property at your own risk.
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