Walking with Waldo

There’s a road, of sorts, on this part of the railroad bed.

Railroad iron is a magician’s rod, in its power to evoke the sleeping energies of land and water.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

My summer between high school and college was somewhat fractured.  It started with my being sick with malaria (which I contracted four years earlier in Ethiopia, but didn’t get sick).  I then had a number of short-term jobs, including stacking baled hay in Colorado, delivering freight in Idaho, helping a guy lay ceramic tile in Utah and ended with working as a laborer on the Great Northern Railroad in Glendive, Montana.  My duties on that last job were to follow behind a machine that pulled the spikes out of the ties and toss them to the side so they wouldn’t be buried in gravel.  Maybe that experience gave me a tenuous interest in railroads.  That, and when I was a kid, my dad gave me a Lionel toy steam locomotive that I liked.  It’s also true that my grandfather was a telegrapher for the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, in Grand Junction, Colorado, in the early years of the twentieth century, so maybe there’s a hereditary component.  At any rate, Waldo and I are back to tracing where the railroad that became the Assebet River Rail Trail ran through the gap that separates the southern part from the northern part.

I have read that the reason this gap exists is that part of it lies on land owned by a local orchard.  The word is that the orchard owners don’t want to let the trail be developed through their land because they are afraid of theft.  However, they do let people come and pick their own apples (for a price) and even hold public events like hayrides, birthday parties and maze walking.  I was careful to look on the All Trails Ap to see what trails were not “private.”  Although there are some trails on the property that are marked as private, the railroad bed is not.

A few days have passed since Waldo and I were last out here, bushwhacking our way along what’s left of the railroad, and today is a good day to finish the project.  I’m wearing my light jacket, but it is unzipped, and I am quite comfortable.  I pull off the road onto an open field, marked as a parking lot.  The road continues on, heading toward what’s left of the railroad bed, but we’ll walk from here.  The skies are partly cloudy and there is next to no breeze.  The ground is dry (we’ve had a bout of drought recently), and, although we’re on a peninsula where the river winds around in a U-turn, it’s not muddy or swampy at all.  The road is well manicured, but unpaved.  Signs say that it leads to still more parking lots and I’m sure that it is also used by the  orchard equipment to maintain their land.  Except for a short distance of about 100 yards where we pass close by the edge of the orchard, we are surrounded by wild forest – small bole trees, bushes and weeds.  There are no bikes around, nor even people, so Waldo takes off without a care to the forward end of the leash and is happily trotting along, doing his Waldo thing.

We don’t go far and we’re on the old railroad bed (now a road).  I can see the river, not far away, and the road runs straight south.  The railroad bed also runs north from where we meet it, but it is unimproved and bushwhacky.  We head north first, to see where it used to cross the river.  It’s just a few yards and we dead-end at the river.  The water lies about four feet or so below us and Waldo wants to go down there.  I don’t need a swamp dog, so I hold him back.  There’s no clear abutment that used to support a bridge, just a few large rocks.  On the other side of the river, I see where the roadbed starts up again – still no abutment or evidence of bridge foundation.  We turn around and head south.

The going is quick and easy.   Winter-prepped forest lies on each side of us and the river is close enough that I can see it through the brush.  After about 0.8 miles, there’s a fence that cuts across the road.  We’re on a dike that’s about six feet high and there is a trench on one side.  The fence is suspended above the trench a good four feet, so Waldo and I scramble down the steep sides of the dike, duck under the fence, then climb back onto the railroad bed.  Here, our path is not so well manicured, but it’s not grossly overgrown either, and it’s easy to navigate.  Off to my right, I can see a man operating a tractor, but he ignores us, so we do the same.

After about 0.1 miles, we get back to the river.  At my feet is a steep sloped river bank and on the other side of the river is the continuation of the railroad bed where Waldo and I explored a few days ago.  We head back to the car.

Right now, everything is clothed in late fall boney beige.  On the way back to the car, off to my right, through barren limbs, sticks and weed stems, I get a glimpse of people on the river.  I can’t tell if they’re in kayaks or canoes, but they’re paddling.   I wonder where they put into the water.  As I walk along, I imagine what it’s like in the spring and summer.  It must be beautiful, all decked out in leafy verdure and flowery color.  It’s a shame the rail trail isn’t extended through here.  My phone says this part of the railroad is 0.9 miles long.  Except for the guy on the tractor and the people on the river, we see no one else.

To be continued…

While, in other places…

There used to be a bridge here.

The excitement lies in the exploration of the world around us.

-Jim Peebles

Continued from last blog…

Waldo and I are still tracking where the railroad ran across the gap that joins the northern part of the Assebet River Rail Trail to the southern part.  We found a low dike where the rails must have run (but are now gone) and follow it.  The going isn’t too bad and, other than the occasional tree trunk that’s fallen across where we need to go, the walking is easy (although not easy enough for a bipedal trot).  There are places where we have to scramble down the side of the dike and then back up again, to avoid crawling under an arboreal obstacle, but few other problems.  Waldo, although frenetically running hither and thither on his own exploration, is readily redirectable and I can steer him where I want him to go, after a few missteps.  The surrounding forest is all beige, dry and boney, the ground is buried under several inches of tan, dead leaves, and the weeds are shriveled and easily navigated.  The temperature is in the mid-50s, the air isn’t moving and the late-fall, low-to-the-horizon, sun is shining free of cloud.

The railroad bed runs straight, but trees and bushes obscure just where we’re headed.  I can just glimpse the Assebet River off to my right and there is a narrow street on my left.  The ground underfoot is buried under dry dead leaves, but, still, I can feel old railroad ties making walking a bit uneven.  Waldo is out front, energetically trotting through the brush that’s grown over the way we have to go like he was trying to decide the right path to take.  I tell him, “Where are you going?” or “Not that way!” and he stops, backtracks and heads off again in another direction as if making a new random choice would get him where I want him to go.  Inevitably, his long leash gets tangled around branches, twigs and trunks so, here and there, I have to stop and unravel it.  But, man, is he ever having fun and we do make it to where we have to go.

About a mile from where we started, I see blue water crossing our path.  I walk right up to what must have been a bridge abutment, but is now just a jumble of stones.  The water looks deep (I can’t see bottom) and is about thirty feet wide.  New England is currently in a drought and the water doesn’t seem to moving at all (during spring runoff the river runs with a vengeance).  On the other side, I can see another pile of rocks and what looks like the continuation of the railroad bed.  I glance at Google maps on my phone and see where the river meanders from the west, then makes a U-turn to head north and northwest.  That means that in about a mile, the railroad bed once again is blocked by the river.  We’ve gone as far as we can without back-tracking to get over the river unless we want to get wet.  And I don’t.

Rather than bushwhack our way back to the car, I decide to follow the nearby streets to a place where they cross over the Mass Central Rail Trail.  It’s then an easy walk back to the parking lot.  The Mass Central Rail Trail is still under construction and is not yet paved, but all the bridges and overpasses are finished and the surface is flat and even.  It’s not very far at all and we’ve come full circle back to Route 62, with the parking lot just across the street and to the right.  It occurs to me that the original railroad bed could not have gone to where the parking lot is because that would require the tracks to make a hard right turn.  Trains don’t do hard turns.

We walk down to Route 62 and I explore around the other side of the road.  Sure enough, there’s a steep embankment with rails on top.  That’s gotta be the continuation of the original railroad bed.  Waldo and I climb to the top and follow the rails the short distance to where it abuts the Assebet River Rail Trail.  On the other side of the rail trail, I can see a high embankment where the railroad must have continued on.  I recognize that it’s where we walked a few days ago.  What I had originally thought was railroad bed next to the parking lot was all wild bush.  That makes a lot more sense than trying to explain how a train could get from the flat ground at the parking lot up the fifteen feet to the top of the embankment.  Problem solved.

Waldo and I walk back on the Assebet River Rail Trail to our car and head home.  There isn’t much day left and I certainly don’t want to be out here walking in the weeds in the dark.

We’ll finish our exploration another day.

Mass Central Rail Trail, near where it crosses the Assebet River Rail Trail.

The old railroad bed, such as it is.

There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.

-Francis Drake

Back in my preteen years, while living in Salt Lake City, Utah, my neighborhood friends and I were always looking for adventure of one sort or another.  We lived in a suburban residential area that had grid-like streets, sidewalks bounded by well-kept lawns surrounding three-bedroom houses sitting on 3/4 acre lots.  It was quiet and not much happened, unless you made it happen.  One of the places we loved to go to make stuff happen, at least in our overactive imaginations, was “The Gulley.”

The Gulley lay a little more than two blocks from my house and was easily accessible.  A half-mile or so wide, it was the extension of Immigration Canyon, the route that Brigham Young and his Mormons took when they first entered the Great Salt Lake Valley.  At one time, there was a railroad that ran down inside its length, but that was long gone by the time my intrepid team happened upon the scene.  The railroad bed was still there, but the rails were all gone.  A few creosote-soaked wooded ties survived and we even found an occasional railroad spike lying around, but there wasn’t much else.  A small creek ran down through the lowest parts of the defile then disappeared under the city in storm drains.  The place was choked with weeds and bushes which made the going challenging, especially given our diminutive stature.  All the same, it was a great place to practice being something like a Richard Burton looking for the source of the White Nile.

Maybe my subliminal burning-yearning for adventure and exploration began way back then, I don’t know.  I certainly had many wonderful real adventures and explorations, in places like East Africa and elsewhere, since then, but those early formative years laid down the desire for searching out new things and experiences that persists today.  It’s interesting that now, in my seventies, I’m once again bushwhacking my way down overgrown old railroad beds just to discover what’s there.

Waldo and my usual trek is along the Assebet River Rail Trail.  It is a tarmac-paved path that runs atop (mostly) the old roadbed of the Marlborough Branch of the Fitchburg Railroad.  The rail trail goes from what is now the Acton Station of the Boston Commuter Rail south(ish) to downtown Marlborough, but not contiguously.  There is a northern piece that runs south from Acton for about 3.5 miles and a southern piece that goes further south for another 5.25 miles from Hudson to Marlborough.  There is this gap between the two, about 3.85 miles long.  Part of it (around 1.85 miles) is now a private road that you can walk along without hindrance, but about 2 miles of the gap is “undeveloped,” which usually equates to “bushwhack.”  Waldo and I, in the past, have walked all but that 2-mile bushwhacky part.  That’s a juicy piece of adventure we opt to begin today.

By looking at Google Maps, I know that there is at least one place where the old railroad bed crosses the Assebet River.  Looking at the satellite maps, I doubt that any bridges that once spanned the water are still there.  The plan is to start at the Hudson end of the trail and head north(ish) until we strike river, then turn around and come back.  We start out late in the day, so I decide to leave the northern part of the gap for another day.

Waldo and I start out from the parking lot at the southern end of the gap.  Somewhere near here, the railroad that is now the Mass Central Rail Trail crossed the railroad that is now the Assebet Rail Trail.  The Hudson terminus of the Mass Central Rail Trail is just across Route 62 and  runs southeast to Sudbury, but we don’t go that way.  Instead, we start at the northern end of the Assebet River Rail Trail and keep going north in a straight line.

The ground is flat and overgrown with small-bole new-growth trees (now barren of leaves) and many stalks and branches of the late fall remnants of bushes and weeds.  The ground is covered by a thick carpet of dead oak and maple leaves, but the ground under that is easy to walk on.  There is no obvious dike or raised ground that hints it was once railroad bed, but, with some imagination, I can sort of see where there might have been one.

We don’t go far and we cross a road.  On the other side, I can no longer guess where the railroad bed used to run.  Some ridges and troughs run in the right direction, but nothing that even whispers “railroad.”  There are no significant nearby hills and although we’re are in a wood, my view of our surroundings is not obscured by greenery.  Still, I can’t find wherever the tracks used to be — their footprint is lost to time.  Small-bole trees and weeds still complicate our route, especially when you’re attached by long leash to a hyperactive border collie who is operating in go-mode.  I plod my way through the brush behind Waldo until we get back to Route 62 (which runs parallel to our track, then turns to cross it).  On the other side, I can see a raised dike, that is obviously what’s left of a railroad, and we head there.

It’s a nice day to be outside doing this.

Can you see it? It takes off to the right, I’m pretty sure…

To be continued…

Waldo at a trot.

Do not regret growing older.  It is a privilege denied to many.

-Mark Twain

Shortly after getting back from Switzerland, my back went into excruciating spasm.  There was a good six weeks this summer when I did little more than walk just enough so Waldo could poop and pee.  At my age, you lose physical conditioning really fast, so for a few additional weeks I needed to get back into things a little gingerly.  I wasn’t surprised, then, when it took me two and a half hours to walk our usual six miles as opposed to our previous time of two and a quarter hours.  But that was four months ago and I’m feeling pretty good.  Still, my leisurely pace is two and a half hours for six miles.  What the hell?

Back in the day, I used to do quite a bit of running.  I found that my pace (a blindingly fast nine minutes per mile) was limited by my ability to blow off CO2.  If I pushed it faster than that, I would run out of breath and would have to slow down, or stop, to catch it.  But at nine minutes per mile, I could go on forever and could run ten, or even twelve, miles without stop.  Walking has no such limitation.  I might breathe a little harder if I were to pick up the pace, but things are still within my physiological ability to keep it up.

Four legged critters can vary the order in which they move their legs and that can change how fast they can go.  I tried watching Waldo to see in what sequence he puts paw to ground, but I couldn’t do it.  There were just too many things moving too fast for me to figure it out.  I’m sure, like a horse, he has a walking, a trotting, a canter and a gallop sequence.

For four legged animals, steps always begin with the hind legs.  They provide the power strokes, pushing the animal forward.  If we number the legs of a horse, starting with the right rear leg, then working around clockwise, the left rear would be number two, the left front number three, and the right front number four.  At their walking pace, horses walk in a four-beat side to side motion: foot one hits the ground, then foot four (same side), the side changes with foot two, followed by foot three (same side), then foot one again and so on.  So, a walk has the sequence of one, four, two, three, repeat.

A horse in a trot has a two-beat diagonal pattern.  Two feet hit the ground at the same time and the other two at a different time.  For example, hoofs one and three hit the ground (right rear and left front) and then two and four (left rear and right front).

A horse in a canter has a diagonal three beat pace.  It’s like a trot except only one pair of diagonal feet hit the ground at the same time.  For example, one and three, followed by foot two and then foot four.  This allows the horse to move a little faster.

A gallop is a four-beat pace, with one, then the other, of the hind feet hitting the ground, followed by one, then the other, of the fore feet (one, two followed by four, three).  This gate allows the horse to flex his back in a bow and he uses his massive back muscles as well as his leg muscles to propel himself forward.  Of all the gaits, this is the easiest to see as first the back legs hit the ground, then the horse’s back unbends like a huge spring, followed by the forelegs hitting the ground way out in front.  The forelegs then rush backward, sometimes between the hind legs as they reach forward, bowing the back and compressing the spring, preparing for the next lunge forward by the back legs.

These patterns are not universal for all four-legged animals.  Camels and giraffes don’t have a trot-gait and their walking pace is unusual.  They walk side to side in a two-beat walk, moving legs one and four together, then two and three together.  I can attest from personal experience that this gives a rider a definite side to side sway in the saddle, as if asea, rocking in the waves.  Ships of the desert, indeed.  Camels and giraffes do gallop, though.  I’m absolutely sure, even though I can’t see it very well, that Waldo is more like a horse than a camel.

Having only two legs, my options are a bit more limited. Unless I were to hop, I only have one choice – left, right, left right.  I’ve played around with trying to move my legs more rapidly versus making each step longer and have found that the latter makes the miles go underfoot more quickly.  Experimenting, I’ve found that the best way to increase my stride length is by consciously leaning forward more.  This puts my center of gravity forward, forcing me to increase my stride to keep from falling.  I can also swing my hips to make my stride longer, but that also requires I move my center of gravity forward to keep from falling.  By doing both, I can, without too much effort, reduce my time per mile from twenty-five minutes per mile (two and a half hours for six miles) to twenty minutes per mile (two hours for six miles) and if I push it really hard, I can do seventeen-minute miles (one hour and forty-two minutes for six miles).

I think what must have happened was that I leaned back just a bit and shortened my stride unconsciously to ease my back pain.  That became a habit and I now must retrain myself.

It’s either that, or admit to myself that I’m just getting old(er).

Waldo at a more sedate gait (rare).

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.