Most of our route looked like this.
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
-Mark Twain
…Continued from before.
So, here we are, Waldo and I, slogging down a barely recognizable old railroad bed, plowing our way through dense foliage. All around us are saplings, bushes, weeds and vines. The weeds and bushes are chest high and thick enough, in places, that I can’t just force my way through. The thin twigs can be pushed aside, but they’re attached to the ground in a most unforgiving, entrenched and deeply rooted web of boot-defying thicket. Vines snake their way along the ground that constantly reach out for my ankles, doing their best to trip me. I only know they’re there when I try to take a step and feel a tug that almost flattens me. Waldo and I are constantly looking this way and that, for the path of least resistance. And not always agreeing on what that is.
Worse still is the Rosa multiflora. As the name suggests, it is a variety of rose, although the flowers don’t look like those that come to mind when one hears “rose.” They are white, or pink, and look more like a daisy. But they have no flowers this time of year. There are, however, plenty of long, spindly, green, claw-bearing tendrils that flail about in the air, just waiting for some innocent to wander close. They then mercilessly reach out and impale their victim with their tiny hooked talons, embedding themselves in clothing and flesh. Once snared, it’s not easy to pull free and when you can, the godawful tentacles swing free and return to do it all over again. When you have a vigorous border collie pulling at his leash, it’s even harder to get loose. The plant likes a lot of sun, so, of course, here, where there is little shade from old trees, the stuff is plentiful. It’s not long before small amounts of blood are running down the exposed skin on my hands and arms. Waldo doesn’t seem bothered, but I’m not so sure that I would trade the experience for a thick, thorn-resistant, sable coat. At least not in these temperatures.
I haven’t figured out why, but the way seems to be a little clearer next to the roadbed as opposed to right on it. But even so, it’s touch and go and we have to weave our way around to get through the worst of it. Thankfully, there are short stretches where a relatively open path appears off to the side. Not for long, but long enough that we can get some relief.
This must have been the way things were when the Indians first came here. It’s no wonder that they liked to follow game trails, when they could, blazed by larger animals. When the pilgrims arrived, they took to both the game trails and the Indian trails until they made “roads” they could follow to where they needed to go. I now have an intimate understanding of what compelled them to do that.
After about 2 miles of fighting the local flora, we cross the highway I decided would be the end of the day’s trek. We turn down the tarmac and head back to the car, about 3.7 miles, following a two-lane road. No way I‘m going back the way we came. The going is uneventful and relatively uninteresting until we get to within 1/8th of a mile of our car. There are a lot of cars on the highway, but Waldo and I are the only pedestrians. On the other side of the road, off to our left, a cop car pulls over and stops. He opens his door and crosses the road toward us.
Oops.
“We got a report that someone was walking through the rail yard, was that you?” he says, as he approaches.
“Yeah,” I say. “They’re going to build a piece of the Mass Central Rail Trail through there and we thought we’d see where it’s going to go.”
“Well, you set off all their cameras. It’s private property and against federal law to trespass there.”
That sounds like a lot of hooey to me. The information I have is that it belongs to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who contracts it out to the train company. Why the feds would be interested, I don’t know. But I don’t argue. “I figured there’d be people who wouldn’t like it, but I decided it would work better if I asked for forgiveness rather than permission.” I left a slight pause. “I guess I could have waited until the trail was completed.”
“Yeah, you could have.”
“But I’m not going to live that long.”
The cop laughed. “Don’t say that,” he said. “You never know.”
“I’m pretty sure,” I answered.
The cop then said he just wanted to make sure that this was not going to be a regular thing and I answered that, no, it was a one-off. I didn’t bother telling him that I felt absolutely no inclination to repeat the bloodletting I had just been through. Not here, anyway. The cop got back in his car and left Waldo and I to walk the short distance to our car. It’s around 5:30 PM and the sun has not yet set, so we finished our trek well before dark.
The next 3 miles on our itinerary (6 miles round trip) will require more bushwhacking, but after that I’m told it’s a clear path (“protected/unimproved”) for 4 miles. Then it’s 6 more miles of “proposed” slogging and we’ll be done. We will have walked the entire 104 miles of the old Mass Central Railroad bed (mostly) from downtown Boston to Northampton, Massachusetts.
And we should be able to do it before the first snow flies.
In one place, for a short distance, we found a nice place to walk next to the railroad bed. The bed is off to the left.