Trustees hike: Charles River Peninsula

On July 11, I visited the Trustees of Reservations property Charles River Peninsula in Needham, MA. It’s a lovely property which I recommend. It’s an easy hike, almost entirely flat, and there is a good amount of interesting stuff to see. As you walk down the short path from the parking lot to the peninsula “entrance”, you pass by this cache of bright-red canoes (look how verdant and beautiful the river behind them is!). I could be wrong, but my guess is that the stacks of baskets to the right of the canoes are a clue about what they’re here for: I suspect they’re used by Trustees staff or volunteers to periodically go out onto the river to collect invasive vegetation. I found this placard posted along the hiking travel to be sufficiently interesting that I thought it worth sharing! As the placard above makes pretty clear, most of the peninsula is covered by a big grassy field, but there’s a border of woods between the field and the river. The main hiking trail at the property goes…