Adding a wooded haven to the Cobb’s Hill series with a stroll through Washington Grove

Adding a wooded haven to the Cobb’s Hill series with a stroll through Washington Grove
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Inside one of the abandoned water towers atop Washington Grove. From 172 years ago when the Millerites trudged down Cobb’s Hill

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George Cassidy Payne. See also Genesee Valley Park Awakens

Over the last two years, we’ve chronicled the richness of Cobb’s Hill.

There was the 100 inning softball game and a 42 year croquet league and a thirty year old basketball league. And a chilly November tennis match and a chilly April Frisbee game, a cyclocross, a leaf mound , a remembrance of a tragedy, when the Millerites trudged up and down the hill and sledding in a March blizzard. (SEE SERIES AT END)

Today, George Cassidy Payne offers another one of his naturalistic montages as he captures the ancient beauty of Washington Grove.

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On the edge of Cobb’s Hill Park, there is a 27 acre forest in the city known as “Washington Grove.”

In 1932, the city and school district dedicated this quiet wooded haven, and it soon became a popular outside laboratory for learning about the natural sciences and civic responsibility.

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Today, the 200 year old oaks still offer important lessons. Nestled on top of kames and kettles, this may be the most ancient biosphere open to the public for recreational visitation in Rochester.

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About The Author

dkramer3@naz.edu

Welcome to Talker of the Town! My name is David Kramer. I have a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. I am a former and still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History and a Storyteller in Residence at the SmallMatters Institute. Over the years, I have taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. I have published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Rochester Patriot, the Providence Journal, the Providence Business News, the Brown Alumni Magazine, the New London Day, the Boston Herald, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, the CITY, Lake Affect Magazine and Brighton Connections. My poetry appears in The Criterion: An International Journal in English and Rundenalia and my academic writing in War, Literature and the Arts and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Starting in February 2013, I wrote for three Democratic and Chronicle  blogs, "Make City Schools Better," "Unite Rochester," and the "Editorial Board." When my tenure at the D & C  ended, I wanted to continue conversations first begun there. And start new ones.  So we created this new space, Talker of the Town, where all are invited to join. I don’t like to say these posts are “mine.” Very few of them are the sole product of my sometimes overheated imagination. Instead, I call them partnerships and collaborations. Or as they say in education, “peer group work.” Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.

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