Trees were dotted with paint, maps went up, and a last round of trash was gathered this week as the Hilltown Land Trust (HLT) gears up to unveil a 2½-mile loop trail as part of Earth Week celebrations.

The new trail links Williamsburg’s Briar Hill trails with the DAR State Forest in Goshen, and the HLT will mark the occasion of its grand opening with a hike on the Clary Hill Loop trails on Sunday at 1 p.m. 

The loop features a 200-foot rise in elevation and a flower-filled meadow, former pastures lined with stone walls, and fern-filled wetlands. The forest landscape also has mature pines and a hickory grove, with fern and sedge carpeting the forest floor.

As HLT staff added finishing touches on Tuesday, they explained the trails weren’t manicured to rid the area of native species, but instead were created to facilitate and encourage biodiversity.

“There’s bears here, and I saw a moose track here the other day … and porcupines and like, all sorts of of wildlife also hangs out here,” said HLT TerraCorps member Mariel Hohmann, listing off just a few of the animals that call the forest home.

But the space isn’t only for nature lovers. History buffs may get a thrill at the small collection of archaeological relics alongside the trails that remain shrouded in mystery.

There is a stone cellar that remains in the ground, as well as more random items like steel remnants of what had been a wheel. One can find stone wall remains that had been used for pastures, and what looks like the base of a chimney.

“We don’t have any conclusive history of exactly how the land was farmed,” Hohmann said. 

The land has seen ongoing development since the fall of 2023 when the Sofinowski family bequeathed the 132 forested acres to HLT, specifying that the land be opened to the public for hiking and recreation.

Hilltown Land Trust is a nonprofit that serves 13 rural western Massachusetts communities, has conserved more than 5,000 acres of forest, farmland, streams, and wetlands since its founding in 1986. The organization’s mission is to protect wildlife habitats while providing recreational opportunities. Clary Hill is HLT’s third new public trail in recent years.

The design of the trails were drawn up with “balance” in mind, weighing both the needs of a sustainable recreational space and conservation efforts, explained Jessica Applin, land conservation and stewardship manager with HLT.

“It’s helping people get that connection to the land through recreation, and also doing it in balance with the wildlife habitat that is here, so that both can live and thrive and be healthy together,” she said.

Applin and Hohmann worked with teams of nearly 30 volunteers from the Williamsburg Woodland Trails Committee, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Ashfield Trails, and HLT, who together spent a combined 700 hours building the trails.

From design, to building bridges, hauling rocks, cutting a treadway with heavy tools – “Everything about these trails was volunteer-led,” said Hohmann, who coordinated volunteer efforts.

Applin explained that, “One of the biggest things we did, one of the hardest things here, was to keep out of the wetland areas. There’s a ton of water on the site, a lot of really neat wetland features, and we need to keep the trails out of that.”

A bunch of aging pine trees were removed and a field of grass mowed to accommodate a field habitat, which Applin noted there is “not a whole lot of” in Massachusetts.

“There’s a bunch of different kinds of field habitats, and this one is a really small one. So you get a lot of different diversity of bird species,” Applin said. “The open areas or the edgy areas will support fox or coyote, or different hawks because they hunt on the edges [where] they have a line of sight.”

Volunteers also picked up some relatively small piles of trash throughout the acres that included barbed wire and other discarded items, but old historical farm features were left along the trails.

Utilizing his background in sustainable landscape design, Dave Weber, a volunteer with Williamsburg Woodland Trails, put in roughly 500 hours into designing and building trails at Clary Hill, including the several stonework features.

He said that, “It’s not often that many seasons can inform a trail design.” That time allowed adequate preparation for a study of erosion, and how to alleviate its impacts along the trails.

Going forward, the trails at Clary Hill will require some upkeep.

“It needs invasive plant management. It needs mowing, and then in a few years it might need some guidance,” Applin said.

The trail will be open to the public at all hours of the day. Trail parking is located on Briar Hill Road in Williamsburg, off Hemenway Road, and dogs on leashes are permitted.

Samuel Gelinas can be reached at sgelinas@gazettenet.com.