Byron Brumbaugh

Rail trails tend to be kinda straight…

If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.

-Barack Obama

Another warm day!  And Phyllis is available to walk!  I’ve been planning on walking the other half of the (as of yet) unfinished stretch of the Mass Central Rail Trail, but the appeal of walking the whole thing tugs at me with force.  A quick call to Phyllis, a pat on Waldo’s head and it is decided.  We’re going to walk from the beginning of the thing in Sudbury to its terminus in Hudson, roughly 7.5 miles.

There’s a bit of a snag here.  I can’t really tell where the Sudbury end of the trail is.  I’ve read it’s somewhere in the Sudbury/Wayland area, but other than that, I don’t have a clue.  I always knew where the trail ends in Hudson, because I’ve been up there and I’ve seen it.  I’ve seen bits and pieces of the trail in Sudbury, but I’ve not seen where the construction ends.  Phyllis and I bushwacked our way through it a couple of years back, but the plan, apparently, is not to pave that entire route.  I can go online (God bless the 21^st century) and follow the route of the old railroad bed, but again, since the trail isn’t yet finished, there is no indication of where the rail trail will terminate in Sudbury.

This is just the kind of adventure I revel in!  I’m pretty sure the trail at least goes as far as Route 20 in Sudbury, so I find a nearby business with a parking lot and we start there.  Once out of the car, I see that the trail, now just a wide muddy track bearing deep tread marks from heavy equipment, crosses Route 20.  There are fences and No Trespassing signs, but, damn the signs, full speed ahead.  We head that-a-way with the idea of going to where it ends and turning around to complete the walk into Hudson.

The temperature is in the mid-50s, the skies are clear and there is no significant breeze.  Like I said, the track is a little muddy and scoured with the rutted wake of long-gone construction equipment.  The ground is not as firm and solid as the part of the trail that Waldo and I traversed in Hudson.  On both sides are stands of tall old growth white pine, just like the rest of the trail.  Here and there, we pass old, rusted pieces of railroad remnants and one large, still standing, signal light.  It’s the kind that you see where railroads cross roads, but there’s no road out here.  It’s just standing there, all alone, out in the woods.  Things have changed, I guess, since steam locomotives pulled long lines of railcars through here.

We walk a good half mile and the trail just keeps going.  There are doggy footprints in the mud that aren’t Waldo’s, and we do pass a couple of other people walking dogs.  There must be others, beside myself, who, given the fact they must do doggy duty, are always on the lookout for new places to go.  It is interesting that most of the people we pass are walking their dogs.  Anyway, it’s late in the day, we have at least 7 miles to walk to get back to Hudson and we’re not sure just how much farther away the end of the trail is.  We turn around and decide to explore the rest at a later date.

Meanwhile, Waldo is having a grand old time, walking through the mud and exploring the country off to the sides.  There must be new smells and sticks that draw him onward, much like the allure of finding new ground to explore has for me.  He’s trotting this way and that, nose just above the ground, stopping and staring into the undergrowth and being generally engaged in living in the moment out in nature.  He’s enjoying his time out here at least as much as I am.

Phyllis and I chat as we walk along, as we always do.  We finished the “36 Questions to  Fall in Love” questions when we were on the Bay Circuit Trail, so we talk about family, our personal histories and philosophies and upcoming trips.  She just returned from hiking down into the Grand Canyon and back out again.  That’s a trip of about 8 miles, each way, with 4,000 ft in altitude gain!  I’m impressed.  I know my physical limitations, from all the walking we’ve done, and I’m not at all sure I could do it.  Maybe not all in one go anyway.  We also talk about my upcoming trip to Switzerland and the magical draw of international travel.  We decide, if we can arrange it (something that is not at all certain) that our next trip together will be to Tanzania to volunteer, for a couple of weeks, as teachers for the local kids.  That’s something I’ve explored online and there are organizations that exist to connect potential volunteers to the needs of people around the world.  It appeals strongly to both of us old folks.  It’s a pity I can’t take Waldo.  He’d love it, of course.

We get back to the car, I drop Phyllis off at her car, then I drive down Route 20, trying to locate the beginning of the trail in Sudbury.  I can’t see the thing from the highway, but I can stop and get out of the car at places where side-streets pass over it.  I’m able to track it to a power substation, about a mile or so from where we turned around, just at the place where a line of high-tension powerline towers takes off and heads toward Wayland.  Phyllis and I walked under those same towers some time ago, so I know that the trail must stop at the substation, even though I can’t get close enough to actually see it.  That makes perfect sense because the powerlines Eversource buried alongside the trail have to connect to something somewhere and a substation is the logical place for them to do that.

We need another good day to explore the rest of the Mass Central Rail Trail in Sudbury.  That should not be much of a problem.  There are no bad days for a good walk.

There are just some days that are warmer, dryer and less muddy than others.

Not really sure what this was supposed to signal…

They’re putting some money into this trail.

Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing at all.

-Helen Keller

There is this piece of the Mass Central Rail Trail that begins just across the street from the parking lot where the northern end of southern portion of the Assebet River Rail Trail ends.  Well, at this point, it’s really more of a rail trail gonna-be than the real deal.  Anyway, from there, it runs more or less east by southeast to somewhere in the Sudbury/Wayland area.  I’m not yet sure just exactly where it ends.

The remnants of the railroad bed were overgrown and barely passable until about a year ago.  There were some lawsuits involving a local utility, Eversource, and NIMBYs who were trying to block its development.  Phyllis, Waldo and I actually walked the southern most part of it, in that natural condition, a couple of years ago.  The lawsuits were settled and, around a year ago, Eversource started burying power cables in the railroad bed and, in the process, clearing all the weeds.  The cable is now buried and the plan is to pave it over and, when that’s done, open it up to the public.  The paving has not yet begun.

I’ve been watching the beginning of the trail in Hudson.  For the longest time, there was a fence that blocked it off, bearing signs that said, “No Trespassing due to construction,” in big red letters.  These signs also said that big brother is watching 24/7 via video cameras (although there was no evidence anywhere that any such cameras existed).  Not wanting to wait for the time that all was paved over, I visited this fence every couple of months or so, hoping for a change that would allow me a chance to explore.  Last spring and summer came and went, then fall and winter, without any change.  Then, a few weeks ago, the fence and signs were gone, replaced by a yellow plastic ribbon strung between traffic cones. The cable is now buried, but the paving has not yet begun.

I was pretty sure that the path, even though not paved, would be solid and easy to walk on because Eversource had to have trucks and heavy equipment in there to bury the cable.  But I didn’t know what the ground would be like and I waited until there was a prolonged dry spell.  I really don’t like treading in muddy areas, with a border collie, if I can avoid it.  Today, the temperature is 60℉, cloudless and there is only a light breeze of 5 mph.  This is the day!

The entire thing is billed as being 7.5 miles long.  Round trip, that’s 15 miles – something my back is not up for right now.  So, the plan is to walk 3.75 miles or so, about halfway, explore what’s out there, and return.  Waldo is eager to go as we leave the car, cross the street and start on our way.

As I thought it would be, the path is broad, solid and flat.  Large treads have dug into the dirt, evidencing the prior passing of heavy equipment, but the ground is very firm and they don’t dig in very deep.  There is no equipment, trucks or cars anywhere to be seen and no one else is around.  There are lots of white pine on both sides of the trail as we enter into a forest.  Pine needles and cones litter the path, but there are no oak leaves.  Just off to the side, down a slight embankment, there is a carpet of oak leaves, so I’m guessing that the construction happened sometime after the oaks lost their leaves.  Pines continuously lose their cones and needles, so that explains why that’s all I would see on the trail now.

Waldo and I are about a mile and a half into our walk when we come across a fence partially blocking our way.  On it hangs those same signs of, “No Trespassing.”  I consider our options and decide to ignore them.  Stirred with confidence, I compose:

I in my shirtsleeves and Waldo sans balk

Carry on anyway with our new walk.

Hubris, maybe, but I also can’t help but wonder what would happen if we were caught.  A fine, probably.  But what if I were jailed?  What would happen to Waldo?  Would they put him in a pound?  Neither one of us would like that!  What if they made us walk by way of the streets to get back to the car?  That would add significant distance to our trek.  My back would certainly not like that!  But Waldo and I are intrepid fellows and we continue on.  Within a half-mile, we come across a young woman, her young son and a golden retriever, also ignoring the signs.  As we go on, we pass three more people with two other dogs and even a guy on a bicycle.  Some danger adds spice to adventure and what risk we are under here doesn’t seem that threatening anymore.  After all, we’re just an old man and his dog out using the path for what it was intended.  Damn the signs, full speed ahead!

On the way back, Waldo keeps trying to venture off the railroad bed and into the woods.  He must have gotten bored with the easy going.  It is pretty straight.  Not this time, Waldo.  Not this time.  The sun is low, about an hour before sunset, as we get back to the car and the air is getting just a bit chilly.  My back is a little sore as I settle into the car seat, but I’m really glad that we explored this part of the rail trail.

And we still have the other half to do.

There’s still some work to do…

Construction along Lincoln Street.

A cry for survival comes from the planet itself.  A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear.

-President Joseph R. Biden

Waldo and I are back to our usual haunt – the Assebet River Rail Trail.  After two days of rest, my back feels good enough to go our usual 6 miles.  It’s been a few days since we were last here and I’m curious how the construction at the beginning of the trail is going.  The parking structure in the back of the site looks to be pretty much done, but the apartments in front, along Lincoln Street, haven’t shown much progress.  For the longest time, all I could see was that they were pushing dirt around.  Then large cement posts, about two or three stories high, sprouted up.  After that, not much seems to be happening.  They built platforms at the second and third floor levels and little else that I can see.  I suppose it does take longer for cement to cure in winter temperatures, but, so far, it’s like watching paint dry.  There’s a lot of heavy machinery running around, doing something, I just can’t tell what.  I wish they would finish so I could get back my parking at the beginning of the trail.

The past few weeks have been unseasonably warm, followed by subfreezing winds and even a snow flurry or two. It must confuse the plants terribly.  Some of the weeds have started to bud out and it’s not even April yet.  Mosses and liverwort are healthy and prolific, what with all the rain we’ve gotten.  Birds are still few and far between, although some do fill the air with their melodic lilt on the warmer, sunny days.  The migratory birds, like the Emmy bird, have yet to return though.  Spring is nigh, but it’s still more of a promise than an evolving fact.

Waldo bounds down the tarmac and onto the grassy, weedy side of the trail.  His nose is to the ground as he s-turns his way along.  Apparently, due to the couple of days we took off from walking, he’s built up quite a backlog of pent-up energy.  I’m not sure what he’s doing, but whatever it is, he’s doing it in a fervor.  He hasn’t even picked up a stick yet!  He pauses briefly to sniff out passersby, both human and canine, then is back to his mission.  Doing a Waldo thing must be a lot of fun, because he is clearly enjoying it!

Soon, we’re to the open field, once a dump and soon to be a public park, that overlooks the Fort Meadow Reservoir.  There’s heavy machinery here too, diesel shovels and dump trucks, pushing the dirt around.  Huge piles of various kinds of soil, some sandy, some loamy, are circumvented by flat swaths of well-rutted “roads.”  They’ve been doing this for quite a few weeks, now and I can’t figure out the science behind it.  Why in the world can’t they just smooth it out and plant some grass?  I’m reminded of Promontory Point, Utah, and the transcontinental railroad.  Two railroad companies, one building from the west and one building from the east, met there.  Instead of joining up and completing the roadbed, however, they just kept on building, one going east, the other west, right next to each other, for many miles, so they could continue to be paid.  Finally, someone forced them to stop, join the two tracks together and the ”Golden Spike” was driven, completing the job.  I don’t have any reason to believe that kind of thing is happening here, but it certainly is curious.  If anyone comes within earshot, I’m definitely gonna ask.

The 23-acre patch of woods, where a developer from Texas wanted to tear down all the trees and build an apartment complex, is still intact.  Red ribbons are fading on the trees where they were tied, well over a year ago, when surveyors came to do their thing.  The last information I’ve gotten is that the developer has given up, at least for now, on putting commercial housing there, but is still developing plans to do something.  Why can’t they just donate the land to the city in an agreement where the land is to be kept in its natural state in perpetuity?  Making a profit is not the summum bonum (greatest good), you know.

Waldo and I pass the English ivy tree, with its perpetual greenery, then turn around at our usual 3-mile spot.  The rail-trail is still here, haltingly warming up to greet a coming spring, with all its slowly evolving human footprints.  Sigh.

Life goes on.

Pushin’ dirt around.,

At last! The Atlantic Ocean!

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.

-Earl Nightingale

Today is supposed to be a beautiful day, with highs almost 60℉!  Phyllis, Waldo and I leave one car at the same spot we did on the last leg, then leave the other in the spot where we the loop begins.  This time, we’re taking the northern ark of the loop.  It runs through Duxbury to the trailhead about 13.7 miles away (officially).  It’s foggy and a little nippy as we start out at 8 AM, with temps in the high 30s, but things are going to get a lot warmer in the next couple of hours.

The first part of our trek runs along a rural road.  Waldo assumes his place on point as Phyllis and I set a pace designed to generate some body heat in our septuagenarian bags of mostly water.  There’s not a whole lot of difference between the country we’re going through now and what we passed through last time.  There are, after all, only a few miles that separate the two paths.  It’s all low sandy country, with lots of white pines, ponds and bogs.  It’s not long and we’re off into the woods on a carpet of fallen oak leaves.

There are many fallen trees that we pass as we wend our way through the forest.  A quick glance tells why.  The downed trees here are not old and diseased, snapping somewhere along a rotting trunk, like they are along the rail-trail.  These trees have been felled at the root.  Large discs of lateral growing roots and soil are tipped up on edge and held there by their tumbled tree trunks.  A kick at the soil explains it all.  It’s sand, not that different from the beach.  Mature oaks and white pines don’t have deep tap roots, so strong winds can easily tip them over — there just isn’t enough integrity to the sand to keep the roots in the ground.  There are places where several trees block the path.  That’s no big obstacle for younger bones and sinews, but when you’re of an age where you don’t go down unless you have a good plan about how you’re going to get up again, you need to approach these obstacles a bit gingerly.  I absolutely hate the fact that I have to carefully plan how I’m going to navigate these encumbrances instead of just hopping over the damn things without a second thought.  Old age sucks.

We pass one older gentleman, going the opposite direction, who is also following the Bay Circuit Trail.  He is alone, though, and has to do it by backtracking.  Using a paper map that can be bought online from the Appalachian Mountain Club, or REI, he selects portions of the trail and checks them off as he finishes them.  It’s reassuring that we’re not the only gray hairs out here meeting the challenge.

We haven’t gone far and I strip off the rain jacket I started with and tie it around my waist.  A little further done the trail and I open my jacket to cool off a bit.  About halfway to the trailhead and I’m sweating. I take off my jacket and stuff it in the pack I use to carry Waldo’s water.  In the process, I take out one of the water bottles and offer it to Waldo.  He sucks it down and empties it – about a liter.  We’re both hot.  Phyllis is shedding clothing too, but keeps on a light wind breaker.  I glory in being able to walk in shirt sleeves again.  And it’s still February!

Most of the path is easy going and Phyllis and I go back to the “36 Questions to Fall in Love.”  We start off with number 20, “What does friendship mean to you?” and, after beating it to death with overthinking, go on from there.  In the process, we did wander off trail, as per usual, so added another half mile or so to our trek.  The last question, number 36, is, “Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it.  Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.”  Phyllis and I have many hundreds of miles underfoot and have discussed, in some form or other, many of the subjects broached by these questions.  Because of that, none of these question have proven to be particularly probing for us, but, still, it’s interesting to go through them and they provide a basis for ongoing prattle as we plod along.

By the time we’ve finish the questions, we’re back on the roads and the day starts to get a little chilly and breezy for my state of dress.  It’s such a bother to have to take the pack off and pull out my jacket, so I decide to just suck it up and continue on.  My back starts to bother me by the time we hit the 10-mile mark and when we get to the trailhead, 14.7 miles from where we started today (along the wandering way we went), I’m pretty sore and stiff.  But we did it!  We add it all up, as best we can and, over the past three years or so, we have walked around 260 miles on and around the Bay Circuit Trail.  We’re done.  I walk to the seawater in Kingston Bay, just a few yards away, and dip the toe of my boot in, just to make it official.  Another half-mile and we’re back to the car.

Waldo is curled up on his car seat and sleeping, so Phyllis and I decide to celebrate by going to a Korean restaurant, in nearby Plymouth, for dinner.   By the time we’re done, I’m exhausted.  Waldo is still napping when I get back to the car.  It’s another hour and a half drive to home, then dinner for Waldo and my recliner for me.

I’m sleeping well tonight!

Done at long last!

A bit chilly as we start out.

“The only guarantee for failure is to stop trying.

-John C. Maxwell

The day was parka cold when we started out on the southern part of the final loop of the Bay Circuit Trail.  This leg is supposed to be 13.4 miles long, but we always seem to wander, so it might be a little longer.  The days are still short, so Waldo and I got up before dawn, drove about an hour and twenty minutes to get to Kingston and parked at a marina on the shore of Kingston Bay.  In a few minutes, Phyllis drove up in her car.  She was a bit agitated because she couldn’t get her phone to work.

I took a look at it and instead of the bars in the upper right corner of her screen, the ones that show signal strength, she had capital letters that said “SOS”.  I guess that must mean, “Sh*t Outta Signal”, because her phone wasn’t talking to anybody.  The rest of her phone seemed to be working fine, it just wasn’t connected to the outside world.  Mine was working normally, which was kinda odd, because we both have AT&T as a carrier.  We decided that as long as we had one phone working to show us on Google Maps where we were as we hiked, we’d be just fine.  We drove to our starting point in Pembroke and started our walk.

The first part of the walk was along a rural highway.  The traffic wasn’t too bad, so I was able to let Waldo head out to the forward end of the leash when there were no cars.  We walked on the left side of the road, facing the approaching traffic, so when I saw a car coming, I told him, “Stay with me!” and shortened the leash.  He readily obeyed and came alongside where I was walking and stayed there until I told him, “Okay.”  He then happily resumed his place on point.  He’s such a good dog.

Soon, we were off-road and into the woods.  Phyllis and I were still making our way through the “Thirty-Six Questions,” so we weren’t paying close attention and we made a wrong turn that had us backtracking. We didn’t realize it until we came out of the woods where we went in.  We do that sometimes.  I looked at my phone to get reoriented and guess what?  There was “SOS” on my screen.  We decided to go back into the woods and be more careful about watching for the trail markers.  We stayed calm and carried on.

This time, we came out where we were supposed to, so we followed the markers and went down the road.  The BCT trail markers are about three inches or so in diameter and usually posted on telephone poles on the side of the road.  They aren’t posted all that often, but tend to appear, usually, in places where you need to make a choice as to which way to go.  Anyway, Phyllis and I were on question 14, “Is there something you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time?  Why haven’t you done it?”, which was quite absorbing (we do have bucket lists), and, after a bit, I noticed it had been a while since I saw any markers.  We could retrace our steps and look for them the way we came, but today’s trek was some 13.4 miles long without backtracking and I didn’t want to make it any longer.  There weren’t any people around, so we did what any lost intrepid explorer would do, we went and knocked on the front door of a nearby house.

My plan was to ask the occupant if they would please share their wi-fi password so I could get online and pull up a map that way.  A woman came to the door and, after I explained our predicament and my potential solution, she said she’d get her son.  A thirtyish young man came to the door and told us the Bay Circuit Trail was just behind their house and he could show us where it was.  He took us out back a few hundred yards and, voila, there was a path with a BCT marker nailed to a nearby tree.  We missed the place where the path went from the streets into the woods and had been walking parallel to it on the paved road.  We thanked the man and continued on our way, trying to redouble our efforts at paying attention.  Ah, the trials and tribulations of walking the Bay Circuit Trail…

After a couple more hours and four miles or so, without wandering off trail again, the signal on my phone came back.  A bit later and Phyllis got her phone back too.  Now we were once again confident that we could find our way and we wandered no more for the rest of the trek.

The country we walked through was mostly boggy pine forest.  It seemed like all the trees around us were white pine, but that couldn’t be true, because the ground was covered in a thick carpet of dead oak leaves.  I guess the bare-limbed oaks were hiding amongst the green, needly, fleshed-out pines.  All I know is that the pines grew thick around us.  Here and there, in the low places, the ground grew muddy under the leaves and Waldo soon had black paws and belly and smelled like wet swamp dog.   Ah well.  He was having fun.

13.7 miles from the start, we got to the marina and our car.  My arthritis was starting to act up again, so I was very grateful to be able to sit down and relieve the pain in my low back.  We headed back home and my beloved recliner.

We only have one more leg to do, the northern part of the loop.  It’s supposed to be about 13.7 miles long, but who knows how long it’s going to be, the way we do it.  Five days from now, it’s supposed to be clear day with highs in the upper 50s!  Shirt sleeve weather.  We’re going to finish this thing then, for sure.

I hope AT&T cooperates…

One of the cranberry bogs we passed.

One of the many pods/lakes here in the low country

Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.

-Steven Wright

We have another fine late winter day to continue our trek on the Bay Circuit Trail.  Phyllis and I are eager to finish the thing and the weather is cooperating.  Waldo, well, he’ll walk just about anywhere, anytime, for any reason, as long as it’s not too hot and his toes don’t freeze.  So, here we go.

This leg is billed as being 9.2 miles long, without gaps, and we decide to start an hour later, at 9:00 instead of 8:00.  The temperature is hovering around freezing when we start, but is scheduled to rise into the high 30s later on.  The sky is overcast, with a possibility of light flurries, and the wind is almost nonexistent.  We’re dressed in layers, prepared to shed when it gets warm enough that we start to sweat.

We left off in Hanson and aim for Pembroke, about 3.9 street miles away.  But, of course, we aren’t going all the way by street, and those that we do go on are not the shortest distance between two points.  The Bay Circuit Trail was not designed to get somewhere fast, but to link together already existing paths that wander through the green spaces surrounding Boston.  Our course is much more tortuous and serpentine.  As we start, we head more or less north, along convenient rural roads and streets, instead of east.

Traffic isn’t too bad, but I do have to keep Waldo on a short leash – there are no sidewalks here.  He cooperates without complaint and Phyllis and I are able to leave him to his tethered pursuit of doggy stuff under only peripheral observation.  Because it stimulated some interesting conversation, Phyllis and I turn back to the 36 Questions to Fall in Love.  We are good friends and not intimate partners, but the questions are interesting just the same.  As we walk along, we came to number 11, “Take 4 minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.”  We lost it in laughter.  Phyllis is 76 and I’m 75, so there’s been a hell of a lot of water go under the bridge in that time.  I’m pretty sure Waldo’s answer would be considerably shorter.  But maybe not.  Oh, the smells he has sniffed and the sticks he has herded!  Anyway, we decide not to limit it to 4 minutes and Phyllis goes first.

We didn’t keep track of how long she talked and she elided over a number of events that could be left for another time without leaving gaping holes in the narrative.  It was very much more than 4 minutes.  I just let her tell her story as she saw fit and at the pace she was comfortable.  She told me of her major struggles in life and how she grew and developed because of them.  She took me on a Mach 4 trip down memory lane from her first memories until the time we met, some 4 years ago, or so.  Many of the details I’ve heard before from our previous discussions, but I’ve not heard them linked in chronological order.  I was amazed at how many of the troubles she experienced growing up (something we’re still doing) were the same as the ones I stumbled through.

We’re into the woods, on an undeveloped trail, when it’s my turn.  I start with my earliest memories, then kick in the afterburner to fly through my recollections from then until now.  I skip over a lot of what I think is worth reporting, we only have about 6 hours for this walk, after all, but include what I think are the essentials to get the gist.  I have no idea how long I went on, but there were several times when we found ourselves off-trail because we weren’t paying attention.  It’s not that we were lost, we don’t get lost.  We just wander a bit.  In the end, our 9.2 mile jaunt took us down a 10 or 11 mile route with some backtracking as we wandered down a seventy-something year memory lane.

Along the way, we passed lakes and bogs, canals and wooded areas.  The off-street trails had patches of snow compacted over beds of dead leaves, but nothing causing our septuagenarian footing to be unsteady.  There was an old mill, the Nathaniel Thomas Mill, next to a creek (the waterwheel had been removed) that operated from 1695 until 1975.  That’s one thing about walking in New England that I enjoy – bumping into history in unexpected places.  Waldo was consumed by his own interests, as we trod our way sort of eastward, and it was obvious that he was as consumed by his experience as Phyllis and I were by ours.

About six hours after we started, we arrived at the car we left behind in Pembroke.  Here, the BCT tracks right and left, tracing out a large loop to the trailhead in Kingston.  We’ve already decided to walk on both sides of the loop.  Our next trek is to the right, the southern arc, 13.2 miles to the sea.  After that, we’ll come back to Pembroke and do the northern part of the trail for 13.4 miles and, after something like three and a half years, we’re done.

And then it’s on to the next trail, wherever we decide that to be.

The Nathaniel Thomas Mill, 1695 – 1975.

Now which way do we go?

The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure.

-Christopher McCandless

A late winter’s day, with forecast highs in the upper fifties, is something that can’t be ignored.  The snow is erased from the ground, like chalk from a blackboard, leaving only weedy and damp, but solid, footing.  The sky is partly cloudy and the winds are light and breathy.  Clearly, this is a day begging to be used for a long walk.  Phyllis agrees and is available, so we decide to venture forth on the next leg of the Bay Circuit Trail, from East Bridgewater, where we left off, eastward to Hanson.

We decided to meet at 7:30 AM.  The drive to where we have to leave a car is an hour and a half away, so I have to get up at before dawn in order to have enough time to get Waldo and myself ready.  In the late spring and summer, 7:30 is a wonderful time to start a long walk because you can avoid the worst of the heat.  But this time of year, it means we’ll be walking for a couple of hours in temps in the high thirties.  Not a problem, but I have to think about what layers I can wear, to keep me warm then, and yet be able to strip off and easily carry the outermost layer so I’m not drowning in sweat later on.  Soon, I’m dressed, Waldo has done his business, the car is loaded with my pack, holding doggy water bottles, and we’re off.

We start our trek at the Town Line General Store in East Bridgewater. Waldo is clearly excited.  He knows we’re off on an adventure and is avidly jogging about and sniffing the world.  Running this way and that, it’s like he’s thinking, “Come on, let’s go!  I don’t care where, but let’s get it on!”  Soon, Phyllis and I are all packed up and we’re off, walking on the side of a busy road.  I keep Waldo on a short leash next to me, but, even so, he seems quite happy, just to be on his way.

This leg of the trail is near the Atlantic Ocean – it’s about fifteen miles away.  East Bridgewater is only eighty-four feet above sea level, so there aren’t any hills we have to climb. The country is low-lying with bogs, some of them cranberry bogs, although civilization has filled much of the area in with houses and roads.  Most of the walking we’re doing today will be along streets and roads, with only two paths, each only a couple of miles long, that venture off into the woods and weeds and wet lowlands.  The kicker is that there is another gap in the trail, according to the map, and we don’t know what’s in that gap.  It’s less than a mile wide, but it’s in the middle of a bog and it’s not clear, even from the Google satellite view, that we can cross it without swimming.  Swimming’s not something I want to do, so we plan to go to the edge of the gap, and then, if we need to, backtrack and go around.  That would add an additional three miles of street navigation to our jaunt, but it can be done.  The total distance is twelve miles the long way and nine on the more direct route, if it’s possible.

The time and distance goes by fast.  Waldo is hyper, running around and exploring, clearly having a lot of fun.  Phyllis and I both have heard (from different sources) of the “thirty-six questions to fall in love.”  I ran across it in the New York Times, I don’t know where Phyllis heard about it.  We Googled it and decided to go through a few of them, just for fun.  Each question is simple enough, but, being who we are, Phyllis and I are able to stretch out our answers to long philosophical and experiential discussions.  They are way too much for me to repeat here.

Somewhere around question number four, “What would constitute a perfect day for you?” and we’re on a built-up dike, hiking through a bog that still has cranberries floating on the surface near the shore.  As we compare answers and discuss what that means, the trail is nearly blocked by deep puddles.  Some of them even have flowing water as it runs from one side of the dike to the other.  We’re able to find ways around them, even though the going is somewhat treacherous and muddy.

By question number six, “If you were able to live to the age of ninety and retain either the mind or body of a thirty-year-old for the last sixty years of your life, which would you want?” and we’re at the gap.  The puddles are bigger and deeper, but there’s still a way around them on the edges (even Waldo goes around them), and soon, we’re past the gap and back on the trail.

Then, in less than a mile, we’re back to the car and done with this leg; nine miles as we did it.  “Hah!” I cry.  “You can’t stop the intrepid Waldo walkers with a few wet spots and swampy ground!”  It’s still early, about 1:00 PM, more or less, with much of the day still left in front of us.

We walked nine miles, but we’re still ten miles, as the crow flies, from our goal.  By the BCT (above which no right-minded crow would fly because of its serpentine meandering), there are still three or four legs left (of nine to thirteen miles each!), depending on how far we want to walk on each leg.  Soon, weather permitting, we’ll be done.  Then it’s off to the next walk, whatever we choose it to be.

Waldo and I part ways with Phyllis and we head home.  Waldo’s chin is on the console between us and his eyes are closed.  I’m dreaming of my recliner and a nice nap.

We have been up since 5:00, after all.

Sometimes, the path is clear.

Cold and snowy one day…

There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.

-Bill Waterson

It’s been about five years since I retired, moved to Marlborough, got myself a border collie and started walking a lot.  This is the time of year when I like to reflect on things and try to get a sense of how all that is working out.  As my life rushes toward that inevitability that we all face, the number of years, months, days and hours left to me ever dwindling, doing that helps me put things into some kind of perspective.  Everything that I’ve done in life, all those years and tears behind me, has led to where I am now.  But just where is that?

Is retirement a good thing?  My body certainly thinks so.  I am seldom sleep-deprived and I often glory in that precious jewel of old age, the midafternoon nap.   Or a nap at any other time of the day I choose, for that matter.  Although my body does complain in aches and pains when I whip it to keep it going on prolonged walks, I can follow a daily routine of exercise that keeps this “ugly bag of mostly water” (to quote a line from Star Trek) in as good condition as can be reasonably expected for someone my age.  That was not so easy to do while I was working.  Then there is that truly sensual experience of sitting in my recliner after a grueling trek, putting my feet up and relaxing every muscle in my body.  The resulting drop in metabolic rate and release of corporeal tension produces a flesh and bone ecstasy more profound than any splash of cool water on a very hot day.  That’s something that my soul relishes and I can indulge myself in it on any day at (almost) any time of day.  That was not so possible before I retired.

Retirement isn’t all do what you want when you want, of course.  Life still finds many ways to impose other people’s requirements on you.  There’s taxes to pay, of course, and rent, insurance, utility bills, and so many other things.  Wouldn’t it be nice if there were some kind of retirement account where all of that was taken care of automatically, or just made to go away?  What if there were an inviolable law that states that you can’t mess with retired folks?  They’ve paid their dues, just leave them in peace.  Wouldn’t that be wonderful?  At the very least, you should be able to take care of business in your own good time, without harassment.  Okay, you’re responsible for taking out your own garbage, washing your own dishes and doing your own laundry, but why can’t a retired person just be left alone to seek such joy as he can find, in what time he has left?  Isn’t that what retirement is supposed to be about?  Sadly, you can’t entirely leave the world behind while you’re still in it.

One of the best parts of my retired life is Waldo.  I wanted to get a dog when I retired for several reasons.  Most importantly, I think, it was because I wanted a friend, a partner, to share the last few years of my life.  I’ve always really liked dogs and they, I believe, have always enjoyed my company.  I chose a border collie, because, after some online research, I discovered they are an independent breed.  Unlike many dogs who constantly seek attention, border collies are perfectly happy, and often prefer, to entertain themselves.  That leaves me with lots of time to entertain myself, something I am prone to do.  And yet, we are both there for each other when the need or desire arises.  Living with a dog has its challenges, but, by and large, it is so much easier, engendering more peace and calm, than living with a human.  People are so much more complicated. and peace and calm are the precious metals of retirement.  Sharing a life with Waldo has proven to be an excellent way to wind down my life’s story.  I do, thankfully, still have my beloved family, but they live somewhere else.  Close by, but not in my face.

So, I worked for decades, giving up my time and peace of mind for a few dollars, and deferring my comfort, while pursuing all sorts of career and personal challenges.  Now I am in a place where I can let most of all that go and largely just relax.  I’ve traveled down a meandering path that has led me to where I am now, but that was never the end goal of my journey.  The journey itself was the meat of the story that I’ve written and now is the time for me to savor it and wonder at the magic of it all.

It’s also time for me to take Waldo out.

…warmer and clearing the next.

It’s a nice warm late winter day.

What some people call serendipity is just having your eyes open.

-Jose Manuel Barroso

Today, the weather is quite warm, for January, with a high of 54℉!  I left my gloves at home and I’m walking bare-eared under my wide brimmed safari sunhat.  It’s cloudy and a little breezy, so I did wear my light fabric flight-jacket, but it’s not zipped up all the way.  Waldo is happily prancing down the path, sniffing on one side, then the other.

I decided I’m going to visit my brother in Switzerland again, this June and July, so I’m committed to reviewing the French I’ve been able to learn.  I would like to take a class in intermediate French, but that’s not something I can easily afford.  So, I pull out my phone and replay the app I used in the past.  Using the app makes me listen and speak and the repetition helps me form neuronic pathways that lead to speaking with some facility.  I put the app on speaker and stick the phone in my shirt pocket where I can hear it well.  I begin with the first lesson.

Because it’s warm and a Saturday, there are quite a few people, some with dogs and even some bicycles, on the trail.  We haven’t walked more than ten minutes and an “elderly” couple, I don’t recall meeting before, passes us.  I’m saying “Je ne comprend pas” (I don’t understand) to the app and the woman gives me a strange look.  I smile and tell her, “I’m trying to learn French.”

“We are French!” she says.

Well, I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, so we walk side by side and converse in French.  Well, they speak in French and I mumble as best as I can, but they seem to understand okay.  Waldo, he doesn’t speak any French, so after a cursory tail-wagging hello, he continues on down the trail in front of us, entertaining himself.  Anyhow, I discover that the two of them have been in this country for some twenty-five years and have lived in Marlborough for fifteen.  The man, whose name is Gilles, works as an engineer at Boston Scientific, a company whose headquarters is just off the rail trail opposite to the open field at Fort Meadow Reservoir.  I didn’t get where his wife, Germaine, works.

It’s been about six months since I’ve worked at learning French and I’ve forgotten a lot.  It’s still there, just under the level of my conscious awareness, and I have a lot of “Oh, yeah!” experiences.  It’s funny.  Over the years, I’ve tried to learn Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.  If I don’t work at using one, what comes out is “Spitulese”, a combination of all of them.  Since I haven’t used the French in a few months, I subconsciously default back to Spitulese when I’m searching for a way to say something in French.  After an “Uh” or two, the French comes up, or my new friends provide it for me.  It’s work, though.

After a half an hour or so, I tire and revert to English.  We then talk about all manner of things, including politics, dialectical differences in the various parts of France and Switzerland.  Germaine is from the south of France and Gilles is from the north.  We compare health care systems and retirement benefits between France and the US (Gilles says he’s thinking of retiring in about five years).  They plan to return to France when they retire (they are dual citizens of the US and France).  Heath care is every bit as good there as here, there’s universal health care, retirement benefits are enough to survive comfortably and it’s home.  Add to that the wonderful food, wine and French culture and I can see the allure.  For one thing, the French pride themselves in living the art de vie, the art of life.  That means basing one’s life on the pleasant things life has to offer: good food, good wine, good art of all kinds and good companionship.

Germaine tells me she knows someone locally who teaches French and there is a community of people in the area who get together to speak it.  Sounds like just the thing I’ve been looking for.  I would think that meeting Gilles and Germaine was serendipitous, if it weren’t for the fact that Waldo and I have been out on the rail trail some 1,800 times over the years and, if anyone speaking French were to ever walk here, the chances are good we’d meet them eventually.  Just the same, I’m really happy to have met them and, sometime soon, I’m going to have to invite them for a walk, or maybe a glass of wine (we exchanged phone numbers).  Too bad there aren’t any sidewalk cafes around here like in France.

Gilles and Germaine stay with Waldo and me for the entire walk.  At the end, we go one way, back to our car, and they go another (their home is within walking distance of the trail).  “Enchanté!” I say, shaking their hands and “Aurevoir!”

Waldo and I go back home to rest, relax and savor our new friends.

No flowers in the Covid Garden yet.

Snow is here!

History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.

-John Dalberg-Acton

Well, we finally got our first snow of the season.  Twelve inches was dumped on us overnight three days ago.  It was wet and heavy, bending some branches way down where we had to walk and even toppling more than one tree completely over.  The temperatures went well down into the teens, making me bundle up in my parka and put gaiters on over rain pants.  The worst part was that it took so much work to trudge along, blazing a trail through all that white.  My seventy-five year old body complained a lot about it.  Not only was I huffing and puffing, with heart pounding, I was dripping in sweat.  Waldo, bless his young heart, porpoised through it having a grand old time.

Then, yesterday, the temperature rose into the forties and it rained.  Today, the high was fifty-one degrees.  Fifty-one degrees!  Most of the snow is now gone, replaced by slushy swamps in the low spots and water running in the ditches.  There is, however, some snow left in shadowy places and where plows piled it up while clearing the streets.  On the rail-trail, there are stretches where there’s patches of squishy snow/slush/water, but most of that can easily be navigated around.  Except, of course, for Waldo, who doesn’t seem to mind getting his paws (and his fur) wet.  He even finds beds of the stuff to roll in.  Ah, well, I’m used to the smell of wet dog this time of year.

We haven’t gone far down the trail and we come across an “elderly” man and his wife out for a stroll.  With all the construction going on, conversation soon rolls around to how much things have changed in Marlborough.   In just the five years Waldo and I have been walking down here, there’s been townhouses built and elderly housing complexes put up in places that used to be grassy fields and stands of trees and bushes.  And now there’s the repaving of a city parking lot, the making of a park on the landfill by Fort Meadow Reservoir and the apartment complex going up at the beginning of the rail-trail.

It turns out the man is a retired carpenter who spent all of his life in Marlborough.  I ask him if he remembers when the train still ran where we’re walking.  He says he does.  Deisel engines pulled passenger cars in the fifties and freight in the sixties.  Where the trail crosses Fitchburg Street, the railroad ran over a bridge with a stone abutment.  The passage beneath it was so narrow, only one car could pass through it at time.  Most of the area that now has houses and businesses, like Boston Scientific, was all open field and forest.  Marlborough Hospital, whose parking lot can be seen from the trail, was a single small building.  The railroad tracks, back in his childhood, ran into town, well beyond where the rail-trail now ends, and there was a station behind city hall.

He remembers when the landfill, where the park is to be built, was still open and used as a dump — it was closed in the eighties.  He even remembers the guy that ran it.  He smoked a big cigar while using a bulldozer to bury whatever was left to rot.  As we walk along, he points out this old building was a factory and that was a business of some sort.  It turns out, he was hired to work on the apartment complex where Waldo and I live, back in the seventies.  He remembers when it was an orchard before that.

I was fascinated to hear about how the landscape and ambience around here has changed during his lifetime.  And that change is accelerating.  Living long enough to remember how things were and how they morphed into what they are now, adds a sense of continuity to the world.  The universe is not just a collection of random events grouped together in meaningless clumps.  The study of history was something I never really liked as a kid, but now that I’m older, I’ve learned to appreciate it.  Not as a sequence of dates and events, but the flow of the human experience as it evolves over time.  It makes me feel like I can connect the dots, tell a kind of story, without too many plot holes, that connects where we were to where we are now.

I’m looking forward to meeting this man and his wife out here again, and learn more about how it felt to live here, back in the day.  For now, though, we each must go our own way.

And I have a doggy to dry out.

Sadly, it’s not plowed everywhere.