Piper Stream Preserve, Northport

From the small parking area (big enough for three cars), you can walk about half a mile along Piper Stream, a charming brook, through the woods. The Coastal Mountains Land Trust calls the parcel a “pocket preserve” with an ecologically important stream.

At 0.25 miles, the blazed trail comes to a natural stone bench at old stone abutments, once the site of a stave mill, which, according to my internet research, was a manufacturing facility that produced strips of wood for vats, tanks, tubs, and barrels. Before plastic, barrels were once an important way to transport many goods—including whiskey!

You can keep going for another quarter mile from the stone bench to the preserve boundary — on what was a slightly rougher trail when I visited — before turning around and retracing your steps.

Directions (from the land trust): From Belfast, take Main Street to Route 52. Continue 3.8 miles south, before turning left on Prescott Hill Road after the sharp curve right. Go 0.3 mi down the hill and park in the small three-car lot.