Sklar Park, Rampe Conservation Easement, and Jeremiah Colburn Natural Area

Sklar Park in orange; Rampe Conservation Easement in blue; Jeremiah Colburn Natural Area in green.

Orono, Old Town, Bangor — this is the land for long, interconnected trail systems! Many of these link several neighborhoods, making it easy for many people to access.

This big trail system connects the Sklar, Rampe, and Colburn parcels, and it includes both protected land and private property. The trails that cross private property are identified with signs asking people to be respectful and are blazed yellow.

Between the three preserves, there are many miles of trails! It’s helpful, if you’re not familiar with the area, to use a digital map like AllTrails (or my Google map!) to keep track of where you are. I tried to map just the blazed, “official” trails, but since these systems seem to be well used, you’ll find lots of unofficial trails as well, and a few may have snuck in. For the most part, the blazed trails are well maintained.

There is some slope to the land, meaning that in general as you head west in all of these preserves, toward the highway, you’ll walk up a gradual, moderate hill. Walking in this direction also brings you closer to the highway noise, but this didn’t bother me much.

Sklar Park: The 40-acre park is owned by the town and managed jointly with Orono Land Trust. There are two main places to park, both at the end of dead end streets. If you begin at the end of Gilbert Street, you’ll start your walk along the edge of a pretty meadow. The then trail swings down to a bridge over Johnny Mack Brook where I saw a couple of dogs cooling off on a hot day. The next part of the trail — through a beautiful mature conifer forest (mostly pines, I believe) — is really nice. Follow the blue blazes to stay on the official paths. You can make your over to the nature trail at the Dirigo Pines retirement community on either official or unofficial trails. Once you’re on the Dirigo trail, you might read about some of the interesting natural history that’s been posted there.

Rampe Conservation Easement: This is a great system of trails behind the high school, and the easiest place to park is at the school. (In general, I try to visit school-adjacent trails when school is not in session.) Walk past the athletic fields (and beautiful lupines in June!) until you see a sign for Town Forest (on the left) or a blazed trail (on the right). Once you’re on the trail system, be ready to confront a maze of paths! The most popular route is to follow the blue-blazed main trail — used by the cross-country team — around the perimeter of the area. It is wide, level, and fairly easy. As you head west, you’ll go up a moderate hill that levels out at the top. Interspersed throughout the parcel are several white-blazed “Spur Trails.” These tend to be narrower and a bit rougher than the blue trail. Also, like elsewhere in this system, trails on private land open to the public are blazed in yellow. Two big vernal pools on the property have been named Lost Pond and Frog Pond.

Jeremiah Colburn Natural Area: The highlights of this area are a few remarkable trees — Porcupine Trees, Lightning Tree, Big Old Tree, and Pineapple Tree — as well as a meadow called Sally Field. What you see at the porcupine trees are two conical mounds of droppings from the resident porcupine(s)! Lightning Tree and Big Old Tree are also dramatic: At the first, you can check out burn marks where part of the tree was seared off by lightning. (The tree was struck twice!) Big Old Tree is massive white pine (there are a couple others nearby). I missed Pineapple Tree, which is a pine tree intertwined with an apple tree.

The preserve includes trails on private property that are marked with yellow blazes, as well as a connector trail to the Tech Park that runs parallel to the highway. I did not like this noisy, exposed section, although I did admire some wildflowers there (unfortunately, the introduced bristly locust, I believe). The trails on Teaberry Hill, on private land, to the north of the preserve don’t appear to be maintained.

As you walk east to west, expect to head up a moderate incline. I also found the stretch of trails at the northeast side of the park, closer to the Bennoch Road side, to be a bit brushy, grassy and wet. But the rest of the preserve, in more established forest, is drier and pleasant.

Directions: For such a big trail system, places to park are relatively few. For Sklar Park, park at the end of Gilbert or Mainewood Drives. For Rampe, park at Orono High School. For access to Colburn, I think it’s probably okay to park at the Tech Park, off Godfrey Drive, behind the building there (currently KidSpace). If you’re worried about that, it’s always less stressful to visit during the weekend, or perhaps leave a note on your dashboard explaining that you’re using the trail system. There are more places to access the trail system if you’re coming by foot or bike.