The excitement lies in the exploration of the world around us.
-Jim Peebles
Continued from last blog…
Waldo and I are still tracking where the railroad ran across the gap that joins the northern part of the Assebet River Rail Trail to the southern part. We found a low dike where the rails must have run (but are now gone) and follow it. The going isn’t too bad and, other than the occasional tree trunk that’s fallen across where we need to go, the walking is easy (although not easy enough for a bipedal trot). There are places where we have to scramble down the side of the dike and then back up again, to avoid crawling under an arboreal obstacle, but few other problems. Waldo, although frenetically running hither and thither on his own exploration, is readily redirectable and I can steer him where I want him to go, after a few missteps. The surrounding forest is all beige, dry and boney, the ground is buried under several inches of tan, dead leaves, and the weeds are shriveled and easily navigated. The temperature is in the mid-50s, the air isn’t moving and the late-fall, low-to-the-horizon, sun is shining free of cloud.
The railroad bed runs straight, but trees and bushes obscure just where we’re headed. I can just glimpse the Assebet River off to my right and there is a narrow street on my left. The ground underfoot is buried under dry dead leaves, but, still, I can feel old railroad ties making walking a bit uneven. Waldo is out front, energetically trotting through the brush that’s grown over the way we have to go like he was trying to decide the right path to take. I tell him, “Where are you going?” or “Not that way!” and he stops, backtracks and heads off again in another direction as if making a new random choice would get him where I want him to go. Inevitably, his long leash gets tangled around branches, twigs and trunks so, here and there, I have to stop and unravel it. But, man, is he ever having fun and we do make it to where we have to go.
About a mile from where we started, I see blue water crossing our path. I walk right up to what must have been a bridge abutment, but is now just a jumble of stones. The water looks deep (I can’t see bottom) and is about thirty feet wide. New England is currently in a drought and the water doesn’t seem to moving at all (during spring runoff the river runs with a vengeance). On the other side, I can see another pile of rocks and what looks like the continuation of the railroad bed. I glance at Google maps on my phone and see where the river meanders from the west, then makes a U-turn to head north and northwest. That means that in about a mile, the railroad bed once again is blocked by the river. We’ve gone as far as we can without back-tracking to get over the river unless we want to get wet. And I don’t.
Rather than bushwhack our way back to the car, I decide to follow the nearby streets to a place where they cross over the Mass Central Rail Trail. It’s then an easy walk back to the parking lot. The Mass Central Rail Trail is still under construction and is not yet paved, but all the bridges and overpasses are finished and the surface is flat and even. It’s not very far at all and we’ve come full circle back to Route 62, with the parking lot just across the street and to the right. It occurs to me that the original railroad bed could not have gone to where the parking lot is because that would require the tracks to make a hard right turn. Trains don’t do hard turns.
We walk down to Route 62 and I explore around the other side of the road. Sure enough, there’s a steep embankment with rails on top. That’s gotta be the continuation of the original railroad bed. Waldo and I climb to the top and follow the rails the short distance to where it abuts the Assebet River Rail Trail. On the other side of the rail trail, I can see a high embankment where the railroad must have continued on. I recognize that it’s where we walked a few days ago. What I had originally thought was railroad bed next to the parking lot was all wild bush. That makes a lot more sense than trying to explain how a train could get from the flat ground at the parking lot up the fifteen feet to the top of the embankment. Problem solved.
Waldo and I walk back on the Assebet River Rail Trail to our car and head home. There isn’t much day left and I certainly don’t want to be out here walking in the weeds in the dark.
We’ll finish our exploration another day.