Arlene wanted to do some walking. I didn’t want to just walk around our loop, so I suggested going over to Poland and looking for ducks at Range Pond State Park. We first stopped at the little park in Webb’s Mills, where Matt and I had seen some ducks in the spring when we went mountain biking. There weren’t any, but it looked like a nice place to put a canoe or rowboat in the water if you wanted some very low-key boating — maybe an ideal place to take a kid for some introductory paddling, where you wouldn’t ever be far from shore and wouldn’t have to worry about power boats.
We didn’t see an entrance to Range Ponds (though we did see another boat landing place to file in our memory) so we went on to Poland Spring Preservation Park. Near the entrance were several pear trees with lots of windfalls on the ground. We didn’t think anyone really cared about the fruit or it wouldn’t have been lying there, so we each picked up a handful. Total, one dozen sound, slightly underripe pears of unknown variety. There were several cars in the parking lot by the start of the walking trails. We went all the way down the Montague trail, the one we had walked in the spring, and didn’t see any birds to speak of. At the bottom of the trail, by the lake, we looked for a long time to figure out what had made a big splash in the water, without success. Then farther away, way across the pond, we noticed a crowd of people sitting on the beach. A cheer went up, and people emerged from the water. Was it some sort of charity pledge cold water swim event? We don’t know.
Arlene’s family had a pear tree in the backyard when she was a kid. Her mother used to cook and can the pears. That was the goal with the ones we had picked up. Sure enough, we peeled, cored, and sliced them, added a cup and a half of sugar to the dozen pears, added two cinnamon sticks, cooked for a while, and ended up with four pint jars of pears.