Return to the Clintonville Pine Barrens

By DENNIS APRILL, Outdoors Columnist

The word "barrens" conjures up images of a wasteland where nothing grows. The Clintonville Pine Barrens is empty in name only, for they are, in reality, home to an interesting, viable ecosystem. 

Last Tuesday, I revisited the Nature Conservancy owned 900-acre preserve off Buck Hill Road between Harkness and AuSable Forks. In the six years since my first visit,  there were some changes to this unique area, but nothing major as of yet. 

From the trailhead one-half mile from the intersection of the Dry Bridge and Buck Hill Roads, I walked past a gate and then through level terrain that is home to the pitch pine, a very uncommon tree in the North Country. Pitch pines thrive on sandy,  glacial soil that has been disturbed by fire. As such, the under story of Clintonville,  like many pine barrens, is dominated by blueberries and other species that grow back quickly after a burn. 

After my last visit here in 1995 and the accompanying article I wrote, I received a letter from a retired schoolteacher who detailed a lush harvest of berries in the 1930s and ‘40s when the area burned regularly. In such low intensity fires,  the under story is destroyed,  but the pitch pines, with their thick bark, survive. So the fire not only helps the blueberries,  but also kills the hardwood saplings that have taken root and would eventually compete with the pitch pines. 

The well-marked trail, which remains level throughout the loop, is so flat it is almost wheelchair accessible, though I am reluctant to say it can be completely maneuvered that way. There are a few bumps,  but not many. 

Early on, I saw coyote tracks in the thin patchy snow cover of less than an inch. They would stay with me through the entire circuit, a gradually weaving path through not only pitch pine thickets, but also occasionally white pines and a few hardwoods. The latter are on better soil built up from leaf deposits and they are the greatest threat to the pitch pines. Below the ridge on the lower ground, hardwoods are waiting to inch uphill to the sandy top land. 

The last time I walked this trail, it ended on Buck Hill Road about a quarter mile southwest of the trailhead. The return was along this lightly traveled road. This time a new loop had been added, so the swing back was through more blueberries and pines instead of hardtop. 

In all, the hike is between three-quarters to one mile and is very easy walking. In the spring, in addition to blueberries, there are bearberries,  sweet fern, sheep laurel, wintergreen and pipsissiwa growing in the barrens. 

Though no one wants a fire,  apparently over time that may be the only thing that saves the barrens, yet if I owned property near the preserve, I certainly wouldn’t want to risk losing my house to a wild fire: it’s a dichotomy that it takes fire destruction to save an ecological area. Maybe someday we will come up with a better way. 

The trailhead for the Pine Barrens Preserve is about a half-mile down Buck Hill Road from where it veers off the main Dry Bridge Road leading from AuSable Forks to Harkness. Pull over just before you see a sign that indicates a downhill slope in the road. The trail sign-in is on the left.