In forest, conscience acts as a guide

CONCORD -- Molly Tsongas, daughter of the late former senator Paul Tsongas, doesn't want the expansive Estabrook Woods touched, even by her alma mater, Middlesex School.

To protest the school's quest to install soccer fields, field hockey practice areas, and tennis courts on 15 acres of forest, Tsongas and another alumna, Rachel Banay, 21, climbed trees facing the headmaster's house and hung a sign -- ``Middlesex, Do the right thing, Save Estabrook Woods."

``We feel the school is making an irreversible mistake," said Tsongas, 26. She said her father would have approved of the action. ``Part of his legacy was about stewarding our natural resources for future generations, and I feel like this is a perfect example of those moments in which we need to have a greater vision for our future."

It is the latest episode in a dispute that has persisted for more than a decade over Middlesex's soccer field expansion in Concord, where virtually all development debates are tinted by questions of historical significance and the philosophical legacies of Henry David Thoreau. On one side of the fight is Middlesex, a private prep school whose students are expected to move on to the best universities in the country. Its website boasts athletic fields that are ``among the finest in the northeast." But the school has fought for a place alongside better-known schools, and in the early 1990s began a $1 million process of winning approval to build new fields.

It eventually won the needed permits, but encountered opposition from residents and environmentalists who want to protect the woods, a 1,200-acre tract of forest, mostly privately owned.

Even some of the forest's protectors concede that it is ``not charismatic" and has a ``beauty that must be teased out," according to a website opposing Middlesex's plans. But it is home to Estabrook Road, which Minutemen used to join the fight against British soldiers at the Old North Bridge, and some wanderings by Thoreau.

Some Middlesex students and alumni in recent years have joined the fight , including a group calling itself the Middlesex Graduates for Estabrook, which has posted banners and bumper stickers and received coverage in local newspapers. The group says Middlesex doesn't need new athletic fields.

The school has countered critics, saying it plans to construct the fields only at the woods' edge. School officials said the facilities are needed to ensure that three field hockey teams don't have to practice on the same field at the same time.

As proof of its environmental sensitivity, school officials pointed out that one of its board members, Allen J. Model, also sits on the board of the Audubon Society. The school has set aside about 120 acres of forest for private conservation, they said.

Yesterday's protest had a nearly genteel feel, with school officials worrying mostly about the well-being of the two women sitting in the trees.

``Our only problem is we don't want anyone to get hurt," said head of school Kathy Giles, who watched them and the smattering of supporters from her office.

The women conversed with each other, swatted mosquitoes, munched on a breakfast of toast and jelly brought by Banay's mother and, later, on power bars that supporters sent up using a bookbag and piece of rope.

They remained in the trees all day, planning to stay the night in hammocks.

Earlier, elected officials -- Senator Edward M. Kennedy among them -- wrote to the school on behalf of the protesters.

School officials said such opinions won't stop the construction, but it's nice to see students exercising their right to free speech.

Said Giles: ``I respect their opinion. How can I be angry?"