Marion Stoddart - The Work of 1000

The river doesn’t freeze anymore; hasn’t done so in over ten years, as far as I can tell. But in the 1970s, when my kids were in high school, the area just out from the Nod Road canoe launch was the sight of many a pick-up ice hockey game.
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Other memories involve the turtles, the large snappers that populate the river. If you have ever been chased away from a turtle’s nest along the river’s edge, you would never again believe that old folk tale about the race between the tortoise and the hare. A large nesting snapper, hissing like a cobra, with her neck extended further than the length of her body, would put any rabbit to shame for her speed.

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There are many people, now in their 40s, 50s, and even 60s, who grew up around here and remember the parties held way back in the woods on the banks of the river in Groton and Pepperell. I never attended any of the parties myself, but my kids and some of their friends told me about them. The party would normally involve a good-sized bonfire, a keg of beer, and anywhere up to 50 or 60 young people who just happened to hear about it. With not much else to do on a weekend night and no neighbors to complain, word got around pretty fast and people drifted in on paths and old logging roads. Even some of the police who tried to catch under-age party-goers had been under-age party-goers themselves in their day. One of my sons described these parties, black shadows moving across the firelight as feeling like primitive Wampanaog rituals, not a whole lot different from those performed by the very Indians the river is named after.