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To: Bluedot Living
From: Adam Moore, Executive Director, Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation
Subject: Two New Squibnocket Trails
Adventure awaits. At Squibnocket Pond Reservation in Aquinnah, two rugged rambles beckon. While more trails will be blazed on this property in the future, these first two trails to be opened to the public offer rewarding views and a chance to move over a landscape that most Islanders have never visited before.
Squibnocket Pond Reservation is actually two properties: Squibnocket Pond Reservation North and Squibnocket Pond Reservation South. If you visit between May and October, you must make a reservation, for one property or the other, using an online reservation system on the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation website. For either property, you may reserve a parking space for the entire day. For the time being, a “day” constitutes the hours between 10:00 am and 6:00 pm. The system wasn’t quite ready at the time of this writing, but check the Sheriff’s Meadow site for information: Sheriffsmeadow.org.
Wear boots or sturdy shoes, a hat, and long pants, and a long-sleeved shirt; bring water. Check vigilantly for ticks; pre-hike permethrin and post-hike lint rollers provide perhaps the best defense against tick bites.
Squibnocket Pond Reservation North
You can reach Squibnocket Pond Reservation North via a driveway entrance on State Road. Drive a short distance along the dirt road, and park in a hilltop trailhead. From here, walk a loop trail that is surprisingly steep and challenging.
The trail begins just past the wooden kiosk, beside a gentle greensward flanked by wide, spreading, pasture oaks. After some distance the trail descends. On either side, forbidding greenbrier thickets dissuade anyone who might consider venturing off trail. Halfway down the hill, the trail spills into a pastoral opening.
Here, you can gaze across the Herring Creek to other Squibnocket Pond uplands. An osprey nest claims the high ground, and ospreys soar about their aerie. The trail leads to the shore of Squibnocket Pond, where, in the future, one may borrow a kayak for the day, and paddle around this large great pond.
Returning, the trail tumbles through the rolling Squibnocket moraine. Up a steep incline, the trail rises, passing a broad, open-grown red maple. The path rounds a bend, then down the trail falls. From different vantage points, you can spy the Herring Creek below, and Menemsha Pond in the distance. A stout walking stick or a pair of trekking poles are advised, as the trail is quite steep in several places. Eventually, the trail winds its way back to the trailhead.
Squibnocket Pond Reservation South
Squibnocket Pond Reservation South may be reached via a driveway entrance along Moshup Trail. Drive up the curving driveway, and park in the handsome trailhead, also situated atop a hilltop. Here, a more accessible trail winds around the trailhead and hilltop, offering long-distance views.
The main hiking trail begins at the trailhead. Sinuous, serpentine, the path snakes its way downhill, swerving through a series of gentle switchbacks. In the winter, clearings offer long-distance views of the Squibnocket terrain. From a knoll, you can gaze toward Squibnocket Pond. From another vantage point, look down into the base of a hollow. At the barren bottom, nothing grows at all, and the Squibnocket winds stir the white sand like a wooden spoon stirs flour in the bottom of a mixing bowl.
The trail passes through forest. Beside the trail grow white oaks, black oaks, scrub oaks, cherries, and even birches. In the understory grow young American hollies. Here and there, you pass highbush blueberries, old and gnarled, with fibrous brown bark and branches proffering delectable fruit, come July. At the bottom of the hill the trail reaches a stream. Beside the stream stands a grand red maple. A marvel of nature, this red maple is split in two places. On one side, half the tree has fallen into the wetland, yet this massive limb still grows, and vigorous young branches sport the characteristic red flowers of spring. On the other side, the tree is cloven cleanly in two, yet still alive and growing.
The trail crosses a short stretch of boardwalks that are covered with a pervious surface, so that light and water can reach the ground below. Once the path has reached firm upland soil, the boardwalks end, and the path winds up a hill, and reaches a grass road. Here the path forks. Today’s journey follows the left fork.
Bearing left, walk along a grassy woods road. The road passes two stone walls, between which grow a dense grove of beetlebungs. To the left, inkberries flank a vast wetland. Pass white-barked birches, wind-toppled yet still surviving. Soon, the ground turns to deep, sugary sand. The trail rises over a crest, and then…
And then a grand Squibnocket vista unfolds. The trail crosses into a rolling, heaving, wind-sculpted world of dunes and heather. The boardwalk lifts the walker above the heather, so that the fragile heathland below is not trampled underfoot.
From this point on, the trail is a world of wonder: Lily Pond, and Squibnocket Pond beyond that, and a mess of distant dunes, towering and falling. In the other direction, the barrens and heathlands rise to the height of Zack’s Cliffs. And directly in front lies a broad beach, and the crashing surf of the Atlantic Ocean, and the uninhabited Nomans Land in the distance. Welcome to Squibnocket Pond Reservation.
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