There’s a road, of sorts, on this part of the railroad bed.
Railroad iron is a magician’s rod, in its power to evoke the sleeping energies of land and water.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
My summer between high school and college was somewhat fractured. It started with my being sick with malaria (which I contracted four years earlier in Ethiopia, but didn’t get sick). I then had a number of short-term jobs, including stacking baled hay in Colorado, delivering freight in Idaho, helping a guy lay ceramic tile in Utah and ended with working as a laborer on the Great Northern Railroad in Glendive, Montana. My duties on that last job were to follow behind a machine that pulled the spikes out of the ties and toss them to the side so they wouldn’t be buried in gravel. Maybe that experience gave me a tenuous interest in railroads. That, and when I was a kid, my dad gave me a Lionel toy steam locomotive that I liked. It’s also true that my grandfather was a telegrapher for the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, in Grand Junction, Colorado, in the early years of the twentieth century, so maybe there’s a hereditary component. At any rate, Waldo and I are back to tracing where the railroad that became the Assebet River Rail Trail ran through the gap that separates the southern part from the northern part.
I have read that the reason this gap exists is that part of it lies on land owned by a local orchard. The word is that the orchard owners don’t want to let the trail be developed through their land because they are afraid of theft. However, they do let people come and pick their own apples (for a price) and even hold public events like hayrides, birthday parties and maze walking. I was careful to look on the All Trails Ap to see what trails were not “private.” Although there are some trails on the property that are marked as private, the railroad bed is not.
A few days have passed since Waldo and I were last out here, bushwhacking our way along what’s left of the railroad, and today is a good day to finish the project. I’m wearing my light jacket, but it is unzipped, and I am quite comfortable. I pull off the road onto an open field, marked as a parking lot. The road continues on, heading toward what’s left of the railroad bed, but we’ll walk from here. The skies are partly cloudy and there is next to no breeze. The ground is dry (we’ve had a bout of drought recently), and, although we’re on a peninsula where the river winds around in a U-turn, it’s not muddy or swampy at all. The road is well manicured, but unpaved. Signs say that it leads to still more parking lots and I’m sure that it is also used by the orchard equipment to maintain their land. Except for a short distance of about 100 yards where we pass close by the edge of the orchard, we are surrounded by wild forest – small bole trees, bushes and weeds. There are no bikes around, nor even people, so Waldo takes off without a care to the forward end of the leash and is happily trotting along, doing his Waldo thing.
We don’t go far and we’re on the old railroad bed (now a road). I can see the river, not far away, and the road runs straight south. The railroad bed also runs north from where we meet it, but it is unimproved and bushwhacky. We head north first, to see where it used to cross the river. It’s just a few yards and we dead-end at the river. The water lies about four feet or so below us and Waldo wants to go down there. I don’t need a swamp dog, so I hold him back. There’s no clear abutment that used to support a bridge, just a few large rocks. On the other side of the river, I see where the roadbed starts up again – still no abutment or evidence of bridge foundation. We turn around and head south.
The going is quick and easy. Winter-prepped forest lies on each side of us and the river is close enough that I can see it through the brush. After about 0.8 miles, there’s a fence that cuts across the road. We’re on a dike that’s about six feet high and there is a trench on one side. The fence is suspended above the trench a good four feet, so Waldo and I scramble down the steep sides of the dike, duck under the fence, then climb back onto the railroad bed. Here, our path is not so well manicured, but it’s not grossly overgrown either, and it’s easy to navigate. Off to my right, I can see a man operating a tractor, but he ignores us, so we do the same.
After about 0.1 miles, we get back to the river. At my feet is a steep sloped river bank and on the other side of the river is the continuation of the railroad bed where Waldo and I explored a few days ago. We head back to the car.
Right now, everything is clothed in late fall boney beige. On the way back to the car, off to my right, through barren limbs, sticks and weed stems, I get a glimpse of people on the river. I can’t tell if they’re in kayaks or canoes, but they’re paddling. I wonder where they put into the water. As I walk along, I imagine what it’s like in the spring and summer. It must be beautiful, all decked out in leafy verdure and flowery color. It’s a shame the rail trail isn’t extended through here. My phone says this part of the railroad is 0.9 miles long. Except for the guy on the tractor and the people on the river, we see no one else.
To be continued…
While, in other places…