Discover Concord's 2022 Guide to the Great Outdoors

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Boat landing at North Bridge

© istock.com/bpperry

A Story of Wildlife, Beauty, and Peace on the Water As I pull into the parking area in early summer, I see people down at the dock of the quaint wooden boathouse on the Sudbury River. Family-owned South Bridge Boat House on Route 62 in Concord is the gateway to the rivers for all who would like to rent a kayak or canoe to explore. You can even walk there from the Concord commuter rail station. I say rivers because you can reach all three Wild & Scenic Rivers—the Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord—from this spot! If you have your own boat, an interactive river map from the watershed organization OARS shows where you can put in. Visit oars3rivers.org/river/recreation or click on the QR code to find the map.

Today we push off downstream, paddling down the Sudbury River to where it meets the Assabet River at Egg Rock. For extra fun, you can download the OARS Summer Quest with clues to the sights along your journey!

Visit oars3rivers.org/event/summer-quest/ OARS-activities or scan the QR code on the next page for more information.

This trip is special for me because, in 2005, I took my family for a spring picnic paddle here for the first time. A few 44

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At the South Bridge Boat House, Sudbury River, Concord

weeks later, I spied a job advertisement at OARS and have worked there ever since!

I am fortunate to work on science-based advocacy, river recreation, and education every day.

We paddle northward to where the Sudbury and Assabet Rivers meet to create the Concord River, which flows north to Lowell to join the Merrimack River. The water under our boat has already traveled up to 30 miles from Westborough and will travel a further 50 miles to the Atlantic Ocean at Newburyport. Our first wildlife sighting is a group of painted turtles lined up head-to-tail on a floating log in the sun.

The Assabet River gets its name from the Algonquin word referring to the reeds along the banks. The Native American name for this stretch of the Sudbury and Concord Rivers was Musketaquid, which roughly translates to “grassy knoll.” This

| 2022 Guide to the Great Outdoors

riverine great meadow stretched over 20 miles and supported early farming towns. The rivers were well known for the plentiful fish, especially river herring and shad that migrated up from the ocean. The rivers were dammed starting in the early industrial revolution, which ended the annual fish migration. The 29 miles of federally designated “Wild and Scenic Rivers” contain no dams and are protected for their outstanding values.

As we get to Egg Rock at the confluence of the Sudbury and Assabet, we pull up near the left bank to read the 1885 inscription commemorating the founding of Concord in 1635: On the hill Nashawtuck at the meeting of the rivers and along the banks lived the Indian owners of Musketaquid before the white men came

© Sue Flint

ALISON FIELD-JUMA WITH JULIA KHORANA