Redding Community Hiking Club: Geology Hike

There is a boulder out there that is eighty per cent garnet, and somebody is going to explain how it got there.

This is a geology walk through the New Pond Farm Education Center in Redding, an environmental education center and working farm with cows, sheep, chickens, stone walls and rolling hills. The point of the morning is that the landscape at New Pond Farm is Fairfield County and the Western Connecticut Highlands in miniature, shaped over 400 million years by plate tectonics, glaciation and rivers. On the way you pass glacier boulders, that garnet boulder, pastures sitting on glacial and riverine sediment above marble bedrock, and higher woodland grown on thin glacial sediment over metamorphic gneiss. The guide is Bruce Ward, PhD, a professional geologist and a New Pond Farm board member.

The Redding Community Hiking Club is a collaboration between the Redding Land Trust and the Mark Twain Library, running family-friendly guided hikes through the town's open space, most of them led by Land Trust trustees.

Good to know. Free, but registration is required and closes on Thursday 5 November at 4pm. The group is capped at 25. The hike is easy to moderate, family friendly, and takes about two hours. It starts promptly at 10:00am, so arrive at least ten minutes early. Dress for it: long pants and sturdy shoes.

Where to go. Not the library. New Pond Farm Education Center, Redding. The parking and gathering point is sent out with your registration.