BENNINGTON — With snow on the ground, the Bruce Edes Memorial Forest is now open for snowshoers, cross-country skiers and snowmobilers to enjoy the forest’s rapids, glacial boulders and plantation of red pines.

“Very few towns have a park like this in the middle of downtown,” said Jon Manley, a member of the Conservation Commission. “And it is about as close to downtown as you can get.”

The land has been a public forest since 2005, when the town voted to turn 24 acres donated by the Monadnock Paper Mill, and an additional 12 acres already owned by the town, into a town forest. The Conservation Commission had spent several years bringing the vision to fruition.

But Bruce Edes, a member of the Conservation Commission, never got to see the completion of the project, dying at the age of 54, a year before it was finished.

Now, every year on Edes’ birthday, Sept. 9, the Conservation Commission sponsors a public hike through the forest to honor his contributions to the project. This year, they also decided to add the final piece of the puzzle - a sign in his name.

The Conservation Commission spent months looking for the perfect medium to honor his memory.
“It was a long process deciding what we wanted the sign to look like,” said Conservation Commission member Joe MacGregor.

Manley said the commission looked at a lot of natural wood signs and placards, but eventually decided that a large inscribed boulder would be a lasting memorial and a good fit with Edes’ personality. “He was a hiker, fisher, trapper and an old-time Yankee,” said Manley. “There was nothing that reflected Bruce’s attitude better than a big hunk of granite.”

The commission spent a long time looking for the perfect boulder for the job, until MacGregor found one sitting in front of the Francestown Sand and Gravel Company, owned by Chris Stewart.

“I was driving by and I saw it, and I was like, there it is,” said MacGregor.

Stewart donated the boulder to the Conservation Commission and personally transported it to Bennington’s VFW Hall on the border of the forest to place it in its new home during the weekend of the public hike held every year on Edes’ birthday.

A month later, on Nov. 16, John Kaufhold, owner of Peterborough Marble and Granite Works, inscribed the boulder for a reduced cost.

The boulder is inscribed with the name of the forest and a symbol of four sets of four lines radiating from a round sun that had particular meaning to Edes — so much so, that he had it tattooed on his shoulder.

According to Manley, the symbol indicates the four seasons, four directions, four stages of life (childhood, youth, middle age and old age) and the four times of day (sunrise, noon, evening and night). “It incorporates a whole lot of things that Bruce was involved with,” said Manley. “We asked his family to come up with a symbol that represented Bruce and every family member came up with this symbol independent of each other.”

The symbol has come to represent the forest, as well, and is used on all of the signs, maps, and brochures.

MacGregor said that for the Conservation Commission, the placing of the memorial has been like a formal completion of the project.

“The sign is really a formal opening. The forest was dedicated in 2005, but this really sets it up and says here we are.” The MacGregor said the Conservation Commission will continue to expand trails and make the forest a natural resource for the town.

This article appeared in the Jan. 17, 2012, edition of the Ledger-Transcript.