2021-5-4, Joan Kenney Preserve, North Canton, CT

 On 2021-5-4, I went back to the Joan Kenney Preserve in North Canton, CT.  I made an interactive map with location numbers that I'll refer to.  The pink line is my GPS track.  Here's a link to my interactive map: https://arcg.is/0rz5i9 .  Below is a static screenshot of my interactive map.



1.  Where I parked, in a parking area that could hold four cars.  You could also park on the quiet residential road.  A trail blazed with painted yellow triangles starts at the parking area.

2.  Here, the yellow trail turns and crosses Joan Kenney Brook.  The turn is easy to miss.

3.  I turned off the yellow-blazed trail and explored a trail (which may be temporary) apparently made by an ATV.  

4.  Back on the yellow blazed trail (which was hard to follow in spots), I noticed a flower I identified as fringed polygala, Polygaloides paucifolia.


5.  I turned off the yellow trail (which continues to a private road) and bushwhacked easterly to Cherry Brook.


7,  I followed Cherry Brook northerly to this point where I took a picture (the camera was pointing easterly) showing a new barn behind the house in which Joan Kenney brought up her five children.  I believe one of Joan Kenney's daughters still lives in the house, and, with her husband, runs a small farm.



8.  While traveling northwesterly on an old road now clogged with fallen trees, I spotted more fringed polygala plants.


9.  I left the old road to look at the view at the edge of a large mown field.


10.  I left the old road again to find the source of the sound of falling water.  I came to a section of Joan Kenney Brook that loses 100 feet of altitude in 534 feet.  At the top of the picture below, you can see what I thought was the remains of a mill dam.  An inspection of the LIDAR layer on my interactive map leads me to believe that the raised structure was actually part of an old road.  Maybe the road doubled as a mill dam.


11.  I turned off the first old road and went northerly on another old road that travels along the eastern side of the land that Joan Kenney donated to Canton Land Conservation Trust during her lifetime.

12. I turned westerly off the second old road onto an established ATV path.  Here's a picture of a campsite next to the ATV path.


13.  The ATV path ends at this large marsh.  Many of the dead trees in the marsh have blue heron nests on  them.  Some species of hawk-like bird with dark wings and a white body seemed to have taken over one of the nests.

14.  A dim trail takes you across from the ATV path to the first old road.  I ventured off the dim path to take a picture of one of the several beaver dams that enlarge the marsh.  I visited the marsh one morning in 1969 and saw a beaver swim away.


15.  A bridge on the first old road is in need of repair.



16.  On a third old road,  I photographed a bird nest.


16.



17.  Here, I detected what appeared to be a flattened circle about thirty feet in diameter that, more than a hundred years ago, was used to support a carefully constructed mound of wood that was caused to smolder into charcoal.  The LIDAR layer of my interactive map shows many of these charcoal hearths in the area.












David Reik

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