Well, we behaved ourselves and refrained from any diving – or cliff jumping! – but had one great day anyhow at the Beckett Quarry and hiking trails. The granite quarry operated from the 1930’s until it just stopped one day in the 1960’s leaving behind incredibly interesting rotting trucks, cranes, railroad tracks, all kinds of equipment, all now rusting on site. If you’re in NYC or elsewhere, you probably have granite quarried here in Beckett. It’s an impressive site. I took 96 photos so here’s just a quick look. The men hikers had a particularly exciting hike day. With time, and a few new spark plugs, they might have fixed everything up. That huge iron tank in photo 3 is an air compressor tank, the truck below an air compressor truck. (Something like that.) Hiker Conrad, a retired engineer, had quite a heyday roaming from one wreck to another and explaining how the cranes operated. We met some really nice teenage hikers who were there for some Diving and Cliff Jumping. (Ah! Youth!) The water in the once quarry site is now many hundreds of feet deep. Best to have deep water if one is disposed to Cliff Jumping I think. Our gang posed for a photo for next year’s hiking calendar on a wonderful old wreck of a truck. That’s me in the green Central Park Tennis Club hat! The rock cave, where apparently dynamite was stored, sort of gave us chills. No one went in! Not even the dogs!!! but the rail tracks still go up to the cave entrance. We set out on the long and interesting hiking trails … granite everywhere! Fun! An interesting big clearing project (photo with all the cut trees) being done by Massachusetts Fisheries and Wildlife is taking place with a hope of restoring the New England Cotton Tail Rabbit to our region. I won’t do a lot of explaining, but it really is an impressive endeavor. Most of us had already read about it in MA Wildlife quarterly periodical. We had a great, and long, day. I’ll see some of you this weekend for the Land Trust Farm and Garden Tour here in Conway and Ashfield. But I wish I’d be seeing ALL of you this weekend! Love, Penny 
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