After the unseasonally dismal weather for most of last week, it'll be good to get out and stretch your legs in the late spring sunshine.

May I suggest the Colman Reservation, a 77-acre tract of land off Steere Street in Attleboro owned by the Attleboro Land Trust.

There are hiking trails, big rocks, birds a'singing, but the the big prize of the hike is found deep into the property: The Giant Hemlock.

I'll go out on a limb and say it's the biggest hemlock tree in the area, wide of girth and towering majestically above the other tree-tops.

I visited it a while back and was rightly awed. And a bit dismayed that there were signs of campfires nearby, and even a little singed bark on the tree itself.

The land, by the way, was a gift of the late Adele and Joseph Colman, and was the first acquisition of the Land Trust.

The Colmans made the land donation in 1992 because they wanted to preserve some of her family's property in its natural state, immune to development.

It's a short hike to get a warm welcome from a the out-stretched limbs of a gentle giant. And worth it.

Ever hear of Chief Ziplock?

Speaking of conservation, if you're free Aug. 7 you might want to head for the tip of the Cape where there will be a meeting on an Indian proposal to build a casino on the National Seashore.

There you'll meet Chief Ziplock and his male squaw Dances With Braves, members of a tribe that has "crept through the dunes of the Lower Cape for the past 400 years, surviving by raiding coolers and gnawing the shriveled meat of your discarded clam shells."

They've made a legal claim for the National Seashore stretching from Eastham to Provincetown and want to build the world's largest casino.

I got all this information from a flier, complete with a picture of the chief, that was stapled to a telephone pole in P-Town.

It's been a long winter on the Lower Cape ... Feedback on going home

Here's more feedback on that two-part column I wrote about living pretty much in the same couple of houses all my life, this one from a frequent correspondent with a flare for the darkly dramatic.

"Your last article brings to mind this story my girl cousin told ... how she came up from Florida to visit my mother and decided to go back to the house where she was brought up ... in Norton, last house on a dead-end street," he writes.

"She's got this nostalgic thing going for her ... flowing through her veins.

"She pulls up to the house and gets out of the car. There are approximately three toothless 'Deliverance' hillbillies sittin' on the steps, drinking beer.

"Too late. She tells 'em how she was raised in this house and would they mind if she looked around.

"OK. So she nervously looked around while these 'Deliverance' guys hovered over and around her like stink.

"She slowly made her way to the door. One of the hillbillies puts his arm around her shoulder and asks for a 'little kiss.'"

"She got the hell out of there," he adds, "got into her car and drove off. I don't believe she looked back.

"Somehow the way my cousin told this story ... was a little better, more poignant, comical, sad.

"I've never believed that you can ever, really, 'go back.' Things change."

Well, at least it had a happy ending. And I hope I haven't offended any toothless hillbillies in Norton.

Funny, I was just watching "Deliverance" again early Friday morning. It's dated, but still quite a movie ...

See you next week.