Once again, Great Brook Farm was the site of an easy-to-direct and (I think) entertaining meet. The weather report was for rain, so the park personnel (specifically, "Rebecca of Great Brook Farm") opened up the cross country ski barn as a base of operations and even encouraged us to use the wood stove to warm things up. With that preparation, of course, the precipitation held off until evening, allowing most participants to finish relatively dry - most, that is, except the lucky competitors on the Long "Score" course.

In designing the courses for this meet, I had two thoughts. One, Great Brook has a limited amount of terrain, and the course possibilities in that terrain are further constrained by the farm and its fields and two significant bodies of water, Meadow Pond and Tophet Swamp. On this map, conventional courses tend to fall into two or three basic loops. To break up the pattern, I wanted to hold a Score-O for the more advanced runners, posing the challenge of deciding control order in addition to route choice. Having advertised the event as a Score-O, however, I decided that I wasn't sure everyone would have a watch for the usual time limit requirement, so I opted for a modified form of "Western Mass Rules". Specifically, each course above Yellow had its assigned controls, which could be taken in any order, and in addition any three controls could e skipped.

The second basic notion came from my thrifty Yankee upbringing and moderate sadomasochistic leanings. The club had paid Mark Dominie to map the southern segment of the park, which mainly consists of a long dogleg down the west side of Tophet Swamp, but this area had never been used for a meet. The southern section also includes a medium-sized (»250 m diameter) island in the swamp, with authentic-looking contour lines on it. To use all of this terrain that we'd invested in mapping, I put several controls on the Long course in the southern area, and three on the island itself. That way, no one would be forced to wade to the island, but if they didn't they'd have to get every other assigned control. Potential routes to the island are mapped as "crossable swamp", and in practice turned out to be no worse than knee deep in most cases. (There was a horse that became stuck up to its belly in Tophet Swamp two years ago and had to be had to be dragged out by the town rescue squad, but I did not burden our competitors with this story.)

The results were as I had hoped: enthusiastic success for most White and Yellow participants, and plenty of skipped control / route discussion on the longer courses. The winners on each course were Philip Turner on White, the Kubik Family on Yellow, Elaine Dill on the Short Score, Stephen Richardson on the Medium, and Robert Galejs on the Long. As can be seen from the listings below, people chose many different routes, and there were no real right or wrong choices. It does appear, though, that it was worthwhile to go to the island.

Many thanks to my helpers: Anne and Steve Dentino, Ed and Liz Kotowski, Dick Taylor (a non-NEOC member who called to volunteer), Robert Galejs, Pete Lane and Elizabeth, Ben and Meg Parson. In addition, Great Brook Farm Sate Park and its staff, especially Rebecca and Superintendent Ray Faucher, should be recognized for their friendliness and support of active use of the woods. To end on a remonstrative note, however: Two participants chose to run between a house and garage that are on the map, ignoring the shouts of the resident. As it turns out, that is Ray Faucher's house, and their actions could have jeopardized the club's ability to use the map again. I ended up speaking to Ray at some length, and have assured him that we will make it very clear at future meets that residential property (and farm fields, another area of complaint) should be avoided. This sort of thing should be obvious to orienteers, but I guess it eludes some - we are guests on other people's land, and if we abuse that privilege, we may not be invited back.