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.

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Exploring Ridgefield, Connecticut

 As I’ve continued my explorations in Ridgefield, Connecticut, I found that the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum has been hosting an outdoor sculpture exhibition. Frank Stella’s Stars are perfectly placed in the snowy landscape.

A few minutes from Main Street, I found a tranquil hiking trail in the Seth Low Pierrepont State Park that paralleled the lakefront and then angled into the woods.

What I love about Ridgefield, Connecticut is that just outside of downtown there are a variety of trailheads easily accessed off the road. The red-blazed Jones Trail, which starts beside a cul-de-sac, gradually climbs an undulating, wooded landscape peppered with boulders.

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An Abundance of Nature in Ridgefield, Connecticut

 I’ve continued my explorations in Ridgefield, Connecticut, revisiting some sights and learning more about the landscape.

In Connecticut, the short, mostly suburban Ridgefield Rail-Trail takes on a sylvan vibe along the section where it intersects two trailheads that veer into dense nature preserves.

I hiked in a still woodland dense with mountain laurel, red maple and hickory, occasionally passing a running brook and boulders left from the last Ice Age. Impressionist painter J Alden Weir once owned and farmed this Connecticut property (Weir Preserve-Weir Farm Art Center) that’s traced by stone walls and has long inspired artists.

One of many old barns and other original structures sitting among the boulders and fields at the Weir Farm National Historic Site. This stunning landscape, where Impressionist painter J. Alden Weir lived, has an active artist-in-residence program

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