Winsor Woods Trails

Putting the ‘D’ in Winsor
Winsor Woods Trails, Canton
November 2015

This is a Canton Land Conservation Trust property.

It’s nearly impossible for me to type “Winsor” without the ‘d’. I currently work in Windsor and of course we have South Windsor and East Windsor and I tie my ties in Windsor Knots and I fly out of Windsor Locks.

But this place, sort of hidden behind some farmland in North Canton off of route 309, is “Winsor Woods.”

And we hiked it.

Windsor Woods contains a trail network. Here, there are more trails than you’d expect (White, Blue, Red, Orange, Yellow) in a small space. They all loop back to the (somewhat sketchy) parking area.

The first bit of trail off the road is the worst – at least with curious little boys. It follows a barbed-wire fence that purports to be electrified. As my sons “danced” and ran up the leaf-covered trail, I had visions of one of them tripping and falling into the barbs and getting shocked to boot.

They were probably very confused as to why I was yelling at them to take it easy and slow down, but hey, I’m a dad. It’s what I do.

And if the barbs on the fencing didn’t get them, the sticker bush extending across the trail would:

I sort of let the boys do a “choose your own adventure” here. Calvin always likes to lead, and he stuck to the White Trail (the longest, but not exactly long) and we began a clockwise jaunt.

The trails here climb the southern flank of the same unnamed thousand-foot hill. Once we began the climb up, it was actually quite steep for about 30-feet. With the wet-leaf cover, the boys comically would step and slide back over and over and literally get nowhere.

I laughed.

They yelled at me for help.

I kept laughing.

Then I got around to helping them up.

And I laughed again.

Here is Calvin recreating the scene:

From the White we took a bit of the Blue to the Red back to the White then cut the northeast corner via the Orange. I was happy to have hiked on all the available trails. They were all marked and cleared well-enough for a small Land Trust. The Red was probably the “worst,” so to speak.

As we neared the end, we passed a few interesting trees. Some seriously old-growth white oaks and red pines are hidden away up here. (And a very serious “widow-maker” tree as well. Not that I expect the CLCT to deal with that sort of hazard at all, just pointing it out. These are trees that are either dead or have large dead branches/limbs that haven’t fallen yet. But they will fall at some point… just hope you’re not under it when it does. Hence, “widow-maker.”)

Then there was this tree trunk. Did you know my kid does tree impressions too? Well, he does:

After that goofiness, we did the perilous walk along the barbed/electified fence again and were on our way to another short hike!

This property is very small, but does have that short little steep section. I was done wandering the place with these two clowns in about 25 minutes I think. Still, it’s a cool little spot and since there are so many other trailed properties in this corner of the world, why not check it out?

Canton Land Conservation Trust
CTMQ hikes CLCT’s Trails