An earlier Andover Institute hike took a group around the heron rookery near Fenvale. Photo: Larry Chase

An easy hike of about two miles around hidden Hopkins Pond in Andover will be led by local outdoor enthusiast Lee Carvalho beginning at 9:30 AM on Saturday, July 9. Offered to the public at no charge, the walk will begin and end in the small parking lot on Elbow Pond Road, just short of a mile beyond its intersection with Route 11 on the eastern outskirts of Andover Village.

Plan on a leisurely two-hour walk along well-established trails and old woods roads with little elevation change. Heavy rain will cause cancellation, but light rain should not. Call 735-5135 or e-mail AndoverCommunity03216@nullgmail.com with questions.

Expect to see glacial erratics, loons, butterflies, dragonflies, wildflowers, and evidence of beaver activity. Invisible from any roads, and with its shoreline showing no evidence of human habitation, the 26-acre Hopkins Pond is part of Proctor Academy’s 2,500-acre campus, which is jointly managed by Proctor and the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department. Fed by runoff from Ragged Mountain, the pond water eventually finds its way to the Atlantic Ocean via Mountain Brook and the Blackwater, Contoocook, and Merrimack Rivers.

Originally known as Adder Pond, it was renamed in the 1940s in honor of Harley Hopkins, a charter member of the Andover Fish and Game Club and long-time owner of much of the pond’s shoreline. The pond is also the original home of a long-submerged dugout canoe now owned by the Andover Historical Society and on display in its museum in the Potter Place railroad station. The pond finds use today by anglers and non-motorized boaters.

Tour guide Carvalho, a retired mathematics teacher at Proctor Academy, is now embarked on a second career of sorts – as an amateur naturalist and nature writer/photographer. She is also a member of the board of directors of the Sunapee-Ragged-Kearsarge Greenway Coalition, which manages and promotes the use of a 75-mile loop trail connecting the summits of three local mountains.

The walk is the latest in a series of “Space Explorations” offered by the recently formed Andover Institute and designed to introduce participants to area locations – both natural and man-made – that receive little public visitation. Previous outings have explored the facilities of Proctor Academy; the 15 or so structures that once comprised Camp Marlyn on Bradley Lake; Cascade Falls in East Andover; the old mills and other structures of downtown Franklin; a heron rookery along the Blackwater River; and Andover’s lone remaining one-room schoolhouse (out of an original 13).

The Institute is an arm of the Andover Community Association. For more information, e-mail AndoverCommunity03216@nullgmail.com.