An Ode to Coggshall Park

The Save Fitchburg were at Coggshall on Saturday for a little while (not for the first time this summer), and it was a good reminder to just how valuable a resource the park is in the middle of the city.

For starters, the place was packed in the early afternoon. The playground was jammed with kids, plenty of people were milling around the pond, Family Dawg was steaming up dogs, and a wedding was getting ready to go off at the Gazebo. Parking spots were few and far between. If you think Coggshall is underused, you weren't there on Saturday.

There was even a noticable lack of geese (I really dislike geese, harkening back to the days when my parents had pet geese that were the nasty "pets" you'd ever meet. They were everything you hear bad about geese. Aggressive, territorial, dirty. But I digress) and geese poop. There are signs all over the place asking people not to feed the geese and ducks, and for the most part people are on board. It's making a big, big difference, because the pond and paths alongside are much better than they were last year or two years ago.

There was one natural downer: On an earlier visit this year, we found a handful of turtles sunning in a corner of the pond near the pathway to the gazebo. The Save Fitchburg children were none to please to find no turtles on Saturday.

Now that the SFC are able to walk their little legs longer distances, we've done the loop around the pond, and on Saturday ventured into the trails up the hill behind the pond. It was a pleasant walk, rewarded with a nice view from the outcropping of rocks at the top. It's a short walk, and worth the trip.

I know from time to time folks here -- and around the city -- think Coggshall is a waste of space and should be plowed under for development. If you were there last Saturday, you'd understand that would be a terrible, terrible idea, and that Coggshall is one of the city's better facets.