The Cole’s Pond Bog trailhead in East Dennis begins in a typical modern Cape Cod neighborhood with manicured lawns and ornamental shrubs. But if you’ve lived here long enough, you know that there are so many hidden gems to be discovered tucked away and out of street view: these special woodland walks, picturesque pond pathways, and not-so-obvious oceanside hikes, dotting the landscape. These places are what make Cape Cod such a special place, and for Dave Hegner, a Dennis Conservation Land Trust volunteer for over six years, this is one of his favorite DCLT places to go step off the beaten path.
We have made a plan to take this walk together so I too can appreciate all the work DCLT has put into acquiring land like Cole’s Pond Bog and putting it into conservation. It’s also to appreciate volunteers like Dave who show up to maintain it: DCLT’s land stewards who help maintain this trail and around eight others that the DCLT manages. Maintaining and conserving means keeping balance with Mother Nature. It also means cleaning up the mess Mother Nature makes after powerful storms where huge trees land across the paths.
DCLT volunteers regularly take on a surprisingly wide range of work. They maintain existing trails, clear invasive vegetation, help develop new trails and care for the landscape so that people can continue to experience it.
“DCLT has been a good place to volunteer,” Dave says, “You get to meet so many nice people who are donating their time just as I am,” says Dave who has also volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, the Housing Assistance Corporation (HAC), CapeAbilities and Senior Service Corps.
How does he juggle all the give-back to community?
“You do the best you can when you’re at the place you’re volunteering at,” he says smiling.
He can’t begin to know just how appreciated his time is, what it means to the DCLT team as well as his fellow volunteers who feel camaraderie with him when he shows up weekly.
He says he appreciates all the different ecosystems that DCLT’s trails offer the Cape Cod hiker. I’m beginning to feel the same appreciation each hike I take. I also appreciate the care volunteers like Dave have put into the maintaining of these trails, winding paths whose unruly bittersweet and sweetly scented grape vines want to lay claim.
Through the swamp is a bog bridge, built and maintained by volunteers and staff of the DCLT, which carries hikers across a watery habitat. The trees seem to rise directly from the wetland, their roots adapted to an environment that is neither quite land nor water. And from this same watery world, wild blueberries are growing sweet and delicious. They’re so enticing that he walks ahead not realizing I’m happily eating every blueberry I see. Tiny treasures, exploding with sweetness.
“If you were blindfolded and released in the woods here and took the blindfold off, you might not know you were on Cape Cod,” Dave says.
I agree wholeheartedly. Freshwater wetlands are typically the hardest-to-reach habitats on the Cape, less familiar to most.
The Cole’s Pond Bog trailhead loop can take as little as 20 minutes. But it’s ok to linger. Explore a little. Follow a side path. Stop to listen to the cardinal and tufted titmouse…
For Dave, that idea of being present is kind of part of the point.
“I do this not to feel like I’m saving the world,” he says, “but that I’m helping my community be able to experience something like this.”
What gets him to show up weekly?
“Once the land is gone, it’s just gone. I understand that change is inevitable, but it doesn’t need to happen so quickly as it has on the Cape and in Dennis for the past 30 years or so. If you can maintain a trail, it will be there forever. I won’t maintain it myself forever but there will always be someone that comes after me to do it and continue what we started.”
And that my friends, is the beating heart of conservation work.
