Blue Hills, Milton Massachusetts

[urbpan]

We still are taking care of my father's car, so we took the oppotunity for an impromptu ride down to the Blue Hills. Just south of Boston (the 128 loop cuts through it) the Blue Hills Reservation is a beautiful wild(ish) place--ancient worn granite hills covered in woods. It's the only place in Eastern Massachusetts with rattlesnakes (they are an extremely rare endangered species).


We hiked up the main trail of Great Blue Hill (635 feet elevation--believe it or not, one of the highest places on the East Coast) in about a half hour.



There is an observation tower at the top.


From there, you can observe...smog.


Oh, wait, if you squint you can see Boston!


It has been Hazy Hot and Humid these days.


(Inside it was dark and cool(er))


We hurried down, to beat the sunset!

Comments

[greenelvish.livejournal.com]

Gorgeous, especially the last one.

Hey, look at that!

[turil.livejournal.com]

My name is all non-anonymous and stuff. Yes, I caved in and joined Livejournal. Mostly cause I got tired of having to prove I was human! Ha! (But I have at least a few weeks worth of journal entries of my own in me, too...)

So, anyway... The Blue Hills are defnitely lovely, though I've only been there once (back when I was brave enough to bike everywhere!).

I don't quite get the "highest places on the Eastern Coast" thing. What are the criteria for this distinction? Within a certain distance of the coast? I mean, there are lots of mountainous bits of land in Maine that seem like they could easily be much higher than the Blue Hills.

Oh, and since when does New England have rattlesnakes? Aren't they warm wheather animals?

Re: Hey, look at that!

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

ONE OF US ONE OF US

Glad to have you aboard Turil!! I'm surprised that you chose the user name you did, but I guess "Turtle" was already taken.

New England has a few (very few) rattlesnakes, and a few of their close relatives, the copperheads. They can only live where there is deep rock fissures for them to hide away in, during the long New England winters. There are none in Maine (according to the National Audubon Field Guide to the New England States), but there are probably some in the White Mountains, a few in the Berkshires and some down in Connecticut. As a boy growing up in rural Connecticut, I remember snake-phobic (ophidiphobes?) being especially concerned about copperheads. I've never seen a venomous snake in the wild. The Blue Hills Trailside Museum keeps a rattler or two in captivity.

For the record, there has never been a human fatality from wild snakebite in Massachusetts. No one has been bit in decades. Rattlesnakes, like wolves and mountain lions before them were deliberately persecuted until they were more memory than animal.

For more on Rattlesnakes in Eastern Massachusetts, check out "Landscape with Reptile: Rattlesnakes in an Urban World," by Thomas Palmer.