US-11513 Martha Deering WMA
This was the most uninviting spot I've been to so far, and to be fair the notice mentioned that it was 'unimproved'. There's no parking, so I had to nestle up against a stone wall on the highway. Even the spot is hard to locate, in the middle of a long state highway.
In late September I ventured northward to the Grafton area of Massachusetts and US-11513 Martha Deering WMA. This was the most uninviting spot I've been to so far, and to be fair the notice mentioned that it was 'unimproved'. There's no parking, so I had to nestle up against a stone wall on the highway. Even the spot is hard to locate, in the middle of a long state highway. We didn't have POTA Reviews then, so I had no idea what the place looked like!
This was the second activation over the weekend. My wife was showing flowers (and winning awards!) at the New England Dahlia Society annual show at Tower Hill Botanical Gardens near Worcester MA, so on this Sunday I went up to see the show and visit, then drove over to Grafton.
In spite of the bleak entrance area, once you get past that sign and 100 yards into the WMA the trail opens up and is clearly groomed and maintained. Based on the number of poop bags near the entrance I'd say it is a popular dog-walking spot for locals. There used to be an actual parking area inside to hold four or five cars, but the entire zone is cabled off, it looks like it was being used as a dump.
I hiked for about a mile looking for a spot, and settled on a quiet stand of very old pine near the foundations of an early 19th century stone house. This property was a working farm then (and, I believe, also late 18th century), and there are a lot of remnants, especially stone work. It's incredible to see structures like this and think about the sheer physical labor required to make an entire house, or barn, or paddock with just stone and sweat.
I set up on a small boulder that had been quarried, something you see all over the woods in New England. This one was pretty tiny, so it might have been used for flooring, or lintels, and I did see what looked like part of the boulder laid down as a retaining wall a few feet away. Here's the boulder and the operating position. Don't forget that it is hunting season now in New England!
Boulders like this were a source of building material for colonists and indigenous peoples alike. Here in New England the Narragansett tribe was know for their stone masonry and hired often by colonists to build structures and walls. Here you can see how they drilled and prised these layered stones into flat sections.
Conditions were tough and I was tired. Rather than look for a good mast for the dipole I just hoisted it up about ten feet by the coax. Not ideal, but it was all I had in me. I clinched the activation on FT8 and then hopped down to CW for a while. While the previous day I was working pileups, this day I could barely scare up any customers. A full 40% of my contacts were DX. In the end, though, I'd worked 22 contacts in an hour and had a nice afternoon in the woods.
Martha Deering had only been activated once before I stopped by. It's a bit out of the way and definitely uninviting, but once inside it's a really nice area. There are a few POTA sites nearby and you could easily do this and another in a day. The big attraction here, I think, are the large number of colonial and pre-Civil War stone artifacts that make up what was a working farm. I love sitting out among this stuff imagining what day-to-day life must have ben like.
I also noticed that this weekend, for the first time, I didn't think about what I was packing, I just stuck the right stuff into the bag. Of course, that didn't work out so well a few weeks later when I arrived on site without an antenna!
ID: US-11513 Martha Deering WMA
Location: Grafton MA, Bristol County
Activation date: 29 September 2024
Activated by: W1GRD
