Things didn’t start out so bad, then…
Challenges are what make life interesting, and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.
-Joshua J. Marine
The cooler weather has continued, intermittently, but today is a nice day that won’t get hotter than 73℉. That means it’s time to fill in another gap on the Mass Central Rail Trail. Waldo and I start from where we left off at Highland Street in Berlin and continue west, about 4 miles or so, to Clinton. It’s going to be a round trip, so I figure it should take us maybe 5 hours or so to complete. It’s 10:30 AM when we start.
There’s a wide place in the road where we can park, right in front of where I think we want to go. Across the street is the spot where we emerged from the weeds on our previous trek, after a challenging walk from Hudson. Here, I can’t tell how rigorous the walk will be. There’s a hint of a footpath that leads into the undergrowth, but it’s soon swallowed up in foliage. I lower a shoulder and push myself through a curtain of green and Waldo follows.
On the other side is a wide raised roadbed with ties, although rotted and partly buried in leaves and detritus, and the original iron rails. There are weeds and new growth saplings that need to be negotiated, but the walking is easy. What a difference crossing the street can make! We’re surrounded by lush green forest. Although there are streets nearby, they’re hidden by the greenery. Waldo assumes his position on point and we’re off.
We don’t go much more than a half-mile and the going starts to get a bit tougher. Tree limbs lay across our path, as well as more and more bushes and weeds, and we’re soon bushwhacking a bit. We cross Coburn Road and things rapidly get much worse. Entire freshly uprooted trees block our way, fallen and broken, with leafy branches still attached. Trunks, a foot in diameter, lay broken, revealing freshly exposed wood, one right after another. You never know how far this kind of thing can last, it might be for only a short distance, with easy going just beyond. So, we continue forward, crawling under, going over and pushing through as best we can. Waldo’s a trooper and he navigates the mess better than I do.
After a bit, I look in front of us and I see no end to the rat’s nest. To continue on, not even machetes would be useful, but chainsaws, dynamite and bulldozers would be nice. Behind is more of the same. Off to the side is not much better, but I know that it’s only a short distance thataway and there’s Route 62 and relief. We change course 90 degrees and head for easier going.
Only after getting onto the road, do I remember that two days ago we had some severe thunderstorms with five tornadoes touching down in the state. They were all category one storms, but that still means winds of 86 – 110 mph, which is enough to pull up some good-sized trees. Yesterday, while mapping out our route for today on the internet, I saw that Route 62, just west of Berlin, was closed. I thought that a bit odd, because it is the main east/west thoroughfare out here. I figured it must be construction or something similar, but now I know it was cleanup and one of those tornadoes came through here. I do a forehead slap as all the pieces come together.
Route 62 is still narrow, and the traffic is as thick as ever, as we portage our way around the storm debris on the railroad bed. The road itself has been well cleared and there is little nearby evidence of what happened, other than some badly dented guardrails. There are, off in the forest, visible signs, though, with trees bent over at odd angles. We continue on the highway until we pass the worst of it, then venture back to the railroad bed to check it out and see if it is passable. After a quarter-mile, or so, we’re back up on the path and once again on our way.
The rest of the trek is pretty much what one can expect while walking on the protected/unimproved parts of the Mass Central Rail Trail. There are some spots where I lose the trail and have to bushwhack and then go around, and some spots that are swampy and squishy, even with ties underfoot. We go through a quarter-mile long tunnel that I didn’t know existed and, on the other side, is the Wachusett Reservoir Dam, built in 1897 to 1905.
At the time the dam was built, it created the largest public water supply reservoir in the world and it was the major source of water for Boston. Today, Boston also has the larger Quabbin Reservoir, further to the west, but the Wachusett Reservoir still supplies water to the city. The Central Mass Railroad was finished in 1887, but a piece of it had to be rerouted in Clinton because the Wachusett Reservoir was going to drown the original right-of-way. This was completed in 1903 and the new path ran over a high trestle that crossed the valley just below the dam. The trestle is now gone and only its footings remain on the valley floor. The last train to cross the trestle was in 1958.
Waldo and I walk down into the valley, via city streets, below the dam and back up to the other side. The trail is paved alongside the reservoir there and we follow it for something less than a mile before we turn around and head back. We now know where the bad spots are and how to avoid them and the trip back is neither so hard, nor does it take so long. The entire walk is something around 9 miles, the way we had to go, and it’s 5:30 PM when we get back to the car. It took us 7 hours to walk 9 miles and that is a good measure of how hard it was.
So, one more gap filled in. Next is a piece that goes from Clinton to West Boylston, around the reservoir (protected/unimproved, of course). I hope it won’t be as challenging. You never know, though.
And that’s what makes it an adventure.
The trail is in there somewhere…