Walking with Waldo

This is a railroad bed? Well, maybe not…

It is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown.  The only true failure would be not to explore at all.

-Sir Ernest Shackleton

When I learned the Mass Central Rail Trail was to be extended from Hudson to Sudbury, I pulled up a map of it on the net.  It was a pleasant surprise to find that the new leg begins in Hudson, across the street from the parking lot that is the northern terminus of the southern part of the Assabet River Rail Trail.  I saw that the old railroad continued west from there, crossed what is now the Assabet River Rail Trail and then continued parallel to it before heading north and west.  On the website map, the trail is listed as being “unimproved,” which means bushwhacking would be necessary.  I didn’t remember seeing any such railroad bed anywhere near that spot, though. Of course, this is something that absolutely needs exploration.

Waldo and I choose a nice shirtsleeve-weather day for our quest.  There is next to no wind and the sky is partly cloudy.  The boney remnants of trees surround us and their leaves thickly carpet the ground off-trail.  As we get out of the Waldo-mobile, Waldo takes off down the paved trail because that’s where we are wont to go.  I call him back and start looking for the remnants of what was once a railroad.  Off in the weeds, I find a ridge running off parallel to the paved trail.  If I squint and turn my head sideways, I can sort of imagine that it’s what I’m looking for.  Waldo sees where I’m headed and takes off headlong in that general direction as if he were thinking, “Yay, no bikes here!”  Before long, I have to redirect him as he’s gone off pell-mell somewhere into the bush.  He’s gotten real good at being redirected and heads back toward me without a fuss.  He’s having a great time out where he’s supposed to be – at the forward end of the leash.

We don’t go far and I’m sure I don’t want to continue.  The weeds are so thick that it becomes way too much work to follow where the ridge runs.  Besides that, I have to continually unwind Waldo’s leash where he has managed to get it wound around bushes and small tree trunks.  So we head back to the paved trail.

We don’t go far and I can see, not far off to my right, a steep embankment rising about 15 to 20 feet from the ground.  On top, I can see railroad tracks.  The sides of the embankment are covered in leaves, which means going up there isn’t going to be easy, but what the hell.  Gingerly herring-boning my way up over the very slippery leaves, I get to the top.  Waldo has already bounded up there – four-foot drive is nothing to sneer at.  At the top are two parallel rails, separated at a standard gauge of 4 ft, 8½ inches, running off into the woods.  We backtrack until the rails stop and the embankment drops off precipitously.  Down below, I can see what I thought was the railroad bed we were following before.  Now, I’m not so sure – there’s no obvious connection between the two.  We head back the other way.

The going isn’t too bad.  I can feel the railroad ties underfoot, but can’t see them because of all the leaves.  Here and there, trees and branches have fallen across our way, making the going a bit tricky, but nothing that requires we leave the roadbed.  Waldo jumps over them as if he were on an agility course.  There is one place where the Japanese knotweed has grown across the tracks in something that looks, at a distance, like a hedge.  But, when we get close, It’s only the leaves that have grown across where we need to go and it is no obstacle at all.

Then, as we walk through a steep-sided ravine, I see a dam of fallen tree trunks, bushes and branches blocking the rails.  Being in a ravine, the leaves are rotting in a black, sort of muddy, stew under the ones that are still on the surface and yellow and tan.  As I get close, I can see that maybe there’s a way around it on the right side of the ravine, but it’s a loose pile of sticks that I’m not sure Waldo can navigate.  As I’m considering the options, Waldo races past me, bounds over the sticks to the other side, then turns and looks at me as if to say, “Come on, old man.   Let’s go!”

I mentally shrug and follow.  After only a couple of steps, the branch I put my weight on snaps and I fall into a dense nest of twigs and sticks and land in the muck.  At my age, it’s hard enough to get up off bare ground when I fall.  But in this mess, it’s like trying to take off Chinese finger cuffs.  I just can’t get a solid purchase anywhere.  Meanwhile, Waldo is patiently watching and waiting for me.  I swear to God he has a smile on his face.

I finally make it up and continue on, only to have the same thing happen a second time!  I have no doubt that Waldo is now silently chuckling at me as he continues to patiently wait.  It takes me a few more minutes, but I finally make my way up and out of the morass.  Just on the other side if the dam, the ravine abruptly ends where a street crosses it on a dike.  Waldo and I climb out of the ravine and find ourselves in downtown Hudson.  There the roadbed temporarily ends in city streets and buildings.  I’ve had enough bushwhacking for today so it’s time to stop – for now.

We’ve wandered a bit north of the Assebet River Rail Trail, but it’s only about a half mile away.  We make our way through the city until we find our trail heading back to the parking lot.  After a couple of miles, we’re back at the car.

Obviously, this story is to be continued as there is still unexplored Mass Central Railroad bed to explore.

But that’s enough for today.

Just how are we supposed to get through that?

Beginning of the Ware piece of the Mass Central Rail Trail.

If I’d had some set idea of a finish line, don’t you think I would have crossed it by now?

-Bill Gates

There are many rail trails in the continental US.  Some are complete, following an entire nineteenth century railroad bed, and many are intermittent works in progress.  The longest one runs, with unfinished gaps, from Washington DC all the way to La Push, Washington State, on the Pacific Ocean.  When finished, it will be some 3700 miles long, going through Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and on into Washington.  It is now about 55% complete.  Even though it is incomplete, there have been a few people who have biked the full 3700 miles by filling in the gaps with connecting streets and roads.

Waldo and I have walked down much of the Mass Central Rail Trail, but it, too, is only about 58% finished.  It follows the Massachusetts Central Railroad bed that goes from Boston to Northampton (approximately 104 miles).  There’s a small piece we haven’t been on, in Ware, MA, that is about 1.85 miles long.  It’s been on my mind to walk it and Christine and I decided to go today.  Waldo, of course, is eager to join us.

Ware is a 1 hour and 15 minute drive west from Marlborough, if we go by way of the Mass Pike (Interstate 90).   It sits on the eastern shore of the Quabbin Reservoir and has a population of around 10,206 people.  It was the birthplace of actor Geena Davis, but has been around for much longer – since 1775.  When Samuel Colt was 15, he worked in his father’s textile plant in Ware.  The name “Ware” derives from “weir” which is a kind of dam used to trap fish, which the Indians who lived there built on the Ware River.  That river powered many mills that manufactured textiles, clothing and shoes in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.  The depression hit the mills hard and the inhabitants of Ware banded together to buy the shares of the struggling companies.  It was the first employee buy-out of a major manufacturer in the US.  Today, all the mills are gone.

Christine, Waldo and I decide to meet in the parking lot of a Walmart Supercenter.  The trail begins in its northeast corner and heads further northeast from there.  The day is partly cloudy and cool, with a 14 mph breeze.  At the start, the trail is surrounded by woods.  The trees are mostly oaks and maples and many of their leaves carpet the ground in yellow and tan.  Some of their branches are barren, but some are still green.  It seems the trees aren’t sure what to do.  That comes as no surprise to me – it has been 80℉ one day and in the 30s the next.  The trail itself is unpaved, but hard packed with stone dust, and easy to walk on.  Christine and I take the opportunity to get caught up and talk about this and that as we walk along behind Waldo.  We pass a few people, and even some dogs, but not many.

At northeastern terminus of the trail, the land opens up into grassy fields and then city streets.  The trip is short, but pleasant, and Waldo and I can now say we’ve walked all of the western part of the Mass Central Rail Trail that’s open.  There is still a piece to the east that goes into Boston we have yet to trod.

Sometimes, on these trails, we can see the undeveloped railroad bed continue on past where the walking trail ends.  Waldo and I, along with Christine and Phyllis on occasion, have bushwhacked our way down these “paths.”  But that’s not possible here.  On the one end, where we started, the railroad bed is obliterated by the Walmart parking lot and, on the other, by the town of Ware.  Still, I suppose, one could follow the streets and roads that approximate where the railroad ran to connect one patch of rail trail to the next.  It might be fun to link all the pieces together in that way, if for no other reason than to say that we’ve walked the entire route.

The next piece of Mass Central Rail Trail to the west that’s open is the bit that we trekked when we walked across Massachusetts from the New York border to the tip of Cape Cod.  That piece is long enough to stretch from Northampton to past Amherst.  It crosses the Connecticut River on an old railroad bridge redone for walking.  The eastern part of the trail, that we haven’t yet been on, starts in Cambridge near the Alewife T station, and runs about 6 miles, or so, into Boston, ending not far from where the USS Constitution is birthed.

The connecting pieces, between the bits of open trail, are classified as unimproved, proposed, or under construction.  The “unimproved” parts usually require some bushwhacking and this is the time of year that’s best for that because the weeds that overgrow the roadbed are in hibernation for the season.  The rest, in the worst-case scenario, can be approximated by following streets and roads (although sometimes this means we would have to go a bit out of our way in order to find a bridge to cross a river).  So, we still have plenty of trail to explore.

But that’s for another day.

Other end of the Ware piece of the Mass Central Rail Trail.

Construction is nearly complete on the apartment complex at the beginning of the trail.

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.

-Bertolt Brecht

The temperatures are still quite warm, with peaks in the high 70s to 80℉.  The leaves are falling with increased fervor, just the same.  The birches have been joined by an increasing number of maples and the ground is becoming more and more blanketed in yellow and tan.  The oaks have not yet joined the melee en force, but the ones that are not marcescent (marcescent trees hold onto their dead leaves through the winter) aren’t far behind.  The oaks are the last to start and the last to finish their denudation, although the maples shed their verdant cloaks slowly and are almost contemporary.  It just occurred to me that the oaks are the tallest, the maples next and the other trees shorter.  Maybe the order of the leaf loss has something to do with the taller trees trying to eke out the energy of the sun longer because of that.  In the spring, the order of foliation is in that same order – smaller plants sprout new leaves sooner and the taller ones later in the season.

The construction projects along the trail are nearing their completion.  The housing complex near the beginning of the trail is mostly done and I think they are about to pave the parking lot.  The giveaway is that they have laid down a path that goes from the complex to the rail-trail, although it isn’t paved yet.  The buildings across the street from there look pretty nearly done as well.  I would expect people to start moving in before the coldest days of winter.

The parking lot an eighth of a mile up the trail from its beginning is paved and white lines marking out the slots have been painted.  The fence around it is still up and the gate closed, but it looks pretty close to being ready to receive cars.  I have no idea what they’re waiting for before it’s opened, but it isn’t open yet.

The great dirt push-around at the old landfill is nearly done too.  For a year now, there hasn’t been noticeable progress, then, a couple of weeks ago, the piles started being smoothed out on top and different layers of soil and sand were laid down.  The other day, Waldo and I walked by and there was nothing much different and then, an hour later, on our way back, grass seed had been sprayed on top.  Today, about half of the area has been sprayed, although there are large piles of topsoil still being pushed around near the beginning.  They’ve yet to smooth out a space for the parking lot and pave it, so there is still much to be done.  Given the fact that the grass needs a number of months to establish itself, I’m guessing the place won’t be open until late next summer or in the fall.  It may take longer than that.

Despite the construction, much of the trail remains unchanged, except by the seasons.  The patch of forest that Boston Scientific tried to sell to a developer, and failed, remains pristine (I’m not sure how long that’ll last).  The ivy tree stands as green as ever.  The Covid garden still entices with floral offerings and the Marlborough rock garden sign yet stands amongst a pool of small stones exhorting the passerby to, “Take one, Leave one, Share one.”

Waldo and I greet the old-guard, “hardcore” rail-trail visitors as we always have.  This includes the old folks, people with dogs, bicyclists, roller skaters and parents pushing baby buggies full of their most precious cargo.  We haven’t seen Derrick, the homeless camper, recently – although his tent is still there.  It looks like the new leaves that have recently fallen haven’t been disturbed, so I worry about him a little.  I hope he has somewhere else to go when it gets real cold out.

One thing that Waldo and I have recently had to contend with that I don’t like, is the increasing number of electrified vehicles on the trail.  I don’t know why this has recently come to be such a thing, but it seems it has.  It’s clearly posted that motorized vehicles are not allowed, and yet people seem to think that if their “vehicles” have electric motors, this doesn’t apply to them.  There are one-wheeled vehicles (sort of like a one wheeled Segway without a handlebar), scooters, electric bicycles and other devices that are hard to describe out here.  My one real complaint about them is that they are operated at speeds that are unsafe.  There are too many dogs and little kids out here who can be unpredictable and impossible to avoid at high speeds.  Of course, there are many regular bicycles out here, too, whose riders don’t operate at safe speeds.  I’m afraid we’re stuck with them, though.  At least until the first snow.

For now, Waldo and I trek our way down the trail, enjoying Mother Nature as best we can, and try to think of the rest like the changing seasons.

This too shall pass.

The new park is nearing completion.

Maple leaf early stages of color change.

How beautifully leaves grow old.  How full of light and color are their last days.

-George Burns

We’re in the midst of an Indian summer with highs of 80℉!  The skies are mostly blue and there is only a slight breeze.  This, of course, means Wado and I are walking in the late morning, but I kinda like to walk then anyway.  We’re done by about noon and that leaves the rest of the day for other stuff.

Before this, there were some low temperatures, down to nearly freezing, that must have triggered the maples and other trees to start changing colors because there are many more reds, yellows and tans out here.  The rail-trail tunnel is still green, and the mighty oaks are not yet all tan, but, in the places where birch trees dominate, leaves are falling a dozen at a time.  A light breeze kicks up and it’s almost like it’s snowing yellow leaves.  The birch part of the trail has not yet turned into the yellow brick road, but that’s not far away.  With these high temperatures, were I a tree, I’d be kinda confused about now, but the earlier freezing temps seem to have acted like a switch, because I don’t see the rate of color change ebbing even a little.

I like to look carefully at the leaves as their colors change.  I walk off to the side of the trail and stare at this leaf and that, still hanging on its branch, or bend over and gaze at some of those that are on the ground.  I particularly like the brilliantly contrasting patterns created at various points of the color development.  Mother Nature can be quite beautiful.

Leaves are the factories of life – creating living tissue from sunlight, carbon dioxide and nutrients from the soil.  Chlorophyl is the photosynthetic pigment that makes this happen.  It is not the only photosynthetic pigment, but is the most efficient one.  It absorbs light in the red and blue part of the spectrum and reflects green.  That’s why leaves are green.  Nature may have evolved this compound, it was at least serendipitous, because the peak of the solar output of visible light is in the yellow-green.  By being able to absorb the red and blue part of the spectrum, chlorophyl can use a good portion of the light available.

If trees held onto their leaves year-round, the cold temperatures of winter would cause their living cells to form ice crystals.  That would destroy the cells and the trees would lose all the nutrients they contained.  Instead, trees have evolved the ability to resorb those nutrients, let the leaf die, and regrow new leaves in the spring.  Most trees, but not all, then shed their leaves for the winter.  Those that don’t, marcescent oaks (the oaks that hold onto their dead leaves through winter), for example, shed them in the spring when they grow new leaves.

In the process of resorbing nutrients, chlorophyl is broken down and the pigments that are left behind have different colors than green.  Many trees have yellow and tan pigments, some have red.  This resorption doesn’t happen uniformly all at once, though.  The nutrients flow back into the tree through veins in the leaves.  This happens by diffusion, since there is no pump in the leaves to make that happen.  That means that at the beginning of the process, the veins and the regions right around them, are a pale green-yellow (because the chlorophyl there has been broken down and resorbed) while the lamina (the are of the leaf between the veins) is still very green.  The result is a pretty pattern in shades of green that isn’t there during the height of summer.

Toward the end of the process, the nutrients have mostly been resorbed from the lamina and only the areas around the veins retain that yellow green tint.  In red maples, and some other trees, what’s left is red and that makes, in my estimation, the most beautiful patterns of contrasting colors — red with streaks of light green and yellow.

That’s not the end of the process, though.  Eventually, if the leaf stays attached to the tree, it will have only the dead pigments left (the red maple leaf will be all red).  So, usually, you have to look for the leaves at the right time while they’re still on the tree.  Sometimes, you can see the almost-dead leaves on the ground, where the process of resorption is frozen, because they have been shed early.  Wherever you find them, they are a true work of art.

Not all leaves die in the winter.  English ivy, for example, stays green throughout the winter.  I’ve seen ivy leaves stubbornly dark green when the temperature was as low as -32℉.  They have evolved a waxy coating on their leaves that protects them from dying and they survive all year long.  Pine needles, a kind of specialized leaf, stay green too, have a waxy coat and remain attached to their trees.  Some, by no means all, are shed in the late summer and early fall, but not because of the coming cold.  They have evolved a different strategy of survival, but that’s a different story.  Mother nature doesn’t evolve just one mechanism for survival, you know.

I would guess the beauty of a nearly dead red maple leaf is lost on Waldo – dogs can’t see red.  But then, dogs have their noses and, I suppose, that comes with its own appreciation of fall beauty.  But I can revel in the rich colorful, although temporary, beauty of an early fall day.

And I do.

Maple leaf late stage, but not complete, color change.

Fort Meadow Reservoir.

I think of each new season as an evolution, not a change in style.

-Manolo Blahnik-

The rail trail is a bit chilly today.  It’s after 3 PM and still the temperature is only around 50℉.  The sky is clear and there’s a 12 mph breeze that makes it feel a bit colder.  I’m wearing my light jacket under my rain jacket (as a windbreaker) and I’m quite comfortable.  Waldo is in his element.  His sable birthday suit is perfect for these temperatures.

In places, some of the maples have started to change color.  The lows have been in the low 30s and I guess that’s been cold enough to flip the switch that tells the trees to suck in the nutrients from their leaves and begin to prepare for the deep cold of winter.  When things first get cold, that’s when the change happens.  Because of global warming, the date at which that happens is occurring later and later in the year.

As we pass the construction where heavy machinery has been pushing dirt around to make a new park, I look out over the Fort Meadow Reservoir.  Most of the trees in the distance are still green, but those that line the shore of the reservoir are all yellow, tan and red.  There’s a sea of green in the middle of which is a body of deep blue water surrounded by vibrant color.  It’s beautiful.

It occurs to me that what causes this is that the shore gets colder than deeper in the forest.  In the morning, when it’s the coldest, open areas, like lakes, streets and meadows, radiate away more heat than deep in the forest where trees can retain the heat by reflecting that radiation back onto the ground.  Therefore, the trees nearest the lake will be subjected to colder temperatures earlier than those in the woods and will start to turn color sooner.  I love it when things make sense.

I also love to think about how Mother Nature has evolved life to deal with varying circumstances.  Plants were the first living things to invade dry ground, hundreds of millions of years ago.  At first, it was just mosses and liverworts.  Mosses and liverworts don’t have stems and leaves and grow close to the ground.  Then some plants evolved the ability to make lignin.  Lignin is a compound that provides a woody stiffness to structures like stems, branches and trunks.  That allowed plants to grow upward toward the life-giving energy of the sun.  Interestingly, the development of lignin in plants led to the second of five near-extinction events.

The thing was, the organisms that could degrade dead things didn’t know what to do with lignin.  So plants died without decay and their remains were washed down into the oceans, supplying those waters with a great deal of nutrients.  Plankton could deal with the lignin and they suddenly had plenty to eat. This caused a worldwide plankton bloom in the oceans that sucked all the oxygen out of the water.  It’s estimated that 85% of species in the oceans then became extinct through suffocation (the same kind of thing, though to a more limited extent, happens today when fertilizer is washed into the sea where algae then blooms and causes dead zones).

On land, the undecayed plant remnants were buried and great pressure and heat turned them into coal.  Later on, land organism figured the lignin thing out and decay led to the nutrients being returned to the soil where they could be reused.  That means there is only a hundred million years or so, in Earth history, when coal was produced.

Anyway, trees needed to develop a way of retaining as much of their nutrients as they could through the cold days of winter.  If they did nothing, the leaves would freeze and die and much of the nutrients they contained would be lost.  So trees evolved to breakdown the chlorophyl and suck it back into their main parts, the trunk and roots.  Then, when the leaves died, they would fall off, but the trees would retain much of their nutrients.  When the chlorophyl, which gives the leaves their green color, is broken down, the underlying pigments, which are yellow, tan and red, shine through, giving the tree a change in color.

Nature is so clever at developing ways to deal with changing climates.  Life always finds a way.

And she does it so beautifully.

Sassafras trees outside my balcony.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…