Connecticut’s Woodcock Nature Center

Ridgefield, Connecticut has managed to preserve and maintain so many green spaces that they have an entire book devoted to these. (The Ridgefield Walk Book is sold in town.)

The Woodcock Nature Center is one of these green spaces.

One of the loop trails in the Woodcock Nature Center wanders beside wetlands and across snow-covered pedestrian bridges over the myriad waterways. When I recently hiked there, I was completely alone in the woods that are laden with old oak, maple and hickory trees as well as a network of low stone walls,

Walking the trails here is a year-round delight. But I found trekking along the purple-red loop especially stunning in the winter when ice crystals glow on the many frozen streams and wetlands.