Chris and Mikey's Excellent Adventure Traditional Cache

The cache is located off the Tuttle-Thoreau Loop Trail. Minor bushwhacking was required during the winter when the cache was hidden; you are on your own during the summer months. No evidence of PI seen nearby. Container is a Gladlock container with a few special items for the FTF, including a Chicago White Sox pin from the World Series, and a TB that wants to travel back to Minnesota, and some other MLB trinkets.

Tthe Tuttle Thoreau Trail is located with Hapgood Wright Forest, near a couple of other caches around Fairyland Pond . Concord's largest conservation land, the Hapgood Wright Town Forest includes 183 acres between Walden Street and the Concord Turnpike. The area can be accessed from a trail head on Walden Street across from the high school.
Parking is available for Concord residents in a lot adjacent to the trail head. The park is closed from 9pm to 5am.

The area is mentioned in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau and their contemporaries. The name ‘Fairyland’ probably dates to the 1850s and is attributed to Emerson’s children and their companions, including Louisa May Alcott, who lived nearby and often played there.^[2]

The Fairyland Pond as it appears today is artificial, having been created in the late 19th century when a dam was constructed. The dam’s drainage culvert was rebuilt in 2011. The inflow to the pond originates about 500 feet to the south at Brister’s Spring, named for Brister Freeman (also known as ‘Scipio’ or ‘Sippio’ Brister), a freed slave who lived with his family on the small hill from which the spring emerges.^[3] The location of Brister’s house is now marked as part of the Drinking Gourd Project, which commemorates Concord’s role in the abolitionist movement.^[4] The site was considered significant by Emerson, who would sometimes bring visitors to drink a glass of water from the spring.^[2]

Brister's Spring near Fairyland Pond

Like the nearby Walden Pond (about half a mile to the south), Fairyland lies within a kettle hole, a depression formed by a retreating glacier. The artificial pond itself covers an area of 2.75 acres. Unlike Walden Pond (which is the deepest lake in Massachusetts), the Fairyland Pond is relatively shallow, with a maximum depth of 4 feet. Its 60-acre watershed is largely undeveloped, lying mostly within the Hapgood Wright conservation area. A certified vernal pool^[5] lies immediately to the west of the pond. The surrounding forest is primarily mixed hardwood, hemlock, pine and maple, and the area provides habitat for a diverse range of wildlife.^[6]