The Ware River from the top of the Mass Central Railroad bed.
The excitement lies in the exploration of the world around us.
-Jim Peebles
…Continued from before.
I’m standing on the grass, next to the tarmac, staring at a dense wall of weeds and woody stalks, interwoven into an impenetrable mesh. The only way I can batter my way through that is to somehow smash it down and walk on top of it. I look at Waldo, who is sitting not far from me, staring in the same direction, waiting for me to decide what we’re going to do. I can almost hear him thinking, Come on! Let’s go! We can do it! He clearly has not come to understand what I have, painfully, learned to accept – I’m not a young pup anymore. I turn and head down the wall, off to our left, with Waldo in tow. I think I know, more or less, where the railroad bed is, I just haven’t found a good way to get there. Yet.
We haven’t gone but a few yards and I see where the wall is not as dense as elsewhere. Going through there will require pushing past a lot of foliage, but it’s not as intimidating as elsewhere. I plunge ahead and, as soon as my intention is made manifest, Waldo charges out ahead as if he knows exactly where we should go. After a little redirection, here and there, and a few calls of “Wait! Just wait!” Waldo is heading where I want to go. We soon come to a place that’s a bit cleared out with some trash lying about. It looks like some squatters have been there in the not-too-distant past.
Where we want to go is somewhere to our right, back in the direction we came when I was looking for a passage through the wall. Now that we’re a short distance from the wad of bush that’s the edge of the forest, the going, while not easy, is quite doable. As long as I pick my way carefully. With a bit of nudging, now and again, and calling to Waldo, “This way!”, he gets the idea, more or less, and we’re making forward progress.
It’s not long and I can see the rise, about four feet in front of us, that is the old railroad bed. The rails and ties are all long gone, but what’s left is an easy walk on firm, if buried in dead leaves, ground. There are a very few trees that are growing on our path, some around 16 inches in diameter, meaning they are about 80 years old. They are easily navigated, though, and after three-quarters of a mile, we come to a stone abutment that must have been the footing for a bridge that is no longer there. In front of us is the Ware River, again, and it’s about a hundred feet wide. On the other side of the water are trees and bushes, but nothing I can identify as the continuation of our trail. A little off to our right, around a hundred yards or so, is a highway. With a bridge and a wide sidewalk. We bushwhack our way over there and climb over the guardrail. There’s quite a bit of traffic, but Waldo doesn’t seem bothered at all. Quite a change from how he was as a puppy. But there aren’t any bicycles around, so what’s to worry?
Once on the other side of the river, I keep watching to my left for evidence of an old railroad bed. There’s a steep rise in the ground that is flat on top and running in the right direction, so I’m pretty sure that’s where we want to go. However, it is about 20 feet above us and the climbing won’t be easy. I head over thataway and Waldo takes the lead, bounding up the hill. Damn, what I would give to be half the difference in our ages.
When we get on top, the walking becomes very easy. We follow the railroad bed back toward the river and, in a short distance, we’re standing at the edge of a sharp drop-off that goes down to the river. Just across the water, I can see the stone abutment that we found before. There is no other evidence of the long-gone bridge that once must have stood there. We turn around and head the other way. After maybe a mile, we run into a currently used railroad, running across a bridge over the highway we used to cross the river. Not only are the rails shiny from recent use, there are also some railroad cars parked on a spur. They don’t appear to have been abandoned long ago. According to the map, the Mass Central Rail Trail continues along the tracks. But that is a trek for another time.
I find a way back down to the highway, that won’t risk my falling on my ass, and Waldo and I are soon back to the car. Waldo seems extremely happy about getting back into the bush again, and I don’t feel any worse for the trip, either. The next bit of trail runs about a mile and a half along the railroad, and then veers off to the right, into the bush, on the old railroad bed and some more weed walking. All I have to do is find where it starts.
And, God help me, I do like the challenge.
Once you get on top of the roadbed, the going is easy.
There’s gotta be a railroad bed in there somewhere…
In wisdom gathered over time I found that every experience is a form of exploration.
-Ansel Adams
My back has been bothering me a bit lately. Again. Walking long distances makes it worse, so I’ve been, to Waldo’s consternation, taking it a bit easy. Hence, no long walks on either the Mass Central Rail Trail, nor the Assebet River Rail Trail. We have walked on the latter, but not far, just a couple of miles at a time. Mostly, we just walk around the apartment complex grounds, several times a day, in half-mile loops. That’s grating on Waldo’s soul and making him hyper. It’s also shortening the length of time we have to finish our MCRT adventure before the first snow flies. Today, however, my back is feeling fine and both Waldo and I have a strong itch to go. I’m pretty sure my back won’t tolerate a 6-mile trek, but something a bit shorter might be doable.
Fortunately, there are three, less than a mile each, overgrown pieces of the MCRT that need to be explored next. All are bounded on one end by a bridgeless part of the Ware River and I’ve seen them up close. That is, I’ve seen where they’re supposed to be. All I can actually see are bushes, weeds and trees, but the railroad bed is supposed to be there, somewhere, amongst all the shrubbery. The day is cool, with highs in the low to mid 50’s, the sky is clear and the ground is dry. There’s a slight breeze forecast, but no tornadoes. That itch really needs to be scratched, so, after waiting until about 1PM, the warmest part of the day, we’re off.
It’s about an hour-and-a-half’s drive to get to Ware, the location of all 3 of the trail bits. The first one is located where Christine, Waldo and I finished our last trek. When the trail is finally completely paved, it will follow the railroad bed we’re here to explore today, not the way we came last time. I know, from the map on my phone, that what I’m looking for is somewhere off in the weeds near where we park, but I can’t see anything in front of me that tells me exactly where. I’ve learned a couple of tricks, however, that help me decide on where to start bushwhacking.
Usually, but not always, the railroad is built up on a dike. The first thing to do is to look for high ground, something a few feet above the surrounding land, and flat on top. Weeds and bushes grow more densely on the edges of forests, so it’s necessary to penetrate into the mess before there’s any hope of seeing any such thing. So, like Sisyphus, Waldo and I put shoulder to the boulder and shove uphill — we dive into the foliage and press our way through the undergrowth. It’s not long and I see what I’m looking for.
Once we get on top of the railroad bed, the going gets a bit easier. The overshadowing canopy absorbs something like 95% of the red and blue light, the colors needed for photosynthesis, so only a few hardy plants grow down there. It’s still a mess to walk through, but the going gets much better. After about a quarter of a mile, the dike drops off steeply in front of us and we can see river. On the other side of the river is ground Waldo and I explored a couple of weeks ago, but I recognize none of it – it’s just weeds. We walk around a little to see if there is any remnant of a bridge that once spanned the water, but there’s nothing but a few loose rocks near the shore. We did what we came to do, so we return to the car. Even though we’ve only gone a half-mile or so, Waldo readily gets back into the passenger seat. Maybe he, somehow, knows there’s more to come.
Our next stop is about 2 miles away in the parking lot of a Walmart Super Center. The map on my phone shows, more or less, where a roadbed is supposed to be, just off to the west of the tarmac. A satellite view is suggestive as well. If I take my phone, turn it upside-down, turn my head to the side and squint, I can sort of convince myself that I kinda see a vague straight line of different-looking treetops heading in the right direction. This could mean there is old railroad bed beneath the foliage. It’s in the right spot.
Even though there is no railroad there any more, the ground on which it used to lie was dramatically disturbed when the railroad was built, so it could support the weight of very heavy trains and not get washed away in New England weather. The earth was compacted and mixed with gravel and rocks and such, with the result that stuff doesn’t grow as well there as elsewhere. That changes what can grow there, and what it looks like from space, high above. And, incidentally, it makes the walking, once you get there, a bit easier.
To be continued…
…oh, yeah! There it is!
This part of the trail is easy going.
There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
There is a 12-mile piece of trail that goes from the Tanner-Hiller Airport to the city of Ware. The map says this piece is mostly paved trail and city streets. There is a 100-foot piece of bushwack that isn’t even blessed with the designation of “proposed” and 1/3 of a mile of footpath, but the rest is easy going. Christine has agreed to go with Waldo and I, so we’re able to park a car at each end of our trek and do it one way. This will allow us to finish a piece of the trail that otherwise would take Waldo and I, on our own, as much as four separate days, doing round trip treks of 6 miles each. Plus, we get to share the walk with our good friend and fellow Waldo-walker.
The days have finally cooled off. The high is scheduled to be in the mid-50s with just a slight breeze and the sky is totally blue. The starting point is a little over an hour’s drive away and we start walking at just about 11 AM. At first, the temp is in the low 50s and I’m glad I brought my light Waldo-walking jacket. We start just across the Ware River from the Tanner-Hiller Airport. There is no bridge and we would have to take a 2-mile detour to go from the airport to where we are. I can see the environs of the airport, but not the actual runway because of all the undergrowth. That’s close enough, so we put the airport to our back, and head west.
This part of the trail is a broad stone-dust paved trail. It’s covered by a coating of pine needles that provides a soft cushion under our feet. We’re surrounded by deciduous trees, but there are not many dead leaves on the trail to keep the needles company. I guess the oaks and maples haven’t yet received the memo that fall is here. There is a splotch of yellow and brown in the trees, though, so I expect that’ll change in the next week or so. Especially with the cooler temperatures.
The trail follows along the Ware River and crosses it twice over a couple of foot bridges. In Gilbertville, we pass by a wooden covered bridge. Christine and I remember how Hurricane Irene destroyed a number of covered bridges in Vermont in 2011. It’s nice to see that some have survived. We wonder why people bothered to cover them and why they stopped. They are all made of wood and are subject to rot and other ways the elements can diminish their life-spans and we decide the roofs were put over them to increase their longevity. Many have lasted over a hundred years, so it must work. Modern building materials don’t benefit from the protection, but there still are a few wooden covered bridges being built even today.
Phyllis is still in Africa and it’s early enough in the day that we can exchange photos by SMS (she’s 6 or 7 hours ahead of us). We send her pictures of the three of us on the trail and she sends us pictures of lions, elephants, giraffes and cape buffalo. We can’t offer much competition there. But, hey, Waldo’s pretty photogenic! When I lived in Africa, we often didn’t even have a landline to call from and, when we did, international calls required long wait times and were expensive. Being able to send pictures back and forth on a whim wasn’t something we even dreamed of. Now, here we are, on a piece of nineteenth century technology, using twenty-first century tools to effortlessly communicate with someone on the other side of the planet, surrounded by our primordial origins. Today’s world truly has some magic in it, even if it has some malignancies too.
When we get to the 100-foot bushwhacking part, we ‘re walking along a narrow road. On both sides of us is a thick mat of weeds and bushes. There is no indication of where you can go to get onto the nearby next piece of trail. Except I was there exploring a couple of days ago and walked the connection going the other way. I marked where to launch off into the weeds by turning a large rock up on end. It was still there and we got onto the new piece of trail, after going down a steep embankment, without any problems.
When I was out doing that exploring, I met a guy who said the lower part of the trail was washed out in a hurricane in 1938 and in order to go from what was left up to the road required that one trespasses on a tiny triangle of private property. The owners don’t like it when people do that. The group trying to develop the rail trail are trying to buy that small triangle to get around the problem, but it hasn’t happened yet. You’d think it would be a slam-dunk. The only thing that piece of land is being used for, right now, is growing weeds and such. Waldo knew where to go and we followed him into the weeds, across the private property and down onto the other piece of trail. No one was around to complain.
The last part of our trek, about 2 miles long, is on surface streets in Ware. We get back to the car and we are sore. It’s been a long time since any of us has walked 12 miles. Waldo hops up in the passenger seat and lays down, comfortably stretched out. I’m just grateful to be sitting down. One thing for sure. Waldo and I are taking tomorrow off from any long walks.
Two days from now, a nor’easter is forecast to come our way, so it’ll be into next week before we can continue. The next 9 miles or so is probably all bushwhacking. After that there’s another 9 miles of what should be easy walking and then we are done! We will have walked the entire 104 miles of the Mass Central Rail Trail from downtown Boston to Northampton.
But we aren’t there yet.
We even pass by a covered bridge.
Next to the Ware River on a Protected/Unimproved part of the trail.
“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
-St. Augustine
High temperatures in the low to mid 80s are back for the next few days, so Waldo and I get up predawn at 6 AM. It’s still sleepy out, but we have to drive a good hour before we can start our walk, so we just suck it up. After getting dressed, feeding and watering the dog, filling his water bottles and only then getting in the car, a half hour passed. We finally arrive at the place where we started our last walk, Barre Plains, at 7:30.
Unlike our previous trek, this bit of the trail is listed as “protected/unimproved.” I have high hopes that it will be an easy walk, and not just a line drawn on a map, because I saw it when we were last here. At least for as far as I can see down the trail, there are no significant obstacles and a clear path to follow.
It’s 55℉ when I step out of the car, wearing nothing heavier than a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. If there were a wind, it would be uncomfortably cold, but there is not even a breeze and the sky is absolutely azure. The sun is still low on the horizon, but it will be warming the day rapidly. I could have worn a light jacket, but, before we finish, I would have to carry the thing. Instead, I plan to walk briskly, with my free hand in my pants pocket to keep it from freezing, and generate enough body heat until the air gets warm. That’s how I rationalize my choice of no jacket and try to quiet the voice in my head that calls me a dumbass.
Waldo bounds out of the car, rearing to go, when I open the door. This, at least right now, is his kind of weather. He’s off at the end of the leash, looking this way and that, waiting for me to point out the direction to let ‘er rip. After a few false starts and dramatic changes of direction, we’re soon on our way down the old railroad bed in proper border-collie formation: Waldo out front at the end of the leash and me in the rear gently restraining his frenetic onslaught.
The path is covered in a thick solid carpet of tan and yellow leaves, mostly oak. I find this a little surprising because the trees and bushes, although showing a slight blush of fall color here and there, are still mostly green. Maybe the leaves are from a previous autumn? They do make a soft cushion to tread on and, with my quickened warming pace, we make good progress. There is an occasional tree that has fallen across our trail, but only a few and they are easily navigated.
All around us is dense New England forest, mostly oak and maple, but some ash and beech trees as well. The undergrowth is thick and I can’t see far to either side, no more that a few meters. Then a clearing appears close by, off to the left, filled cheek-to-jowl with some kind of red-leafed weed. I’m tempted to go over there and speciate the stuff, but I can’t see a way to do it without some significant bushwhacking and I’m not that curious. A little further on and we get close enough to the Ware River to see the water, to our right, through the bushes. This part of the railroad bed skirts along the river and there are places where it is only a few meters away. It isn’t much of a river here – it looks shallow, is slow moving, and only about 50 feet across.
I think this must have been what Massachusetts was like in the 18th and 19th centuries. Where we’re walking would have been called a highway, then, and I can imagine coming this way riding a horse or being in a buggy. The scenery would not have changed much when the railroad was completed in 1887 and I can daydream about being on a train being towed by a steam locomotive chug-chugging along at a whopping 40 miles an hour. Of course, if I were really on such a train, I would also be bathed in the smell of hot steam venting from iron vents, spent embers and ash from the smoke stack falling on my clothes and in my hair and the loud screech and rattling of steel on steel as the train car wallowed back and forth. But I don’t have to be that accurate to wonder what it was like to be live and travel here back then.
After just over 2 miles, we burst out onto the Tanner-Hiller Airport. It was closed last year to make way for the Mass Central Rail Trail that has yet to be built here. It was a small, single runway, backwoods airport servicing only small planes. The tarmac runway is still there, but it is full of cracks and small weeds. I could land a Cessna, or even a light twin Beechcraft, safely there, but its day has clearly passed. Off on the edge of the clearing are a few dilapidated hangars, one with what looks like an ultralight and one with a Piper Cub. There is even a single engine Piper, maybe a Cherokee, that looks like it is rotting in the weeds. Sad.
At the far end of the clearing, the trail becomes “proposed” and it quickly disappears. We batter our way forward until we come across the place where the river cuts across our path and turn around. There is no bridge, nor any obvious way to proceed without getting significantly wet. This part of the gap has now been thoroughly explored.
We backtrack to our car. I have an app that says we’ve done only 4.7 miles. But it has been a pleasant 4.7 miles. The temp is now touching the low 70s, I’m starting to sweat and Waldo’s tongue is out. Our day’s walk is done.
Our next piece of rail trail is somewhere around 11 miles long and is almost all paved, but there are short sections that are protected/unimproved, and some streets and highways. It should be a very nice walk. Christine has agreed to come with us, so we’ll be able to do it one-way. We just have to wait for a day when the temperature doesn’t get above the low 70s.
And that won’t be long from now.
What’s left of the Tanner-Hiller Airport.
In some places you can kinda, sorta see where the railroad bed used to run…
The greatest adventure is what lies ahead. Each day brings new possibilities for exploration and discovery.
-J.R.R. Tolkien
The next little gap in the Mass Central Rail Trail that Waldo and I have to walk is about 3 miles long (6 miles round trip) and runs west from a small community, called Barre Plains, to somewhere just south of Barre and west of Oakham. Our turnaround point is in the middle of the woods and I’m not sure what town would claim it, but I think it’s technically in Barre (there are no signs of any town nearby). Christine and I ended up there, coming from the east, a couple of years ago, after walking on a paved part of the MCRT. Now Waldo and I are going to approach it from the west, on a bit that’s listed as “proposed.”
I’ll have to admit to feeling a little trepidation about where we’re going, because this part of the railroad has not been used for about 85 years and it’s in the middle of nowhere. I’m not sure what “proposed” means, but it just might be that it’s nothing more than a line drawn on a map, running where the old railroad used to go. Its location makes it far enough out of the way that it’s unlikely to have been used for hiking, biking or ATVing. So, probably, it has just been abandoned and left to Mother Nature to reclaim what’s left. As I planned this part of our trek, I worried that there would be places that were not navigable and, being so deep in the country, there may not be any roads close by to engineer a convenient go-around.
My fears proved well-founded. From the start, the old railroad bed was swallowed in woods and could not be seen. We trespassed over someone’s back yard toward where the map said it should be. Pushing aside some undergrowth, I finally found our “path” at the bottom of a cut. It had drainage ditches on the sides and, although curating bushes, weeds, saplings and some small bole trees that made our walking a chore, it was walkable. After no more than a quarter mile, it just disappeared. I couldn’t see any evidence that it continued any further. Off to our left was a creek that the map said we would have to cross. Given the state of what we were walking on, I seriously doubted there would still be a bridge that crossed it. However, the map also showed that the old railroad coalesced with a railroad that is currently in use, just on the other side of the creek. So, Waldo and I backtracked and walked on paved roads to the newer railroad.
The rails were not as polished from use as those we walked on near the Wachusetts Reservoir. Walking between them was just as much a pain, though. The rails ran about a half-mile, then just stopped. They were replaced by a couple of ruts laid down in deep grass. We followed the ruts until we came to a road that crossed our path. On the other side of the road was nothing but weeds. After searching around for a bit, I again found what was left of the railroad bed and we continued on.
After another quarter-mile or so, the railroad bed, once again, disappeared. We were surrounded, on three sides, by waist-high weeds. I knew there was a road not far ahead, so I encouraged Waldo to plunge through the foliage in the same direction we’d been going. He couldn’t have been able to see more than a foot in front his nose, but he was more than game. He loves walking in weeds and bushwhacking in general. After a hundred yards, or so, we broke out into the town dump.
The dump was surrounded, except by the way we came, by a fence. The fence had a couple of gates, but they were padlocked. The gap in one gate was large enough for Waldo to fit through, but not me. I toyed with the idea of climbing the fence, but I’m not nearly as spry as I used to be, and I decided, instead, to look for another way out. Just as I was about to explore the fence on the other side of the property, a van showed up at the gate. Waldo and I sauntered down thataway and left as they were entering. Problem solved.
We crossed another street and looked for the continuation of the railroad bed. We had to look for a little while, but finally found, off in the weeds, a serviceable path. We followed it for only a short ways until it, too, disappeared into the brush. I could see no way forward, so we backtracked and headed for the highway, Route 122. We were only a half-mile, or so, from our turnaround point.
The traffic on the highway was busy, but there was a wide shoulder, so Waldo and I could safely walk to our destination. Once there, I decided to travel a short ways on the trail Christine and I walked before. I remembered there was a place where the paved part of the trail diverted from the railroad bed. At that point, Waldo and I left the pavement and walked down what was left of the old railroad bed. We headed west, trying to approach the route from the other end. We followed a footpath about a half mile and then it turned to the south, away from where the tracks used to run. I could not see any evidence of the continuation of the roadbed, so we turned around and headed back to the car. Going back was a lot easier because I knew where we could and could not go. Back at the car, we headed home.
Today’s slog gave me a pretty good idea of at least one meaning of “proposed” and it ain’t pretty.
Next time, we’re walking a “protected/unimproved” piece of trail that runs from the Tanner-Hiller Airport to where we started today. I expect it will be somewhat easier, but who knows?
And that’s what makes it an adventure.
And in others, not so much.
The beginning of the trail.
You have to motivate yourself with challenges. That’s how you know you’re still alive.
-Jerry Seinfeld
The next gap in the Mass Central Rail Trail goes from the Clinton Dam to West Boylston. I estimated the distance at about 6 miles. That would mean a roundtrip distance of about 12 miles – a bit much when I don’t know what kind of walk we’re going to have. So, I asked Christine to meet us in West Boylston where we will park our car and take us to the Clinton Dam where we will start. That way, we can do a one-way trip of 6 miles. Very doable under almost any circumstances.
Christine does not like bushwhacking the way Waldo does, so I didn’t expect her to want to join us. She lives just a 15-minute drive away, so I thought she would drop us off and we’d go on our own. But when we got to the dam, she decides to join us. Both Waldo and I like to walk with her, so we’re in for an unexpected treat.
You can see a footpath disappear into the undergrowth where we start. Just past the initial barrier of weeds, a well-trodden path continues on the old railroad bed, the ties and rails have all been removed. The sky is clear and the temperature is in the high 60s. The ground is dry and there is no one else on the path. We’re surrounded by new growth forest, few trees have a trunk wider than 9 inches, and the canopy is dense enough that there are very few bushes and undergrowth on both sides of the trail. There are a few fallen trees out there, but nothing like the tornado-driven rat’s nest we had to negotiate in West Berlin.
We don’t go far and we see another railroad bed off to our right. This is obviously still in use with shiny, well-polished rails on ties that float on a bed of large-rock gravel. There are scant weeds, only rarely present. It comes from someplace to the north, in Clinton, and parallels our route for a short distance. We wonder why they didn’t build the newer tracks on the older bed, only to find out in a short distance, they did. Our footpath converges with the active train tracks and then disappears. We’re left with walking on the gravel or the ties.
I don’t know if it’s by design or coincidence, but the ties are placed at an inconvenient distance that makes it impossible to walk on them easily. The gap between them is just low enough that it is uncomfortable to step with one foot on the gravel and one on a tie. It‘s just short of being one foot-length wide, so it’s either that, or step fully on a tie. The ties are separated by a distance that makes you feel like you’re taking baby-steps to go from tie to tie, or giant leaps, if you try going to every other tie. Waldo marches on out front, showing no difficulty in the walking at all. Bushwhacking, slugging through swap, or walking the rails, it’s all good to him.
There is no comfortable place to walk to the side of the railroad, due to weeds and undergrowth. In addition, every 50 feet or so is a pile of new ties, obviously meant to replace some of the ties that are already there, that block the way. Roughly every other to every second tie is marked by pea-green paint and they look like they need replacement – they’re cracked and rotting with the spikes backing out of the wood. Some of the spikes are so loose, you can reach down and lift them from the wood without much of a tug.
The online map shows that this is our route, but it’s not detailed enough to reveal whether or not we should be following the train tracks, or if there is another “path” nearby. If there is another way to go, it would be to our left across a drainage ditch. So, we climb down the steep grade of the dike the tracks are on, cross the ditch and explore. Christine happily plays along, despite her feelings about crashing through undergrowth. There is no obvious old roadbed there and the going is a bit rough, but who knows. We trek along parallel to the tracks for a while, until the drainage ditch widens and becomes pretty swampy. There is still no clear trail to follow, so we hike over the ditch, climb back up the dike, a good ten feet, and follow the train tracks the rest of the way. I now have a new category to add to the list of what “unimproved” means: actively used railroad tracks.
Not far from our endpoint, as we cross an inlet of the Wachusett Reservoir, we meet a man carrying a fishing pole. He says he was out here fishing a few weeks ago with his daughter and lost his little girl’s fishing pole in the water. He brought a large magnet and is going to try to retrieve it, hoping the magnet will attach to the metal reel. We wish him luck and continue on our way. There is a pontoon boat out on the reservoir that we see too, but we can’t tell what they’re doing. We pass no one else.
After something over 5 miles, we come to the place where the map says we should venture off the rails and into the weeds. It’s close to where our car is parked. We bushwhack through a wall of green and find a small footpath going in the right direction. Shortly thereafter, we’re in the parking lot and at our car.
One more piece of the Mass Central Rail Trail conquered.
The active railroad.
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…
Unimproved, but walkable.
Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit.
-Frank Borman
A paved piece of the Mass Central Rail Trail, starting in Wayland, ends where it crosses the Assebet River Rail Trail, in Hudson. The continuation of the railroad bed from there, still outlined with rusted steel rails, goes on, but it’s overgrown a bit. In the past, Waldo and I bushwhacked from that trail-crossing into downtown Hudson (about a mile or so). It’s going to be fairly cool today, with highs in the low 70s, so I decided we should return to Hudson, where we left off, and see if we can continue the trek all the way to Berlin, a distance of about 5 miles. The maps list the route that we will follow as “Protected/Unimproved.”
Today, Hudson has a population of around 20,000. It was once a part of Marlborough (population 42,000, as of 2024) and became a separate town in 1866. The railroad that ran from Marlborough to Hudson (north/south) was built just 11 years prior. The Central Mass Railroad (running east/west) was started in 1870 and completed all the way to Northampton in 1887. Berlin was the next stop west on the Central Mass RR from Hudson. So, all this happened right around the time of the Civil War (1861 – 1865), or shortly thereafter.
There is spotty evidence of the old railroad bed in the town of Hudson, but because of the construction of streets, parking lots and buildings of various sorts, it can be hard to follow. Railroads, like as not, run in straight lines, so when I find evidence of the old right-of-way, then lose it, all I have to do is keep going in the same direction until it reappears. When it does, it usually is overgrown with weeds and small-bole trees.
I have no idea why, but Waldo loves bushwhacking. He charges up ahead, as if he knows exactly where we’re going, which is usually pretty obvious, at full trot. When he makes an error, his leash gets all tangled up in the tree trunks and weeds. It’s a pain for me when that happens, but, hey, he’s having a lot of fun. So, I accept the consequences and give him his head until I have to redirect him and untangle the mess.
Once out of town, the railroad bed is mostly easy to find. But it is not necessarily easy to follow. There are six different scenarios. First, the way is clear and has a well-trodden path to follow (it happens, but not all that often). Then there are times when the path is obvious, but overgrown with small trees and weeds that makes the trek a bit of a slog, but it’s not that bad. Third, there are times when it becomes a real pain to fight through all the foliage, but Waldo and I are intrepid. There are also times when the way is overgrown enough that I have to question whether or not it’s worth the effort. Usually, when that happens, there is no easy way to leave the railroad bed, so it’s continue on to see if it gets better (which it almost always eventually does) or backtrack. Backtracking is something I would only do as a last resort and we successfully avoid that. Then there are places where it is clear that I really don’t want to go in there without a machete (I don’t have one) and I look for streets, parking lots or other paths I can more easily walk on, that run, more or less, parallel. Finally, there are places where the railroad bed, along with the rails, just stop and I can’t see where they used to run on. So, again, it’s find some other way to go until we can get back on the path. Between Hudson and I-495, we confront all these.
I-495 is approximately halfway on our route. It was built in 1957 and the last train to Berlin ran in 1958. So, there is a tunnel that was built over the old railroad and it’s easy to walk through. Just before we get to I-495, the going goes from impossible (we had to leave the railroad bed and walk around it) to a slog (once we got back on it). Then, just as I-495 comes into sight, things turn into an easy walk, with a cleared roadbed and a well-used footpath. It continues on as a pleasant way to go until we cross Sawyer Hill Road in Berlin (around a mile or so further), then it becomes a never-walked, real pain with not just weeds, but thorn bushes and swampy areas to navigate. So, the nice path starts at the I-495 overpass, that is really hard to get to from the east, and runs west to a country road that has nothing else around it. The trail, literally, starts nowhere and goes to nowhere. Why in the world would anyone choose that length of old railroad bed to keep clear and walk on? Curious.
The last bit we have to walk runs from Sawyer Hill Road to Highland Street, Berlin (population 3,500). The town (such as it is) is just to our south and we leave the train tracks and take to the streets and highways to get back to our car in Hudson. The going isn’t as hard, but it’s difficult because we have to go along Rte 62, which is a two-lane highway with fast moving traffic. There are no sidewalks and the shoulder is narrow (sometimes less than a foot wide). I keep Waldo on a very tight leash and we finally make it safely back to Hudson and our car. I’m sure Waldo doesn’t have nearly as much fun walking alongside the highway, but by that time, we’re both just thinking of getting back to the car and home. It’s been an interesting walk, but we’ve had enough. For now.
Next leg of the trek is from Berlin to Clinton. It, too, is about five miles long and is listed as “unimproved.” That’s a term that I now know can mean just about anything.
Except paved.
End of the day’s walk, at the I-495 overpass.
Trail starts out pleasant enough.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who do what they say they will do, and those who say they will do it.
-Vince Lombardi
Today, I decide to fill another gap in the Mass Central Rail Trail. This piece is close to Boston and runs about 2 miles, the same distance as the last gap. It’s to the east from where we live, whereas the last one was to the west. Still, it’s a good hour’s drive to get to where we start. However, the forecast is for temps in the 60s to low 70s, so we don’t have to leave at an ungodly hour.
I’ve been putting off this piece of trail because most of where we have to go, if we follow where the original railroad bed ran, will make us walk close by the actively used tracks for the Fitchburg Line of the MBTA Commuter Rail. We could go on nearby streets, in a serpentine path, to cover the same distance, but where’s the adventure in that?
The railroad right-of-way is quite wide, allowing for 2 sets of tracks. Having seen both ends of our path, I know there is plenty of space to avoid getting too close to any trains that go by. The tracks lay on top of a ridge of gravel, though, and I can only guess how walkable it will be too far off the rails. I’m also a little nervous because I don’t suppose the MBTA wants us there and they may make a stink when they find us strolling near rapidly moving trains. The Commuter Rail does go pretty fast. I don’t think it’s at all dangerous, or I wouldn’t bring Waldo (and what would then be the purpose of being there at all?), but you know how uptight people can be, especially when they think there are potential liability issues. But this isn’t the first time I’ve operated on the principal that it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Well, perhaps it’s more accurate to say it’s more expedient, not better. Anyway, you can see that I am a little ambivalent about it.
Our journey begins at one end of a strip of tarmac that serves as parking spaces for a set of commercial buildings that run alongside the tracks. Phyllis, Waldo and I were there late last fall, when the weeds and leaves were all gone. I saw, then, what looked like a broad footpath that continued on past the end of the asphalt, going along what I was convinced was the original railroad bed. Today, at first, I couldn’t find it. There’s a solid wall of foliage that starts where the blacktop stops. But when I get close, I see, beyond the weeds, there is a narrow, dusty footpath, running on a dike, through a natural arbor of tall Japanese knotweed. As soon as Waldo sees it, he’s out on point at the far end of his leash and we’re off.
We don’t go a quarter-mile and the path turns to the north, where we don’t want to go, and to the south, to the railroad tracks. Just as we get there, still up on the dike, I hear a train bell dinging. Waldo and I stop and wait until its source, a slow-moving train, rounds a curve and comes into view. It’s going away from Boston, toward Fitchburg, and accelerating. There’s a diesel engine out in front and five passenger cars behind. Waldo isn’t bothered by it at all. It’s not as if that big noisy thing was a bicycle, after all. I wave and walk down to the tracks after it is gone. From here on, we will be near, but not too close, to the rails.
The walking isn’t hard for either Waldo or myself. We can easily maintain a good pace at the bottom of the ridge of gravel, a good fifteen feet from the rails. Much further away than that, though, and there are plenty of weeds that would make our walk a real slog. Waldo is very nonchalant about it all, sniffing and exploring his way along as if it makes perfect sense that we should be here. Knowing us, it does.
In about a half-mile, we come to Waverly Station. That explains all the dinging and the slow pace of the train. There is only one person at the station, waiting for the train going into Boston. I call out, “Hello!” and we continue on our way. The waiting passenger-to-be ignores us, absorbed in a book.
We pass one more station, Belmont, before we get to the end of today’s walk. All in all, three trains pass us, two going to Fitchburg and one to Boston. They all have the locomotive on the end of the train facing away from Boston, so the train going to Boston looks like it’s going in reverse. But diesel locomotives don’t really have a front and a back end and why turn something as huge as a train around if you don’t have to?
We are also passed by a pickup truck modified with wheels that allow it to travel on the rails, and some kind of big machine that is spraying some sort of liquid off to the other side of the tracks. I wave to them all and the guy operating the sprayer waves back. I guess I was worried about nothing from the railroad crew.
We did get some guff, but not from the railroad. Waldo and I walk along a driveway, where we turn around to go back to the car, and a guy in a pickup drives by and yells at us, saying that we’re on private property. “Cool down!” I call back. “We’re just walking.” Nothing more is said and we continue on our way without further ado.
Before too long, we get back to our car and head home. All said and done, it was just another walk on the rail trail.
And one more gap to receive a checkmark.
But then we have to walk alongside railroad tracks and trains.
Off to the left, the forest opens up and there is a large farm.
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
-Buddha
Finally, we have a day that is cool enough, for long enough, that Waldo and I can venture a bit farther afield, without getting up before dawn, and walk for a couple of hours and not get baked. I decide to head over to Rutland, where we last walked on the Mass Central Rail Trail, and close a gap we haven’t yet walked. This gap is about 2.2 miles long, runs along a couple of highways, and ends on a piece that we, with Christine, walked some time ago. It’s just Waldo and me this time, so we have to do a round trip, totaling 4.4 miles. The starting point is a 45-minute drive away, so it’s around 8 AM when we start out. Across the road from where we begin, the old railroad bed continues, but immediately disappears into the weeds. Waldo and I have certainly bushwhacked our way along unimproved paths in the past, but not today. We stay alongside the road.
As soon as we leave the car, Waldo is out front at the end of the leash. When we go to a new place to walk, he gets excited and forgets to be hypervigilant about bikes. Even though cars go faster, and make more noise, he doesn’t seem to be worried about them as much as he is about their smaller, quieter, slower cousins. And there are quite a few cars that pass us, traveling at 40 miles an hour or more. There is no sidewalk out here in the boonies and the shoulder is marked by a solid white line. Waldo keeps to the outside of the line and often in the grass and gravel beyond the tarmac. He doesn’t pull at the leash, like he used to as a puppy, but he does take as much leash from the retractable handle as he can. He’s having a good time.
I spent a good portion of my life living in semiarid places, like the western United States and the high plateaus of East Africa. The predominant colors in those places are pastel yellows, beiges, and tans. There is some green, of course, but it doesn’t dominate. Here, in New England, things are so very green. As I walk down the highway, it’s like I’m walking through an emerald tunnel. I don’t know what the origin of the emotion is, but it makes me feel subtly secure, satisfied and enlivened. Some have speculated that sylvan landscapes of grassy fields alongside blue lakes surrounded by deep green forests, generally appeal to people because of RNA memory that has passed down from generation to generation since our distant ancestors lived in trees. Whatever the source of the feeling, I do notice its subliminal message.
We don’t go more than, at most, a half-mile, and, off to our left, the green tunnel opens up into a large cultivated field. What was a sylvan landscape has morphed into a big farm, growing corn and hay. The corn is not yet mature enough to harvest and the hay has been cut and raked, but still needs to be bucked and baled. In the distance are large well-kept barns and silos. There are no tractors, or balers, or other farm equipment in sight. It’s as if the farmer has taken the day off. It’s a good day for that, for sure. At the near edge of the fields is a stand of tightly packed, new-growth, staghorn sumac. The plants are so densely jammed together that I can’t help but think they were planted there by human intent. I can’t imagine what that intent was, though.
As we walk along, I see tree leaves whose shape I don’t recognize. I pull out my phone and speciate them as I notice them. There are shagbark hickory, European beech and white ash that are not denizens of the Assebet River Rail Trail. One of the hickory trees is more than 150 years old, as evidenced by its diameter of over 30 inches. On average, trees grow about 0.2 inches per year in diameter, so something that big has been there a long time. I wonder if it was planted when the place was settled, back in the late 1700s to early 1800s. There is history there, for sure.
There isn’t a whole lot of birdsong today, for some reason. I do hear a distinctive whistle, though, so I pull out my trusty phone and bring up the Merlin app (isn’t the twenty-first century wonderful?). It identifies what I hear as a bluejay tune. So, I now can identify Emmy birds (catbirds), cardinals and bluejays by their distinctive lilts. Of course, there are others that are better known, like the caw of crows, the hoot of owls and the high-pitched scree of a red-tailed hawk soaring on high.
The more I learn, the more I’m drawn into the experience of living, surrounded by Mother Nature. And that’s the point. It’s not to know about biology, botany, or ornithology. The goal is to try to notice what’s going on as I walk along, to become engaged with nature and the present. The speciation of trees, the identification of birds and the learning of how nature works is just a trick to draw my attention out into the world and what’s going on in the present moment – the only place where the human condition touches reality. Events in the past have already occurred and the future isn’t here yet.
“Now” is the only time when anything is happening.
Passing through the outskirts of town.