Byron Brumbaugh

October 29, 2024

Red Virginia creeper vines growing on a tall oak.

 

The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth..

-Chief Seattle

 

Acorns bulge up through the soles of my boots and sometimes crunch beneath my weight.  The oaks have pretty much stopped throwing the things at whatever and whoever is below them, but they’ve left plenty on the ground.  The black walnuts, too, have stopped dropping their fruit on the trail, though there are still plenty of black smudges where the yellow-green fruit used to be.  Many of the birds of summer have taken wing to head south and no longer fill the air with song.  Still, there is plenty of life – purplestem asters are abloom and bumblebees flit amongst their blossoms, gathering pollen.  The deep forest has lost some of its density, but it still offers a calming bosom of stillness in which to rest my thoughts.

I wonder why people are drawn to spend time in nature.  I think that is pretty much universally true, although many may feel that the impulse is better ignored than to be embraced and have to deal with what they may perceive to discomfort and inconvenience.  Many are drawn to forests, some to mountains and most people are drawn to the beach.  Sometimes we are drawn to outdoors because that is the only place where we can do certain activities, like play baseball, race cars or fly airplanes.  But, I believe, most would agree that the outdoors draws us to spend time there, at least on occasion, simply because it is there.

Sometimes going into nature is a way of getting outside of our daily routine.  In order to take a break from a place, it’s necessary to go someplace else.  If you want to really get away, you need to go someplace else that is really different.  If you’re inside, go outside.  If you’re in a city, go to the country.  If you’re around a lot of people, take the road less traveled, the one that wanders around into parts seldom visited and untouched by human hands.   When I’m out on the rail-trail with Waldo, I can’t help but feel that I’m outside of my everyday life and I can look at that life from outside of it.

I’ve heard it argued that people are drawn to the beach and breaking surf because of species memory.  Somehow, we retain a yearning for the ocean, or a lake, or a stream, that our distant ancestors felt and we left behind millennia ago.  A fish memory buried beep in our souls that we never lost as we evolved.  Some say that people like to look at idyllic pictures of meadows surrounded by forest and lakes because they put us in touch with our arboreal ancestor memories.  The trees are a safe haven, the fields offer great places to forage and the lakes provide a ready source of life-giving water.

There is something primordially appealing to communing with Mother Nature.  To me, being out in the woods and its cool shade is like going home.  I like the beach a little less because of the harsh sun, but even going outside onto a football field has its appeal.  It’s just that the woods are a little more comfortable.  High craggy mountains give opportunity for incredible vistas, although climbing their ridges can be a little daunting.  Outdoors anywhere is better than being stuck inside.

I can’t help but feel that there is something that drags at my primordial soul, enticing me to pay attention to my essence which is, after all, neither more nor less than a part of the nature that surrounds us.  I would wager that I’m not alone at thinking, on some superficial level, that I am somehow different from nature, that humanity is above all that.  What hubris!  We are all nothing more than a combination of the same elements that make up the rest of the world.  Getting away from our manmade caves of wood and mortar, or our transportation glass and metal cocoons and surrounding ourselves with an environment created by the forces of nature allows us to come in contact with a reality more fundamental than what our daily lives provide.  You want to find out who you truly are, go out and experience who you are when you are engulfed by Mother Nature, because that is your true self.

In the end, all these mental gymnastics don’t put you in nature, though.

To get there, just go outside and open yourself to the experience.

 

Beautiful sunny day on the rail-trail.

Posted by Byron Brumbaugh in Walking with Waldo, 0 comments

October 22, 2024

If you have to live in the woods, this isn’t a bad place to do it.

 

The humanity we share is more important than the mental illness we may not.

-Elyn R. Saks

 

It’s mid-afternoon on the rail-trail, around 3 PM.  The temperature is 63℉ and there is a light breeze.  There are a few tan leaves on the tarmac, mostly birch, and, in places where white pines grow close by, patches of needles.  The oaks, black walnut and most of the maples are still green, but the smooth sumac has turned to red.  There are towering dark green oaks accented with large dark red splotches of Virginia creeper vines that have crawled their way up the canopy of the tree.  Veils of fox grape vine hang loosely from the upper branches of some trees like they’re wearing yellow and tan shawls.  The sky is partly cloudy and the ground is slightly damp from a storm that passed through yesterday.  Waldo and I are making our way down the still very green tunnel through which the path passes.

A fellow on a bicycle passes us, going the opposite direction.  I recognize him as the guy who lives in a tent just off the trail near the Hudson/Marlborough border.  Before he can go very far, I ask him if he’ll stop and talk.  He puts on the brakes and comes to a stop.  “Sure,” he says.  I ask him, just to be sure, if he’s the one that lives in the tent.  He says that he is.  I tell him about the boys and their scooters, but he doesn’t know anything about them (other than someone ransacked his place).  We are soon wrapped up in a pleasant conversation about his circumstances.  Waldo sits down and ignores us as we talk.

He is homeless, unemployed and living in the tent for the past couple of months.  I ask him several times if he needs anything and he says that he does not and he gets enough to eat.  Although he smells of the great unwashed, he appears quite healthy and in good condition.  He is twenty-six years old and is going to court tomorrow, but we don’t get into about what.  His adopted family and his biological family have abandoned him and he has struggled with many issues that have forced him to be homeless.

I am not surprised.  It doesn’t take long before it’s quite apparent that he is delusional.  All the factual stuff is imbedded in a confused litany of beliefs about how the world works that make absolutely no sense.  The man has lost touch with reality.  This is not a judgment call.  It’s not that I disagree with his beliefs, they’re incoherent and disconnected.  He talks about having seen his “Akashic record” several times and that he has special powers that he wants to use to help people.  He claims that he has platinum crosses worth a lot of money and he owns a house, but he doesn’t know where it is.  He expects to come into a large inheritance soon, left by his biological mother.  What he talks about is a jumbled mish-mash that’s impossible to follow.  I think it’s all dreams and wishes without any substantial reality.  I’m pretty sure he has a diagnosis of schizophrenia and is not taking his meds.

Massachusetts is a “right-to-shelter” state, so I ask him why he doesn’t stay in a shelter.  He says that he’s afraid that “they” (I presume he means the other people staying there) will steal all his things.  That is a very real possibility and something that is shared by many of the homeless but sheltered.  They are desperate, after all.  In addition, people with psychiatric problems don’t like being constrained by people who are trying to help them.  Those people often, believing that they are being kind and caring, pressure psychiatric unfortunates to do things they don’t want to do.  Like seek medical help (they feel there’s nothing wrong with them), take medication (that makes them not feel well in various ways), live in safe housing (in which they don’t feel safe at all), or go to a hospital (which robs them of their self-determination).  21% of the homeless report having a serious mental illness.  Compare that to 16% who report having a substance abuse disorder (being as how people like to self-medicate, I’m not sure how the two are teased apart).

I ask him what his name is.  He says it’s Derrick.  I introduce myself and Waldo, shake his hand, tell him it was a pleasure meeting him and we continue on our separate ways.

Derrick is neither unique nor unusual.  In the latter part of the last century, when antipsychotics first came on the market (allowing patients to be able to function well enough in society), it was decided that it was inhumane and a violation of a patient’s rights to forcibly keep psychiatric patients (who were not a threat to themselves or others) in hospitals and many hospitals were emptied.  The result was, and is, that there are many people out here in the world that don’t fit in, although they offer no great threat to anyone.

I don’t feel sorry for Derrick, that would be condescending.  He’s struggling with his demons, as we all do with our own.

I do worry a bit about him, though.

 

I don’t think Waldo would mind at all… At least until it got cold.

Posted by Byron Brumbaugh in Walking with Waldo, 0 comments

October 15, 2024

The rail-trail at its (nearly) pristine best.

 

It’s always something!

-Gilda Radner

 

The weather has finally reached a temperature, highs in the low 60s to low 70s, where Waldo and I can go walking any time of the day.  That means that we don’t miss very many days out on the rail trail.  Not only do we get to experience nature’s slow, but inexorable, slide toward winter, we are also exposed to a whole variety of things that happen out there.  There’s the usual squirrel play, bird serenading, insect pestering things going on, but there are sometimes quite unusual events.  The trail is a winding swath of wilderness, but humankind is not far away.

One morning, Waldo and I were just starting out on our walk.  It was a little cool and not at all windy.  The black walnuts and maples gave good shade over the tarmac further down the trail, but we were at the intersection of the trail and Hudson Street, so we were exposed to the early morning sun.  We passed a woman who seemed a bit preoccupied.  I asked here if she was alright and she mumbled something about calling the police because of a woman on a bench.  I looked down the trail and there, in the shade, was a woman sitting on a bench with her head laying low on her chest.  She didn’t seem to be conscious.  About then, a policeman came by.  I identified myself as a retired ER physician and offered to help, if my help was needed (I didn’t want to get in the guy’s way of doing what he needed to do).

We walked up to the bench and it was obvious, after a cursory examination, that the woman had ODed on narcotics.  The cop called for his partner to bring some Narcan and, after a couple of squirts of the stuff up the woman’s nose, her eyes opened.  She was still too far gone to be able to speak, but it was apparent that she would be okay.  An ambulance came by and Waldo and I took our leave.

Another time, this time in the afternoon, Waldo and I were walking along, enjoying a late summer cool breeze wafting through the shade provided by the tall old oaks and birches and we passed a couple who asked if we saw the tent pitched just off the trail near the border of Marlborough and Hudson.  I had not.  Walking past where they said I would find it, I noticed a two-man tent, dark green/gray and easy to miss if you’re not paying attention.  On another afternoon, I just happened to see a young man on a bicycle ride up next to the tent and get off his bike.  I said hello, but he wasn’t in the mood to talk, so I left him to his own devices and Waldo and I went on our way.  That tent has been there for months now.  I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing the guy is homeless.  He’s keeping a good campsite with no significant footprint, so I leave him alone.

About a week ago, Waldo and I wewre walking by the construction site, near Fort Meadow Reservoir, where heavy equipment is pushing dirt around to make a new park, and two motor scooters approached us from behind.  They each carried two kids, roughly mid-teens to early-twenties, on them, coming on relentlessly and fast.  That is something I felt I had to take action on because motorized vehicles are prohibited from the trail – they’re too dangerous, especially with all the very young kids that are there, walking, skating, riding bicycles and being pushed in strollers.  So I stood in front of the lead scooter and forced them to stop.  I told them that they needed to leave the trail because motorized vehicles are not allowed.  They ignored me and continued around me and on down the trail.  I called the police and they said they would send a patrol car around.

As we passed people on the trail, I asked them if they saw the scooters.  Everyone said they did, so they were still going down the trail.  I then passed a woman on a bicycle who said she came across them, off their scooters, ransacking the homeless man’s tent.  When I went by the tent, I saw that it was open and a sleeping bag was on the ground outside it.  I felt bad for the homeless guy.  After all the trouble in life he has to deal with, he has to be subjected to that kind of thing too?  It wasn’t right.  Marlborough is very good at responding to things that happen on the trail and really try to keep it a safe place to enjoy the outdoors.  It wasn’t long before the police showed up, but by then the kids and their scooters were long gone.

When these kinds of things happen, Waldo stops and sits, waiting for me to do my thing.  He doesn’t understand what’s going on, but he does understand that he needs to bide his time until I’ve done with what I think I need to do.  Then we’re off again down the trail and he can continue his sniffing.  I think he’s bored by it all, but gives me the space I need.

Generally speaking, the trail provides a path into the real world of Mother Nature secluded from the artificial world of man.

Except sometimes.

 

Homeless man’s camp.

Posted by Byron Brumbaugh in Walking with Waldo, 0 comments

October 8, 2024

Sometimes, it rains.

 

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.

-Vivian Greene

 

Finally!  The weather has cooled.  Highs have dropped from the mid-eighties to sixty degrees.  That means that Waldo and I can go walking just about any time of day.  But it’s still too warm to walk with a jacket on during peak temperature times and too cold to walk in the mornings without one.  I don’t like to take my jacket off and then have to carry it, so we’ll wait until the afternoon to head out to the rail-trail.  The kicker is, it’s raining all day.  That means I’m going to wear my rain jacket and pants.  Normally, that would mean I will be uncomfortably warm, but my rain clothes are old and have lost their impermeability.  So I’ll get wet, but not as soaked as I’d get without them and the wet will keep me cooler.  Life is full of compromises.

The rain is light, more like a drizzle, really, but constant.  There’s not much wind, which means no driving rain.  My rain clothes soak up water, instead of repelling it, but the process is slow, so there is some protection from the wet.  Still, it doesn’t take long and my shirt and pants are damp, although not nearly as soaked as they’d be if I took off my rain gear.  It’s all tolerable; I won’t melt and my toes aren’t going squish, squish in my boots, so we’re good.

Waldo could care less about light rain.  If it’s raining really hard, he’ll try to take shelter by going from bush to bush, but in this kind of drizzle, he pretty much ignores it.  In fact, I think he rather likes it.  Rain means there are puddles and he prefers lapping up water from puddles to drinking water from his water bottles, for some reason.  There are also fewer bicycles to contend with (although the number is not zero), which is appealing to him.  We are not the only ones out here in the weather. doing doggy duty, so we get to do some socializing, which he enjoys.

The rain is light enough that the visibility is about two miles.  In the clearing where the new park is being constructed, I can see all the way across Fort Meadow Reservoir and north well into the hills.  This is the kind of weather I used to like to fly in – dense enough to require instruments, but light enough that everything was above minimums.  At altitude, you’re surrounded by a soft blanket of white.  But as you descend to land, you pop out underneath the clouds and there in front of you, as if by magic, is a long straight runway ready to gently accept you to its bosom and give harbor to the wet and weary.

Nature is different in the rain.  The light is dimmed from the clouds, and you get a little more green and blue with a bit less yellow and red.  Things take on a darker, more verdant hue and lose the vibrant glitter they have in bright unobscured sunlight.  The light is so diffused that there are no shadows, which give things a flatter look.  Much of the texture of living things, like tree bark, is lost.   It’s quieter outside, not just from the scattering of noise by raindrops, but also because most animals, like birds, insects and squirrels, are quietly waiting out the drizzle in their hidey-holes.  The air smells different, saturated with wetness, the odor of mud and, well, wet Waldo.

None of this makes walking in the rain less pleasant than walking in sunshine.  It’s just different.  You see nature from a different perspective that adds to its beauty, it doesn’t detract from it.  I remember scuba diving at depths of 60 to 100 feet and things had a similar appearance.  At that depth, only the green and blues can be seen, the other wavelengths of light are absorbed by the water.  Diving at night, when you bring your own source of light in the form of an electric lantern, and all the yellows oranges and reds magically appear.  The world seems so different, but not necessarily more beautiful.

For Waldo and me, walking in the rain is not a burden.  It just adds to the variety of our experience.  We still get our exercise and time outside in the woods.

And that’s what’s important.

 

Things are quite green in the rain.

Posted by Byron Brumbaugh in Walking with Waldo, 0 comments

October 01, 2024

My good friend, Waldo.

 

Happiness is a warm puppy.

-Charles M. Schultz

 

It’s been a long hot summer here in Massachusetts.  There have been years when it’s been hotter, but it hasn’t ever, for as long as I’ve been here, been so hot, day after day, week after week.  It’s almost fall and the high temperatures are still on the mid-eighties.  For Waldo and me, that’s a nuisance because it means we have to finish our walks before late morning.  It’s not such a big deal really, except when I need to be somewhere else in the morning and then we can’t walk that day.  It’ll sure be nice when things cool off enough that we can walk later on.

Although the temperatures are still hot, the length of the day is getting quite a bit shorter.  That signals many plants to begin their slow transition into winter mode, despite the high temperatures.  Although most trees remain green, a few leaves on the maples and sumacs have started to turn.  A small number have even fallen onto the ground.  The weeds and grasses have gone to seed and the oaks are profusely dropping acorns on whatever sits beneath them.  It’s not unusual at all to be walking along and hear a whack! as one of the things crash to the ground (or the roof of a car).  Outside our door, the ground is covered by large ball bearings deposited by a towering oak.  Tennis-ball sized black walnut fruit can be found on the trail, although just a few.  I’m sure most of them are still hanging onto their branches, waiting for the next big rainstorm to separate them from their parent tree.

Fall is definitely not far away, along with its cooler temperatures.  Waldo and I will soon be able to walk later in the day.  Among other things, that means we’ll be able to go on longer hikes — ten miles, twelve or even longer.  Walking was one of the reasons I got Waldo, you know, and it’ll be good to stretch that to the extent of our endurance.

Walking wasn’t the only motivation I had in getting a dog when I retired, of course.  It’s true I wanted a dog whose needs would inspire me to get off my duff and get the exercise I need to stave off the unavoidable dissolution of old age.  But I also wanted a companion, another living being, to share life with; a personality with whom to interact and hold loneliness at bay.  Waldo has given me all that and in spades.

I am amazed at the spectrum of animals that can form deep bonds with people.  People don’t have just domesticated animals (like cats and dogs) for pets, but also animals whose evolutionary separation from humans is hundreds of millions of years old.  That includes animals like snakes, birds and even spiders.  Some even have wild predators, like lions and tigers and bears, for companions.  Ancient pharaohs used cheetahs for hunting.  They hooded them and took them out to the bush on the rumps of horses and then released them to chase down game, much like how falconry is done.

And homo sapiens is not the only species that adopt other animals. Koko the gorilla had a cat for a pet, as did Tonda the orangutan. Capuchin monkeys are known to adopt and care for baby marmosets.  A crow raised a stray kitten who couldn’t care for itself without assistance.  Elephants have befriended dogs and at least one goose paired up with a tortoise.  There is something more universal going on here than just the penchant for people to acquire surrogate children by bringing animals into their lives.

Oxytocin is a hormone that is associated with social bonding, stress reduction and feelings of trust and empathy, among other things.  Serum levels increase in both humans and their pets as bonds are formed.  Perhaps the production of oxytocin was an evolutionary development that encouraged people to bond together in groups that in turn improved their ability to survive as a species.  Maybe this trait has spilled over to include the ability to bond closely with other animals as well.  But cheetahs are solitary animals as adults and yet they still can form close loving interactive relationships with people.  Just as close as dogs can.  Maybe something else is going on.

The thing that I enjoy the most about having Waldo in my life is the opportunity to take care of another intelligent being.  This is true even when I’m awakened at three o’clock in the morning by the disgusting odor of watery diarrhea because he couldn’t hold on to it until daylight (I’m sure oxytocin isn’t the only, or even the dominant, hormone flowing through me at those times).  I get something meaningful out of being with Waldo, not just because of an oxytocin rush, or anything else that’s an immediate and direct benefit to me.  Something more spiritual is happening.  Something that is not an expression of what I want, but who I am.  I take care of Waldo because it exercises a part of me that cries out to be nurtured and developed.  It’s much like walking Waldo to keep m

e physically healthy and strong, even when it is tiring and painful.  Perhaps oxytocin doesn’t motivate what I do, rather what I do is mediated by it.  The hormone flowing through my veins certainly does make things easier.

Maybe we should try to understand all relationships more in spiritual terms than simply as a mechanistic, hormonally based, biological imperative.

What’s important is, I am Waldo’s friend.

 

He’s listening to me…

Posted by Byron Brumbaugh in Walking with Waldo, 0 comments

September 24, 2024

The rail-trail is a beautiful place to walk.

 

We don’t make movies to make more money.  We make money to make more movies.

-Walt Disney

 

The Assabet River Rail Trail is a very pretty walk.  It has a special place in Waldo’s and my heart.  The forest it passes through is thick enough that, in places, you can’t see, hear or smell the surrounding city and all its human hubbub.  It leisurely winds its way through the woods from near downtown Marlborough to downtown Hudson.  Birds sing, insects buzz and chirp, squirrels cavort and, in the winter, deer wander nearby.  It’s a place, in the middle of human habitation, where one can go and feel they are far from the madding crowd.

Yesterday, Waldo and I were just entering the Hudson part of the trail and we came across a cart carrying a movie camera filming a commercial for New Balance running shoes.  Apparently, the crew was trying to create a commercial that appeals to the common recreational runner, as opposed to the worldclass athlete.  In any event, it was nice to see the trail getting some broader exposure.  It deserves it.

Waldo, of course, was oblivious to what was going on, and I was neither too curious, nor very interested.  I’ve seen movie-making up close before.  We just walked past them, said hello, and continued on our way.

Years ago, before I went to medical school, I was living in Sherman Oaks, just over the hill from LA.  I had an apartment and my roommate was the apartment manager – a job that neither required much energy, nor took much time.  One day, a guy came by and asked if they could use our apartment to film an episode of Dragnet, not the original, but the remake with Jeff Osterhage and Bernard White as the detectives.  Of course, we agreed and we hung around to watch them film.

I learned a lot about acting professionalism while watching them do their shtick.  You know how the camera changes perspective when different actors speak?  It’s focused on one actor and then the other.  One person speaks and the camera is focused on them and then the other person speaks and the camera is directed at the other person.  The way they film that is they film the entire scene with the camera directed at just one actor and record the sound at the same time.   Then they refilm the scene with dialogue, but no sound recording (so the already recorded sound can be synced), with the camera directed at the other actor.  That way the scene flows more naturally without having to wait for the camera to reposition.

Because no sound was recorded on the retake, the people off camera didn’t have to be quiet.  And they weren’t.  Some of the crew found a bodice-ripper novel on my roommate’s bookshelf and they read some very sexually suggestive passages out loud while the actor in view of the camera was redoing the scene.  And this was Dragnet.  Even though it was a remake of the series, the deadpan acting was still the tone of the piece.  The actor being filmed kept the most placid expression on his face and his body language exuded what you might expect from a Dragnet detective while everyone else in the room was giggling and carrying on.  I was impressed.

There was nothing like that going on while we were walking the rail-trail.  I don’t even think there was any sound being recorded at all.  They were probably going to do a sound-over in the studio after the filming was done.  So, in a moment of mischief, I suggested that what they needed was some footage of an old fart out walking his dog.  They could focus on my worn-out boots and suggest that I would be better off with some New Balance shoes.  They smiled and ignored me.  Waldo and I went on our way and they finished doing what they needed to do.

It is so interesting being exposed to what happens out here in the woods.  You never know what’s coming next.  Yesterday, it was a commercial being filmed; in the past, it’s been running into all kinds of interesting people at opportune times.  Tomorrow, who knows.  But one thing is nearly for sure.

Waldo and I will be there.

 

Of course people want to film it.

Posted by Byron Brumbaugh in Walking with Waldo, 0 comments

Common burdock still alive.

 

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

-Bertrand Russell

 

It’s late summer now and the hottest of the dog days have passed for the year.  The kinds of plants I see this year are somewhat different than last year.  There is no blanket of moss and liver wort next to the trail, the Japanese clover is not easy to find and the Japanese knotweed doesn’t seem to be as tall or as prolific.  But many of the other plants are unchanged.  The leaves on the oaks, black walnuts and maples are still green and the sides of our rail-trail are still densely overgrown with weeds.

Now, I don’t have any problem with weeds.  They’re a part of nature and have at least as much right to be out here as I do.  I suppose the Japanese knotweed and the orange jewelweed, for example, even though they’re invasive species, have their place in the local ecology and their presence needs to be respected.  There is one weed, though, that I take exception to: the common burdock.

Common burdock is a plant that stands about 3 feet tall.  Its stems, roots and leaves can be eaten.  Called “gobo” in Japanese, it can be added to stews, stir-fried and pickled.  For centuries, it has been used medicinally to treat eczema, acne and psoriasis.  It has been used as an anti-inflammatory, to aid digestion and in weight management.  I have no idea how effective any of that is, but, supposedly, there is research that says it’s not all bunk.  In North America, burdock is mostly seen as a nuisance plant and I wholly subscribe to that.

There’s not a lot of it along our trail; it appears in only about seven places along our 6 mile route.  But where it does appear, like most of the weeds that grow there, it’s right next to the trail where it can get direct sunlight not blocked by the taller trees.  Most of the year, this is not a problem.  But in late summer to early fall, the plant forms these jawbreaker-sized spikey spheres that stick like super glue to whatever touches them.  These things grow in clumps at the end of the plant’s stems, protruding out toward the tarmac.  For me, that’s no big deal, I usually stick to the blacktop and don’t get near them.  But Waldo?  That’s a different story.

For reasons I don’t at all understand, Waldo likes to walk underneath the overhanging weeds as he saunters on his way, sometimes almost disappearing under their leaves.  He lifts his leg in there and even squats in the bushes, where I have to bushwhack to pick up what he leaves behind.  I can live with all that, but if he gets anywhere near a burdock plant, their damn burrs stick in his long hair and are really hard to get out.  Clumps of four or more of the damned things cling to him in as many different places.  Behind his ears, on his back, in his tail and on his chest, they intimately cling to him like leeches.  Worse than leeches.  They wad up his fur into tangled mats that I have to pull apart in order to get them out and it hurts him.  He puts up with my ridding him of his scourge, but he lets me know he doesn’t like his hair being pulled like that.

Since there are only a small number of places where the plant grows, you might think I can just guide him away from them and avoid the whole problem.  But I’m not watching him every second.  He’s off doing his Waldo thing while my mind is, often, in a different universe, learning French or something.  Invariably, day after day, he picks the damn things up and we go to battle.  So, I declared war on the burdock – the burr wars have begun.

I have no interest in eradicating the entire species.  Like the other weeds, they probably have their place in the world.  Those that grow far enough away that Waldo doesn’t touch them, I let them be.  But in the seven or so places where they grow right next to the trail, well, they’re coming up by the roots.  I put a two-fisted death grip on their stems and lean back with all my weight.  With only one exception, the plant comes up, root and all.  The one exception broke down near the ground and I left the remnant be.  I then throw the plants as far away from the trail as I can and make sure they are laying parallel to the ground where they can’t reach out and touch someone.  I end up wearing a few of the burrs on my shirt and pants in the process, but compared to what happens to Waldo, they are easily removed.

I suppose I’ll have to deal with those same plants next year.  Even if they don’t resprout from whatever roots are left behind, the burrs are still there, providing seeds for next years crop.  But for the rest of this year, I’m not going to have to torture my dog to get them out of his fur.

You don’t mess with my Waldo.

 

Common burdock, fallen but not neutered.

Posted by Byron Brumbaugh in Walking with Waldo, 0 comments

September 10, 2024

Road signs.

 

Sometimes the things you’ve lost can be found again in unexpected places.

-Lemony Snicket

 

I can remember, when I was a kid, driving across Nevada on a two-lane highway, back before I-80 was completed.  It was endless and the scenery was quite bleak – just miles and miles of semi-arid desert dust and sage brush.  In between tiny clumps of civilization, there were no houses, no fences, no livestock and no trees.  Just a whole lot of nothing.  The road was, for the most part, straight as a rifle barrel, with only a few curves here and there.

There was, however, something that broke up the monotony a little – Burma-Shave signs.  On the side of the road were a series of signs, spaced about 100 feet apart, that bore poetry of a sort.  The signs would be maybe a foot wide and four feet long, placed low, about three feet above the ground.  Each sign had a line of poetry, except for the last sign that said, in an artistic logo, Burma-Shave.  For example:

HER CHARIOT RACED

AT EIGHTY PER

THEY HAULED AWAY

WHAT HAD BEN HUR

BURMA-SHAVE

Or:

SLOW DOWN, PA

SAKES ALIVE

MA MISSED

SIGNS FOUR AND FIVE

BURMA-SHAVE

Or:

SUBSTITUTES

ARE LIKE A GIRDLE

THEY FIND SOME JOBS

THEY JUST CAN’T HURDLE

BURMA-SHAVE

They were quite entertaining and served well to break up the seeming endlessness of the trip.

At one time, there were some 7,000 signs in 45 states, mostly touting the product, a shaving cream.  But, like those above, some referred to safe driving and even romance.  Their history goes back to the 1920s, when a guy by the name of Alan Odell got the idea of posting a series of signs (usually four or five) advertising his father’s product.  In 1963, the

company was sold to Phillip Morris and the signs were taken down on advice of counsel.

I haven’t thought about those signs much, over the years.  Then, I saw a movie, “The Fastest Indian in the World” and there was a scene where a driver and passenger read the signs as they went past them.  I remembered the built up of anticipation, driving along and only being able to read one sign at a time, and waiting for the final punchline.  It was fun.  So many nice things have been lost as time marches on.

I have had the idea of leaving little markers, circular and about 3.5 inches in diameter, on the sides of the trails that Waldo and I wander down.  On the sign would be a sketch of Waldo with his head and paws above and hanging over a sign that says, “WALDO WAS HERE.”  I would design it so it was reminiscent of the “KILROY WAS HERE” sketches that the GIs left all over Europe during WWII.  Wouldn’t it be fun to leave other little signs along the way as well, like the Burma-Shave signs?  Well, I may be willing to try to leave the “WALDO WAS HERE” signs as we explore the world and people might even leave some of them up for a while.  But, I

fear, there are too many people out there who would take exception to a series of signs like that and make it even more likely for them all to be taken down.  Sigh.  Still, wouldn’t it be amusing to be hiking somewhere and come across a collection of signs, with silly poetry, that lead you on your way, and end with “WALDO WAS HERE”?  Something like:

ALMOST EVERYTHING

HAS A SMELL

SINCE I’M A DOG

I SNIFF THEM WELL

WALDO WAS HERE

Waldo and I are back to walking the rail-trail near our home and looking for other trails to explore.  There is no dearth of trails to choose from, they are everywhere, and we’re sure to be wandering down more.  Who knows, maybe we will even be able to venture down some not so well-worn paths in some other part of the world someday.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful for people to go hiking all over the world and see “WALDO WAS HERE” signs, along with some “poetry?”

If only I thought of this when I was younger…

 

The commercial.

Posted by Byron Brumbaugh in Walking with Waldo, 0 comments

September 03, 2024

 

The pleasure of exploring new places with friends and family.

 

Travelling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.

-ibn Battuta

 

Two days after getting back to Marlborough, my back went into incredibly painful spasms.  We were in the midst of a heat wave, so our walking would have been limited anyway, but now it’s all I can do to walk around the property for pee and poo.  Waldo takes it in stride and waits it out with me.  After all, this isn’t the first time our walks have been curtailed by circumstances beyond our control.  It’s going to be a while before I can see my physiatrist and get some cortisone shots, so we make do as best we can.  In the interim, I try to come up with ways to play with Waldo, that don’t require much back-bending, and rest my back as much as possible.

Now that I’m home, I can’t help but ask myself if the trip was worth all the expense, angst and bother that it caused both Waldo and me.  I can’t speak for Waldo, but for me, the answer is clearly yes.  Even the mishaps, long delays, uncertainties about making connections, and prolonged travel times were well worth the effort they required.  For me, that all just adds to the adventure and makes the narrative more interesting to tell to others.  In retrospect, it now seems amusing.  After all, Phyllis and I were never in any danger.  And isn’t adventure the whole point of the thing anyway?  It is for me.  But that begs the question as to why I feel the desire, nay, the need, to travel?

Quite a few years ago, coming home from taking the kids to a Six Flags amusement park, I wondered at why parks like that exist.  They serve no clear purpose, other than entertainment, that I could see.  And why are the rides that cause people to empty their lungs in wide-eyed screams, their hearts to race in uncontrolled fear and, on occasion, empty their stomachs, so enjoyed?  I came to the conclusion that many would say that it all made them feel alive.  It’s as if we spend so much time and effort to build ourselves safe havens, that we tend to overdo it and make our lives kind of boring.  Those amusement parks, like Six Flags, with their scary rides, provide people the opportunity to get scared, but in an environment they know is relatively safe.  To feel fear is to be unavoidably thrust into the present moment where your life is in your face and not at all theoretical.  It’s real.  You pay attention.

For me, traveling is something like that.  The desire to travel is multifactorial, for sure, but part of its allure is that it causes me to be placed in circumstances where I can’t react habitually, as if I were on autopilot.  Those circumstances may not be frightening, like in an amusement park, but they are unusual and potentially risky, causing me to have to deal with what’s happening in the moment.  I often don’t have habit patterns that will allow me to get through the day without living it more consciously and completely.  The adventure is in exposing myself to unusual, not fully prepared for, but tractable, risk.  It makes me feel more alive.

I’m pretty sure that Waldo feels something similar, at least on occasion.  He is so much more focused and energized when we walk in places where we haven’t been before.  His tail is up and wagging, he’s pulling at the leash, going this way and that, sniffing everywhere as if he doesn’t want to miss a thing.  There’s no “Oh, yeah, been there, done that,” coming from him at those times.

I can only imagine how much Waldo would enjoy going for a walk along a bisse in Switzerland.  Or along Hadrian’s wall in Britain.  Or along the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain.  The problem is getting him there.  It’s possible to put him in a crate that’s stowed with the luggage in a plane, but it would be traumatic for him.  The luggage bays are pressurized and heated, but they’re noisy and very different from what he’s used to.  He wouldn’t understand what was going on or why.  He would only have to deal with it for seven or eight hours as we flew across the Atlantic and he is used to spending that much time in his crate at home with a thunderstorm noise-maker, so maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad.  Once in Europe, we could go together by train.  Europeans take their dogs everywhere.   And the benefits…

Imagine what it would be like to World Wander While Walking With Waldo!

 

The pleasure of being back home with friends and family.

Posted by Byron Brumbaugh in Walking with Waldo, 0 comments

August 27, 2024

Entrance to CERN Visitor Center.

 

Although I love travelling and I’ve been to some wonderful places, I always appreciate coming home.

-Tom Hadley

 

During the days we had left in Switzerland, I worked through a few items I still had on my to-do list.  One of the first things Phyllis, Bill and I did was to go to CERN.  The river went down enough that we could go back to Geneva by train without having to take any ersatzbuses.  Once in Geneva, we took a streetcar to the CERN facility.  It took us about three hours just to get there, so the entire day was used up in the excursion.

My brother is a geophysicist and I have a PhD in Relativistic Astrophysics, so our interest in the place is obvious (see previous blogs for a description of what happens at CERN).  Phyllis was less intrigued about what happens there and I tried to explain it in simple terms.

Suppose you have a box that you think might contain something and you want to know what’s in it.  Suppose, too, that it has no obvious opening and no apparent way to get into it.  What would you do?  One possible answer is to find a big enough hammer and smash the thing open.  In the early part of the twentieth century, physicists new, by experiment, that various particles had some sort structure to them, but they didn’t know much else.  They wanted to “see” inside the particles to discover that structure.  So, they decided to “smash” them open to “see” what was there.

The problem is, the force that holds particles together, the strong nuclear force, is the strongest force in the universe.  In order to break into a particle, one would therefore need a hammer with an incredible amount of energy.  What physicists came up with was a way to accelerate particles, like protons, to speeds very close to the speed of light, then smash them into each other.  This is done with particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Accelerator (LHC) at CERN.  It is the largest accelerator in the world and the only one that can produce the energy required to find much of the fine structure of elementary particles.  It turns out, when you ram particles, like two protons, into each other, you get a shower of other particles, that are the constituents of the original particles.  By looking at those showers, you can determine a lot about what fundamental particles are made of.

We saw a number of exhibits and went on a tour that included the control room of the LHC.  The accelerator is constantly running and data is collected and stored on computer 24/7.  Physicists all over the world can then sort through that data at their leisure, accessible through the World Wide Web, and look for evidence that supports, or doesn’t, the various theories they have.  The machine itself is huge, an oval about 17 miles in circumference, and has some very high-tech gadgets, like superconducting magnets.  But the real magic is in the data that it produces.

In the days that followed our trek to CERN, Phyllis and I also went on some hikes in the Alps.  There are a number of trails near where we were that traverse across the mountains, more or less horizontally, although there is always some up and down.  We were in the mountains, you know.  I spent most of my life in the mountains of Utah and Colorado and I miss them, now that I live near the coast.  The snow-covered, majestic thrusts of granite high into the sky is breathtaking and the air is so clean and full of the fresh smell of nature. The refreshing gurgling of rushing mountain streams, unmuddled by the background din and hum of a city, makes it so easy to appreciate and enjoy the magic of the universe we live in.  I only wish I could share it with Waldo…

There were many other things that we did as well.  I gave a copy of my novel, “The Devil’s Vial,” to the bibliothèque in Sion, we watched a couple of soccer championships on a wide screen TV in a local bar, and ate a lot of good food and drank some fine wine.  Finally, it was time to go home and Phyllis and I took the train back to Geneva and our separate flights back to Boston.

Our journeys back were pretty uneventful and ran as planned.  I did have a 16-hour layover in Copenhagen, but I opted for that when I bought the ticket (due to the savings in price).  I spent the time napping as I could (a skill I developed during medical training) and noshing now and then.  For the entire return trip, the only real snag was that the Sumner Tunnel in Boston was closed for construction and I had to wait a very long time at the airport before the shuttle bus came to pick me up and take me to Framingham (where my son-in-law met me and drove me home).

I was a couple of hours late when I got Waldo, but I finally made it.  Sixteen days, we were apart.  He was frenetic and happy to see me, excitedly running and prancing.  Waldo seemed to enjoy the people who were caring for him, but was definitely eager to get in the car.  For a little while, I think he was waiting for the other shoe to drop, not sure just what else was going to happen to him.  But after a couple of days at home and our old routine, he was back to himself.  If anything, I think his experience has made us closer to one another.  I sure know I’m happy to be back with him.  Maybe one day, I can bring him with me.

Then I could call these blogs, “World Wandering While Walking With Waldo.”

 

Posted by Byron Brumbaugh in Walking with Waldo, 0 comments