Newman's Own Woods Are Now Everyone's

Forget about the coyotes, the turbulent Aspetuck River, or the night creatures of the forest.

When Lissy Newman and her neighborhood pals spent their childhoods playing hard in the woods behind their homes, their worst fear was that the woods they loved could become a housing development.

“I’ve always been so worried about it my whole life. I could never relax and enjoy myself over worries it might be claimed by a developer,” recalled Newman, who was born in 1961. That year her famous actor parents, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, settled in a farmhouse on the Aspetuck in Westport.

 “It was one of our great fears as kids,” agreed Ian Warburg, one of Newman’s childhood chums who joined her on a celebratory walk in the woods of their childhood on Sunday.

Finally, Newman, Warburg, their friends, neighbors and everyone can rest a little easier: May 1 marked the formal opening of the Newman-Poses Preserve, a 39-acre town-owned gem of open space with hiking trails, boardwalks and bridges through woods, a meadow and along the river.

The nature preserve, off Bayberry Lane Extension, was assembled from a 12-acre donation from the Newman family and a purchase from Lillian Poses, a lawyer who worked on the New Deal for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A year ago, the land was “short-listed to become a municipal brush waste disposal site,” Newman said, and she sprang into action.

“My father and I walked these fields frequently with the ubiquitous pack of six dogs and we fretted together about what would eventually happen here,” Newman said.

 “Oh Pop, you should have created a Paul Newman Dog-Walking Park here,’” she recalled telling him.

 "You’re probably right," he replied.

After Newman’s death in 2008, the family was approached by the town, which wanted to do something to honor the film legend. Newman came up with the idea of the nature preserve and City Hall gave the OK.

The Aspetuck Land Trust was brought in as an interested party and it agreed to maintain the preserve for hiking and passive recreation.

Newman serves as trails steward. Along with Aspetuck Land Trust volunteers and Westport Boy Scout Troop 100, she helped clear paths for hiking. Land Trust head David Brand posted trailmarkers for each of the four trails.

For Opening Day May 1, Newman shared her powerful feelings in a tribute to the land for the Aspetuck website, www.aspetucklandtrust.org.

 “I believed, from the time I was about seven, that all of this land was mine. I treated it like it was mine,” she writes. “I went crazy wild here with dogs every day after school, indeed, I thought I was a dog. I seemed to experience nature here the way a dog does, face first, running through thorns, snuffling in the mud, tracking deer.”

 “So now it belongs to everyone, as I always felt it should. Its wonderful microcosmic diversity lives on to muddy up another several generations,” the tribute continues. “I want to thank it all for raising me and teaching me and protecting me. I want to return the favor.”

Newman’s childhood forte was constructing elaborate twig forts made of woven fallen branches of wood large enough to provide overnight shelter. None has survived the New England winters, but their secret locations remain sites for family pilgrimages.

During an informal hike she led on Sunday, Newman shared other secrets of the woods, such as how to make a whistle out of an empty acorn shell. Squeezing one tightly between her thumbs and blowing hard, she demonstrated how to summon an errant dog.

On the shore of the river, she scooped up two freshwater mussels and recalled that her sister Nell, who practiced falconry and fly-fishing as a child, used to catch freshwater eels there as well.

“She cooked them in butter and made us eat them,” Newman recalled. “I remember they tasted quite good.”

To Warburg and his younger brother, Paul, the woods became the childhood home they remember best.

“We lived out woodland fantasies, it was wonderfully wholesome,” recalled Ian, as Paul pointed out a pile of fallen branches which, in their younger days, they would have transformed into a rustic overnight shelter.

 The woods were also the setting for occasional gala adult events, such as the wedding of their Aunt Daphne in “Stumpland,” a clearing filled with tree stumps.

The Warburgs’ grandfather was Edward Warburg, philanthropist and a founder of Amerian Ballet, precursor of the New York City Ballet, and the Museum of Modern Art. Along the Aspetuck was his country retreat, a family compound where he bounded out first thing in the morning into the woods with Taboo, a black Labrador, and Sage, a rescued German shepherd.

“We galloped through the woods with those dogs,” Ian remembers with deep fondness.

Don Snook, who once served as Westport’s tree warden, and his wife, Katherine, were among the first hikers at the preserve on Sunday.

The two nature lovers found the hike “very rewarding” and were especially delighted to spot yellow, purple and blue violets, periwinkles and an abundance of trout lilies. They noted the appearance of a baby garter snake sunning on a rock.

Newman greeted hikers Andy and Nancy Frankel and their four children. They are the present occupants of the Poses home.

“There’s a coyote den here,” she cautioned them. “Scary but cool!”

 “This is much better than a brush waste disposal site,” said Frankel. “We love the coyotes.”

Joanna Greenfield, who grew up nearby, said her hike with Mae West, her Cavalier King Charles spaniel, was “life-changing.”

“This place is so beautiful, so peaceful, so close by,” she marveled. “I’ve never been in these woods before and I will be back!”