Musquash Esker Trail, Grand Lake Stream

If you look at this trail on Google maps, you can easily see that it follows an esker out into a fen (which enlightening panels along the trail will explain is different from a bog!). Another panel explains how glaciers made eskers, those long, narrow raised mounds you encounter on many Maine walks. Musquash Esker was created 12,500 years ago. Expect a great sense of peace when you get to the end of the path.

I was initially not excited by this one-way, flat trail when I looked at it on the map, but very soon after I began walking along the accessible path, I realized I was in an amazing place. It is part of the Downeast Lakes Community Forest’s 57,000+ acres, which includes several large lakes.

The peatland around the esker is beautiful (and includes a domed bog hidden out of sight). There is a unique, sweet smell to the place, which I thought must be emanating from the peatland vegetation? There are places along the trail you can check out the fen, including from a bench on a platform at the end, set so you can take in the sight of Amazon Mountain rising behind Big Musquash Stream.

The wooded trail you follow along the length of the esker is charming, too, in its way. On the day I visited, it was lined with mushrooms.

The area is protected by Downeast Lakes Land Trust. The trail also early on passes quarry ponds and a small meadow. Here’s a good guide to the area trails.

Directions: The trailhead parking area is marked with a sign on the north side of Milford Road, about 5.5 miles east of Grand Lake Stream. The trail begins behind a gate on the old “Talmadge Road.”