The Trustees’ stewardship and trails teams work tirelessly across our special places to invest in and maintain these spaces for visitor enjoyment. To provide a glimpse of the vast work being done across the state, we sat down with Joshua Reynolds, Central & Valley Region Trails Specialist, to learn more about what a day is like for him and his colleagues.
Tending our Trails: A Spotlight on Stewardship
Joshua Reynolds, Central & Valley Region Trails Specialist at Monument Mountain.
Q: Tell us about yourself and your role (or roles!) at The Trustees.
A: I grew up in Dedham, where I spent a lot of my childhood digging around in the backyard looking for cool bugs or helping my dad in the garden. As a Boy Scout, I really solidified a love of outdoor recreation as well as an appreciation for the value of service within a community. After graduating from Hampshire College in 2014, I completed a life-changing 10-month residential AmeriCorps program based in Hawley, which fully planted the seed for my career in trails and conservation work.
I’ve been working as a Trails Specialist in the Trustees’ Central & Valley region since late 2021. I’m outdoors almost every day. I’m part of a regional team based in Florence that tackles major projects on trails and trailheads throughout (and occasionally beyond) our region. We keep up with routine trail maintenance, signage installation and maintenance, and support other teams with stewardship and building maintenance as needed. I sometimes joke that I feel like more of a generalist than a specialist because of the huge variety of projects we undertake. It can be hard work, but it never gets boring.
I love the collaborative nature of stewardship at The Trustees, and within our trails team in particular. Different regional teams are constantly sharing expertise, equipment, and occasionally personnel to ensure that things run smoothly and efficiently—which can be a challenge considering the complexity of our operations and logistics. Especially in the summer, when we hire seasonal employees, I look forward to coming into work everyday thanks to the strong team dynamic that we cultivate here. We also have a stellar roster of regular volunteers who help out as needed.
Q: What are some current projects the trails team is working on in the Central & Valley region?
A: We recently wrapped up a really productive summer season, where we tackled two major bridge replacements at Royalston Falls. The old bridges were roughly 20 years old and degraded to the point of impacting visitor safety as well as the trail experience. We used two very different bridge designs that responded to the unique conditions at each project site, see images and captions above. Both projects were technically complex and required plenty of creative problem-solving amongst our team.
Besides the bridges, we have been continuing a series of projects to improve the drainage on several of our most eroded legacy trails. Legacy trails—trails that were not designed and constructed as hiking trails, but were old dirt roads which The Trustees inherited and subsequently repurposed into trails—don’t tend to manage water very well. Using mini-excavators, we are able to construct large-scale grade dips in rutted trails that would be virtually impossible to fix by hand. Monument Mountain and Peaked Mountain are two highly-visited properties that continue to receive ongoing drainage work from our trails team.
As we move into the fall, we are focusing on the less-glamorous routine trail maintenance (cleaning out trail drains, cutting back encroaching vegetation, clearing downed trees). We have also begun the process of renovating buildings at the newly acquired Beaver Brook property in Williamsburg, which eventually will provide much-needed workshop space for regional stewardship operations.
A conventional dimensional lumber bridge where Joshua and team were able to move materials into the Royalston Falls site with machinery.
A rustic, native-timber bridge at a more remote location on the Tully Trail where the team could not bring in large materials.
Q: What does stewardship of these special places mean to you?
A: For me, stewarding Trustees properties is about providing everyday access to precious green space for people all over Massachusetts. Earlier in my career, I worked in National Forests and National Parks, which are incredible places, but more like tourist destinations. It’s so important that nature isn’t only something to visit on a vacation but is integrated into daily life in ways that are easy to access for a broad swath of users. When I see a visitor walk over a bridge or staircase that we built, or stop to check a map, or just enjoy the space, I get this really subtle thrill of having played a role in creating these experiences for people.
Stewardship is more than that, though. On the trails team, we are really focused on the visitor experience. By facilitating recreational access, we build the support for conserving these places in the first place, which ripples out to benefit entire ecosystems. By stewarding Trustees properties, we help to maintain a growing network of conserved green space that enables diverse communities of flora and fauna to thrive alongside our human communities. That’s part of the big picture—people existing as part of an ecological community and having a stake in protecting it.
Q: What excites you about the future of stewardship and trails management/work at The Trustees?
A: The recent addition of Beaver Brook to our regional portfolio is really exciting. Being part of the process of converting this former golf course into an ecologically restored, recreationally rich landscape is a unique opportunity that will create a lot of ripples in the local community.
Other than that, there’s a lot of exciting activity happening within land conservation and potentially adding more Trustees properties in the near future, both in our region and beyond. We’ll be keeping busy, that’s for sure.
Q: Do you have a favorite trail?
A: It’s so hard to pick one. I don’t think I can. It would be like picking a favorite child!
Q: Is there anything else you would like to share?
A: Just to ask folks to keep in mind that a lot of work goes into maintaining Trustees properties. Other than that, I hope you all can get out there and enjoy the trails!