Proof there are intrepid souls out on the rail trail.
They who sing through the summer must dance through the winter.
-Italian Proverb
Waldo and I got a little bit of a late start today. I got involved in some writing and lost track of time. We won’t be finished before about 5:30 PM. The sun will set at 4:26 PM, so I expect it will be a little dark by the time we get back to the car. There’ll be a full moon tonight and the sky is pretty clear, though, so I’m not that worried. We’ve been out here when it’s been darker.
We had a dusting of snow again, no more than an inch, so the trail is covered in white, with many, many footprints. No plow has been this way yet, though I’m sure it will in the near future. The snow fell yesterday, so it has had time to bond a little to the underlying ice. Things are still somewhat slick, but the going is easy with no real danger of falling. The ice at the bottom was thoroughly pockmarked from lots of boots and paws and that makes the path very lumpy and a bit hard to walk on, but it’s not that bad.
Waldo and his four-paw drive, with built in cleats, doesn’t seem to have any problem at all. He’s on the trail, off the trail, in front of me and behind me, nose to the ground, seeking out interesting pee-mail and sticks. He really likes to grab long branches, some as much as 9 feet. Holding one end (usually the thinner end) in his mouth, he drags it behind him, and in front of me, where it’s hard for me to walk without stepping on it. That’s his way of enticing me to grab the heavier end and play tug-of-war. If I’m recalcitrant, he sometimes tries to poke me with the free end. Once, he missed and jabbed it between my legs, causing me to trip and fall. He may be 7 ½ years old, but he’s still a puppy. I grab the bigger end and we pull each other down the trail. After a while, I tire of the game and drop the stick. Waldo then repeats his ploy in remonstration. I’ve explained to him that sticks don’t appeal to me like they do to him, but he can’t fathom it. Finally, he gives up, directs his attention to what’s in front of his nose, and continues on down the trail, odar on.
We’ve gone just over a mile, just past the new park at the Fort Meadow Reservoir overlook, when I see a bicycle leaning up against the hurricane fence that borders the trail there. I know there are bikers out here this time of year because I can see the tracks they leave behind in the snow and ice. But this is the first time I’ve actually seen one on the hoof. A man stands a few feet from the bike, doing I-can’t-tell what. “Hello!” I say as Waldo and I get close. “Is that your bike?”
“Yes, it is,” he answers.
“Can I take a picture of you and your bike? Just to prove that there are bikers out here this time of year.”
“Sure,” he says and gets closer to his bike, as I dig my phone out from my zipped-up and sealed-tight parka.
“How the hell do you keep from falling?” His bike is a thin-tired touring bike. Not even a balloon-tired mountain bike.
“It isn’t easy. This stuff isn’t too bad, but Hudson is impossible.”
“You mean in the no-plow zone.”
He smiles. “So, you know the path well.”
“I’ve been there, once or twice.”
I get my picture and Waldo and I continue on our way. After a few minutes, he passes us, rolling down the trail as if there were no snow and ice there at all. Amazing.
I was a little concerned about how the going will be in Hudson. I needn’t have worried. The snow has covered the ice I studiously avoided yesterday, before the storm, but it is very walkable today. I don’t have to take to the swaths of white ice on the sides of the trail, like I did the last time we were here. I can walk anywhere and get enough traction. It is lumpy and a little slippery, but not that much different from the trail in Marlborough. Maybe the biker could have negotiated it after all. I see no tracks saying that he tried.
A couple of hours have passed by the time we get back to the overlook. It’s 5 PM and the sun set more than a half-hour ago. The day’s afterglow lingers as twilight in the mostly clear sky. Beyond snow-covered fields, lights shine in distant buildings and houses and along the Route 85 highway. They provide a splash of color to the white and beige landscape and, not much more than 10 degrees above the horizon, is a gorgeous full moon, just risen. It’s cold, the temperature has dropped to about 10℉, so we don’t linger, but I do take another picture so I can relish the sight later in the warmth of home. Winter has its own kind of beauty.
All you have to do is get out into it to experience it.
There are advantages to being out here after dark – moonrise over Fort Meadow Reservoir.
No plow? No problem. Get a shovel.
It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
This year, winter came like Mother Nature flipped a switch. We were having a chilly New England late fall, with temps in the 30s, and then, whammo! came snow, ice and blasts of arctic air, making it feel like it was 2℉. I can dress for the cold, and Waldo comes equipped with a sable birthday suit, but the worst of it is the ice. Watching Waldo do a four-footed river dance on the stuff is amusing (he hardly ever falls), but my bipedal stance is significantly more metastable. It makes walking over a sheet of mirror-smooth frozen water pretty close to impossible, without doing an unintentional limb-flailing, death-defying aerobatic maneuver, resulting in an unavoidable hard, wheels-up, uncontrolled ground-pound, with the potential for serious damage.
In Marlborough, the city plows the rail trail up to the Hudson border. This has always happened, albeit a day or two after the storm is over. Although not perfect, that helps quite a bit, as long as the plow isn’t forced to remove snow that has been deposited over a pre-existing sheet of black ice. In that case, the only hope is for some salt, which is sometimes laid down (they try to avoid adding salt to the forest environment). Once we get to Hudson, the trail is a never-plow zone and we sometimes have to turn around because the conditions are so bad. Usually, though, I can find a narrow swath of “white” ice (signifying that it contains air and will crush when stepped on) that gives me enough traction to avoid a fall.
After the last snowfall, someone made a somewhat serpentine, two-foot-wide path through the inch or two of snow accumulation left behind. Surrounding that was some white ice, and foot and pawprints, smashed into clear ice, that was marginally walkable. I was curious about what and how that path was made. There were no tread marks on the sides, that indicated a snowblower, nor any piles of snow resulting from snow being blown. The thing is, it went on from the beginning of the trail to only a few feet shy of 2¼ miles, just past the Hudson border.
Thinking about that yesterday, as Waldo and I were but a mile from the car and the end of our walk, a man passed us going the other way. “It looks like the plowman got lazy and could only do a narrow path,” I said to him, trying to be clever.
“Oh, no,” he answered. “I did that with a plastic snow shovel.”
“Damn!” I said, in awe. “That’s a helluva lot of work. It’s almost 2¼ miles long!”
“Yeah, my wife thought it would be a good idea.”
Talk about honey-does!
“Well, thank you. It makes the walking a lot easier.”
“You’re welcome.” He nodded and continued on his way.
You know, there are people out here who truly love this place and are willing to go out of their way to take care of it. There’s the elderly couple who maintains the Covid Garden. Even the city put up a sign, encouraging people to make and maintain a rock garden. I know of one man who carries an empty shopping bag to hold the garbage he picks up, as he walks along, that thoughtless people have left behind. And I have been known to pick up dog poop, that wasn’t left by Waldo, to reposit in the trash barrels the city puts out on the side of the trail. These acts are not done merely out of a sense of duty, I believe. I think the motivation is based on loving what we share and enjoy. After all, what better way is there to actively love something than to take care of it?
That was yesterday. Waldo and I didn’t go out on the rail trail today. Winds in excess of 20 mph dropped the affective temp well down into the single digits. What killed the idea was when Waldo bit at his feet as we walked on the apartment grounds, doing the poop and pee loop. When he does that, it means he’s growing ice between his toes and it really hurts (I can attest to that because I know what it feels like to grow icicles on my mustache). It’s also true that it snowed a couple of inches last night. That’s just enough so that, if the trail isn’t plowed, the pre-existing ice will be buried out of sight and hard to avoid. Sigh.
I wonder if the plowman came along and decided that the shoveled path was good enough.
The no-plow, no-shovel zone in Hudson.
It’s a gray day on the rail trail.
A stroll through a winter forest is a stroll through one’s soul.
-Robbie George
A light numbing-cold breeze dances over the exposed skin on my face. My fingers, although protected in thick ski gloves, are a bit achy in the icy temperature. The rest of me is snug in my down parka and rain pants over trekking trousers. There is about a three-inch deep blanket of snow on the ground, except on the trail itself, which is pocked with footprints. The snow is powdery and crunches underfoot as I walk along, providing adequate, although not perfect traction. Clouds of white waft in front me as I exhale from the mild exertion of walking on snow.
One could do a fine rendering of what I see in front of me, using only sepia ink on the whitest of paper – along with a dash of thin light green watercolor, here and there, to suggest the occasional presence of white pine drowning in a sea of spindly, barren, beige limbs. I suppose, the artist would also need a pinch of black to show Waldo’s sable birthday suit and the leash that connects us. Oh, and a slightly meandering path, about two feet wide, where the underlying tarmac has been exposed by some means of snow removal. It’s overcast, so no robin’s egg blue for the sky, and no yellow for the sun, is needed, either. Just sepia ink on white paper with a smidgeon of green and a bit of black is all the palette that would be needed.
It all feels so subdued. Mother Nature at rest. On today’s walk, I have only seen one squirrel, and he was just a fast, furry, beige blur, as he scurried across the trail and out of sight. No other denizens of the woods are out and about. No rabbits, no deer, no foxes, no chipmunks, no mice — no one else is showing up in the quiet stillness. I know there are birds that continue to live around here during the winter, but they’re not advertising their presence. No crow’s caw, songbird lilt or woodpecker rattle. It’s quiet.
Some animals hibernate, of course. But even some of those that don’t, go into a state of torpor when it gets cold out. It’s not as deep as hibernation and it doesn’t last as long, but it does conserve heat and energy. Songbirds are an example, as are raccoons and chipmunks. Many of those animals that do neither will still hole-up in the warm nests they’ve either created or found, until needs, like hunger, require them to stir. Then there are animals, like Waldos, who never do any of the above. Oh, it might be cold enough that they don’t want to go outside for long, but border collie energy does not abate by just laying around, you know.
I think people are somewhat similar to Waldos, although on a different scale, as we get cabin fever too. Oh, it’s not beyond us to fall into prolonged states of physical torpor, even take a nap, now and then. And when it gets nasty out, we do cloister away and assume trance-like states in front of TVs, computer screens or a good book (of course, bad weather is not a prerequisite for that). But, sooner or later, the bottoms of our feet get an itch and we have to go, not only because we need to feed ourselves, but because we need to get out and live.
Today, Waldo and I are out here in the cold and white and beige, not for survival, but to satisfy the need to do. At times, I’m here to simply put one foot in front of the other and be open to let life happen. Although Waldo is spontaneous, he’s always doing more than just walking. He’s looking for pee-mail, the perfect stick and the answer to that most disturbing of questions, what the hell is that smell? That’s something that I, personally, would often be more than happy to just walk away from. But not Waldo. It seems that, even in winter, if you have the nose for it, the odor palette is much more varied, and possibly enticing, than what nature offers the eyes.
The still, muted quietude of winter swaddles me as I walk along. Mother Nature’s repose penetrates into my soul and I can’t help but embrace her placidity. It’s a lovely walk, without riot of color, furor of sound, or distraction of movement.
It’s a wonderful walking meditation.
A nearly monochromic landscape.
You comin’?
In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn’t merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.
-Edward Hoagland
Yesterday, a warm front came through our little patch of woods, The Assebet River Rail Trail, and raised the temperature to 58℉. It rained about 0.6 inches and the two together melted all the snow and ice on the tarmac. Last night, the temperature dropped well below freezing and I was afraid that I’d awaken to iced-over puddles. But that didn’t happen. There are a few small, shallow ice-skating rinks on the rail trail, maybe a foot in diameter, but nothing that can’t be easily negotiated. The temperature today, with windchill, is in the low twenties and the winds are blowing around 10 – 14 miles per hour. So, it is a little chilly, but easily dressed for. Waldo’s enjoying the cool.
Still, it’s cold enough that there aren’t many animals about. On other days, I see the occasional deer and, sometimes, an adventurous squirrel, but not today. No rabbits anywhere. I know there are skunks around here, but I’ve never seen any (I can smell them when they’re around). The air is clear and brisk today, however. I neither hear, nor see, any birds, whatsoever. It’s quiet. It’s just me, Waldo and a few fellow intrepid walkers, who pass us by. We have no hibernacula (a word I just learned that means the place where animals hibernate) — we gotta get out and fight cabin fever, you know. Oh, and, of course, there’s also the sleeping woods.
Waldo is doing his Waldo thing, nose inches off the ground, searching the environs with his odar (odor detection and ranging). He trots along in S-turns, back and forth across the trail, and stops, on occasion, when he finds something particularly interesting that requires a more prolonged and intensive sniff. That might be pee-mail, some other dog’s poop, a dead animal, or God knows what. When he does find that peculiar, enticing whiff that requires his focused attention, he sometimes falls behind. When he catches up, he almost always goes around me on my left. I’ve often wondered why.
Border collies are known for doing something the community calls “spinning.” They often walk around you – falling behind, passing you on one side, then falling behind again on the other side. It’s thought to be an expression of their herding instinct. When they’re on a leash, the result can be that you get all wrapped up in their tether. I am constantly passing the leash handle from one hand to the other to prevent that. When we’re out bushwhacking and Waldo gets in front of me and on the wrong “path,” I call him back. If there is a tree between me and him, he seldom comes back the way he went. He spins the damn tree. That means I have to plow through the weeds some distance (the leash is long) to where he is and unwrap the leash. We then backtrack to get on the course I want us to follow. It’s just one of the many ways I feel like I’m constantly trying to get us over what he’s put asunder.
One thing that I find puzzling about Waldo’s spinning is that it’s almost always in a clockwise direction. He falls behind me on my right, passes me on the left, and so on. Why in the world would he have a predilection for clockwise spinning? In nature, wind moves from a high pressure to a low pressure so the pressure can be equalized. This can’t happen directly because the Earth is rotating which creates a pseudoforce, called the Coriolis force, that makes wind blow clockwise out of the high-pressure region and then counterclockwise into the low-pressure area. That’s why all hurricanes and tornadoes spin counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere (in the southern hemisphere, the same force makes tornadoes and hurricanes spin in the opposite direction). But, as far as I know, there’s no counterpart to the Coriolis force that governs dog behavior. Maybe I should test that and take Waldo to Australia to see if he spins me in a counterclockwise direction.
After many S-turns and clockwise circles, Waldo straightens out his path and tugs a bit at the leash. He’s anxious to get back to the car and home. I don’t think that’s because he’s tired or cold. I think he’s looking forward to supper. And, of course, passing on dicta to his dogdom from his balcony throne. He does have responsibilities, you know.
Me, I’m tired and cold and looking forward to warming up in my beloved recliner. Until tomorrow, that is, when we do it all over again.
And share the joy of being in the woods.
Let’s go, then.
More snow, with fresh footprints.
To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake, it is necessary to stand out in the cold.
-Aristotle
Snow is falling in tiny little dry flakes all around us as Waldo and I walk down the Assebet River Rail Trail. It’s more like Mother Nature’s dandruff than the big puffy milkweed wisps that gently float down when it’s snowing hard. I really like it when I’m surrounded by the big fluffy stuff wafting around me. It makes the universe feel so small. You certainly can’t see very far and sound doesn’t travel well, so the world seems close and personal, like it ends just a few feet away. It’s almost like existence is giving you a hug. The small stuff is nice too, though. And the best part is that it doesn’t accumulate into deep piles that make you work and sweat for every step.
Of course, this all presupposes that there’s not much wind. A good hefty breeze can be brutal. It drives the flakes into the exposed skin of your face, turning their pillowy softness into icy needles that not only painfully poke, they also stick and grow into icicles hanging from any exposed hair (like a mustache). And, of course, the wind chill factor can drop the apparent temperature by tens of degrees. Most heavy snow falls when the air temperature is around 32℉, but in a blizzard, it is, effectively, much colder. And all that wind can produce some really interesting phenomena too. I remember driving home from work, one winter night, in a blizzard. It was blowing so hard that I was engulfed by lightning all around me (turbulence makes lightning). There were no nearby strikes, but there were some close enough that their boom shook my car. It was surreal to be plowing through a sea of snow that was occasionally lit up by a bright flash of light, making a good bit of the white air momentarily glow.
But I digress. Nothing like that is happening today. There is next to no breeze and the snow is ever so slowly falling and joining its kin on the ground. The storm started more than 4 hours ago, but there’s only about 2 inches of accumulation, so the walking is easy. The patches of ice that were left from the last storm are small and few enough that I can avoid them, even though I can’t see them. I just have to remember where they are. I slip a little, here and there, but I don’t come close to falling.
Because it’s been hours since the snow started, there are footprints in the snow. A lot of them. And doggy pawprints and a few tracks of mechanical devices, like bicycles and baby buggies. We pass a few people, sometimes with their dogs, but no wheeled vehicles. There are no indigenous beasts out and about, neither squirrels, nor rabbits, nor birds, that I can see or hear, and I don’t see any tracks either. They must be snuggling next to their versions of a hearth, waiting for the storm to pass.
Waldo is having a great time. He’s trotting along, nose close to the ground, going back and forth, searching for the ultimate snort (I suppose). Once in a while, he’ll drop his jaw and scoop up a dollop of the white stuff to slake his thirst (I’m guessing). When I stop walking, for whatever reason, he goes off to the side of the trail, rolls over onto his back, and makes snow-doggies. Once in a while, he’ll find a stick, trot up to me and do his best to entice me with it. Just what he wants me to do, I’m not sure. He pokes me with it, or lifts a paw to swipe at my foot or leg, then retreats out of range, so I can’t grab the stick. I do my best to participate and he seems happy with the effort. This is his kind of weather and he’s reveling in it.
Today’s walk is decidedly different from our recent excursions through weeds and brambles. They were more of an exploration, a quest to get from where we were to where we wanted to go. What we’re doing today is more of a joyful indulgence, using our little patch of forest as a playground, in celebration of being alive in the natural world.
Both Waldo and I are grateful we have such a beautiful place to do that.
It always amazes me how many people come out here, as evidenced by their footprints, despite the weather.
Marlborough plows the trail.
…For we have strayed far.
But one is never too lost
To rediscover the Path…
-Falisa Tang
Ten days after Waldo and I finished walking the route of the Mass Central Rail Trail, we had our first snow. A cold, snowy airmass moved down to us from the south and east. A warmer, rainy airmass moved up from the north and east. They met over Marlborough, in a line running southwest to northeast, consisting of wet snow, sleet and freezing rain. Places a mere 15-minute drive north of Marlborough had a snow accumulation of up to 9 inches. Belchertown, the last city we walked through, got 6 inches. South of us got mostly freezing rain.
At the beginning of the storm, the grounds outside of our apartment were covered by around 3 inches of snow. Then came the freezing rain that coated much of what was already on the ground with a thin sheet of ice. Some of the snow melted in the rain, but what was left was slush. The next day, there was a hard freeze that turned everything to ice. It’s still walkable without crampons, but not by much. Waldo and I finished our trek toward Northampton just in time.
Now, here we are, back on the Assebet River Rail Trail. The portion that runs from the beginning of the trail to the Hudson border, just short of 2.25 miles, was plowed, leaving a swath of clear tarmac roughly 6 feet wide. On either side is a layer, 1 inch thick or so, of white, crunchy ice full of footprints where other people and dogs walked. Even the unplowed areas aren’t too slick and we step out there, when required, to let other people, dogs, and even bicycles, pass. In Hudson, where no plow ever ventures, it is mostly crunchy ice, also full of footprints, bicycle and even baby stroller tracks. Waldo and I are never the only intrepid souls who brave even the worst of the weather Mother Nature shares with those who will not be cloistered when things get nasty.
Waldo is happy with the cooler temperatures and the snow and ice doesn’t seem to bother him. In certain conditions, when the temperature drops below 10℉ and the snow is light and powdery, so it can work its way between his pads and freeze into ice, his feet can really bother him. But not today. He’s wandering around, out into the icy snow, doing his Waldo thing — grabbing sticks, sniffing the bushes and leaving his scent where he goes. There are a few bicycles that we pass, but not many, and Waldo doesn’t seem concerned by them. He’s out at the front end of the leash and simply makes room for any that pass.
Me, I’m happy not having to fight the Rosa multiflora. I do miss the adventure of having to find an antique path through the weeds, but any walk in the woods offers plenty. It’s nice, too, seeing how things have changed on our rail trail. While exploring the MCRT, we still came out here on the days we weren’t out west, but we weren’t here every day. Today, the fallen dead leaves and ground, that we last trod on, are now covered in white. The chilly breeze requiring a jacket has been replaced by a biting, icy blow that prods and probes in search of some way to penetrate the puffy parka I now wear. It feels like it was late fall when we last walked here and now winter has beset us with its months-long siege.
We pass by the spot, next to the Covid Garden, where I planted some wild flower seed. There never were any flowers there, so I don’t know if the seed took root or not. I’m hoping that there are plants there, they just need a year to mature enough to blossom forth. Any flowers that did sprout will have to compete with some very hardy weeds who will not be willing to readily surrender ground, so it’s not a foregone conclusion. Over this last spring, summer and fall, I did see green plants grow there, and some of them, I think, were my flowers. But I also saw local plants in the same spot that I know for sure I didn’t plant. Spring will tell.
The Covid Garden is asleep for the season and the new park is in hibernation. The English ivy tree is covered in dark green leaves, white pines are a spiky pale green and garlic mustard can be seen here and there, poking up through the ice. Everything else is a pale shade of tan to beige. No birds are out singing and the rabbits and squirrels are out of sight, doing their best to stay warm. Mother Nature has assumed her quiet, subdued wintry posture. Hello, Assebet River Rail Trail! Waldo and I are back and we’ll be greeting you on nearly a daily basis.
At least until it thaws a bit.
Hudson doesn’t.
The train, when it was running, went through some truly idyllic forest.
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
-Ursula K. Le Guin
So here we are, on the last leg of our prolonged journey.
A little over 6 years ago, Waldo, Christine, Karen (a friend of Christine’s) and I first put foot on the Mass Central Rail Trail near the town of Northampton. At the time, we were walking across Massachusetts from the New York border, near Pittsfield, to the tip of Cape Cod. We were able to accomplish that in about 6 months. In the process, we followed highways, streets and any other route than ran from where we were to where we wanted to end up. Just west of Northampton, the maps on our phones showed a rail trail, going in the right direction, and we took it. It ran from there, across the Connecticut River on an old railroad bridge and on past Amherst to Belchertown, where it stopped. From Belchertown, we had to resort to streets and highways again.
That piece of rail trail is part of the Mass Central Rail Trail, but it is also known as the Norwottuck Rail Trail. Other pieces of the Central Mass Railroad were improved and paved by local communities and given other names as well. Six years ago, it was incredibly difficult to search online for all the different sections of the entire MCRT, because to do so meant you had to know all the local names. Waldo, Christine, Phyllis and I walked on other pieces of the MCRT, sometimes without knowing it, but there was no easy way to know where the entire route was. That’s why it’s taken us so long to walk the whole thing.
A few years ago, I don’t remember exactly when, a group of people dedicated to the development of rail trails started a website focused on connecting all the different pieces and making a single paved rail trail from Boston to Northampton, following the original railroad bed as much as possible. They posted a map that made it “easy” to find all the separate pieces and their connections.
At first, I focused on walking the established, paved parts, but the rest was still there, just begging to be walked. The website says there are 63 miles of trail “open,” which leaves 41 miles that needed to be explored. So, last spring, I decided I needed to do just that and Waldo and I were off on another adventure. It took us over 6 years to do the whole thing, but, today, here we are, on the verge of completing the trek. This last leg takes us to the eastern end of the Norwottuck Rail Trail, which we walked way back when, and, when we’re done, we’ll have completed the entire 104 miles of the old Central Mass Railroad, from Northampton to downtown Boston.
We park the car, where we ended up on the last leg, on Bay Road, in Belchertown. Across the street, there is an embankment, some 20 or 30 feet high, and even when we’re on top, there’s nothing that can be recognized as old railroad bed. The map says it’s “proposed”, then becomes “protected/ unimproved.” On the ground, I can’t tell any difference between the two. As we walk along, no path at all morphs into well established path, to weed-choked, but obvious old railroad bed, to well established trail, to nothing at all again. It’s pretty much what the last few miles have been.
There are places where the railroad cuts through stunningly gorgeous pieces of forest land, or around swampy ponds sporting all kinds of flora. And Waldo and I are doing this in late fall, when all the leaves are gone. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the sylvan beauty that must be here in the height of summer. I try to picture what it must have been like to be on the train going through here back in the day. You know, Calvin Coolidge, when he was Governor of Massachusetts, used to take this train every day, going from his home in Northampton, to Boston. That was about a 3-hour trip. Each way. Today, because there is no direct route, it would take from 4 to 7 hours to travel by train, depending on connections.
There is so much American history where we have walked. Much more than I’ve mentioned. Like the Daniel Shays Highway, that goes to Belchertown. It is named after the leader of the 1786 rebellion against the newly founded government of the United States. There is the Quabbin reservoir, which finally filled in1946, drowned several towns and necessitated some rerouting of the Central Mass Railroad. And there is a lot more. But, then, in New England, Waldo can’t lift a leg without risking getting some piece of history wet.
As we walk down a well-trodden footpath on a raised part of the old railroad bed, I see, up ahead, through all the weeds, bushes and trees, a highway. On the other side is a large sign. I can’t read it, but I know what it says: “Norwottuck Rail Trail.” A few more yards and we’re there, beside the sign. We’ve done it. In order to avoid all the bushwhacking, we take to the roads and return to the car.
It’s funny, I don’t feel a sense of accomplishment, or the desire to celebrate. In fact, I’m a little disappointed. As is very often the case, maybe always, the real value is in the journey, not the realization of the goal. I’m going to miss the adventure of navigating my way through the bush, finding my way forward when it is not at all obvious.
But then, this isn’t our last walk in the woods, is it.
We’ve done it! All 104 miles (and then some).
The train used to go through here, somewhere…
If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine, it’s lethal.
-Paulo Coelho
Only 6 miles to go (roughly). After looking at the map, I’m expecting to have to do a lot of tramping through weeds and brambles, so I’m dressed in armor: gaiters, rain pants and jacket with heavy gloves. The temperature is cool, in the low 40s, fortunately, so I’m not sweltering. I don’t know how I would be able to protect myself without suffering heat exhaustion in temperatures of 70℉. The beginning of today’s trek takes off from a patch of tarmac called Maple Street (there are no buildings around) and wanders into the woods on a well-established path. The map says it is “in design,” whatever that means, and, as far as I can see, it promises to be an easy stroll. There is a railroad, currently in use, about 30 yards to our left and trees and brush to our right.
After about a mile and a half, we come to a street. On the other side is a steep embankment with a wall of weeds that, if not impenetrable, would be a challenge to negotiate. The railroad to our left passes over the street on a bridge. Taking the path of least resistance, we cross over the road, on the railroad bridge, then head back into the bush. Waldo is now used to dealing with daylight shining between his toes on these bridges and we have no problems. However, once on the embankment to the right of the railroad bridge, I can’t see anything that looks like old railroad bed. Just weeds, brambles, brush and small bole trees. At one place, we have no choice but to force our way through a wall of foliage – we now have to add plowing through to crawling under, climbing over and going around.
There are a couple of places, parallel to each other, where, with a little imagination, I can sorta guess where the railroad maybe used to go and Waldo and I weed-whack our way from one to the other, looking for the best way to go. You know, this could be part of a new border collie sport. We’d call it “agility bushwhacking.” I begin to understand why Waldo likes these walks so much. He loves doing agility training. Me? I’m tempted to take to the railroad tracks to our left, but I don’t give in that easily and Waldo is having a blast herding the shrubbery. So, we continue on as best we can.
Then, after about a quarter of a mile, I can see something that resembles a path. It obviously isn’t used much, but it is clear that someone, or something, has been there before. There is nothing to suggest an explanation as to why that path has been used and not where we just came from, but we’re grateful for the change. There are all kinds of paths that traverse through all New England woods and we don’t want to be misled onto a track that takes us from where we want to go, but this path seems to be going in the right direction. We follow it and the further we go, the better defined and wider it gets. Soon, we pass signs designed for snowmobilers, which explains some of who has been using the path. At times, other well-trodden paths branch off to our right, but we hold our course.
We cross another street and the trail, thereafter, is not so well developed at all. But it’s still relatively easy going. There are a few fallen trees blocking our path that we have to climb over (jump over in Waldo’s case) but little else that needs effort to travel over, under, around, or through.
After about a quarter-mile, we come to the road that is the endpoint of today’s walk. On the other side of the street is a steep embankment and no obvious clue as to where the railroad bed continues. That’s a problem to be solved on the next walk, on another day. We reverse our steps and head back the way we came.
When we get back to the next street, though, we take to the road. I do not want to repeat the worst of the bushwhacking. The road is 2-laned and the shoulder is narrow. The traffic is light, but they are going about 40 miles per hour or so. They give us a wide berth, but even so, as soon as we’ve gone around the sea of brambles, bush and weeds (ending where the railroad bridge passed over the street), we take back to the old railroad bed and walk carefree on the well-established path. Soon, we’re back to the car and another piece of our trek is done.
Only 3 more miles (approximately) to go!
Ah, yes. There it is. Waldo found it!
Not only is this part of the trail well-manicured, it has other people on it!
To study history means submitting yourself to chaos, but nevertheless retaining your faith in order and meaning.
-Herman Hesse
I was pretty sure that this next chunk of the Mass Central Rail Trail was going to be a fairly easy walk, with little to no bushwhacking. I couldn’t be sure, but the map and satellite views suggested it would be. Also, a couple of weeks ago, I met a guy, on a different part of the trail, who, if I understood him right, said it would be a nice walk. We parked across the road from where we ended up last time and headed out.
My reasoning was sound. The trail is broad, flat and straight. It’s buried under a carpet of dead maple, oak and birch leaves and the rails and ties are completely gone. Here and there, I get a glimpse of the ground under the leaves and it looks like it was paved in crushed stone at some point. The map says it’s “protected/unimproved,” but it doesn’t look to me that much will be required to improve it. We’re surrounded by a forest of new growth trees, none older that about 50 years. The railroad was finished and opened in 1887, so the original landscape must have been mainly farmland then. I can see a good half-mile or more in front of us – the path runs as straight as I-80 through Nebraska.
Waldo is up ahead, at his usual position, doing his Waldo thing. He needs no direction. Our course is obvious, even to a border collie who loves to search out different paths to take. I don’t know what he’s doing up there, but whatever it is, he’s happily doing it without feeling the need to involve me. We pass 4 other people with dogs, and one couple without, who are out for a walk on a cool autumn day, just like us. We also pass 2 bicycles, but Waldo doesn’t seem particularly bothered by them like he is on the Assebet River Rail Trail. I’m left with lots of time for my mind to wander as it is wont to do.
137 years ago, steam locomotives were belching, wheezing, rattling and screeching their way down this same route where we’re walking today. Trains in the US first started carrying passengers in 1830, but they were few until after the Civil War. Before then, since prehistoric times, man had three choices about how he could travel: on foot, on water in a raft or boat and using animal power to propel him and his goods in one way or another.
It was slow. Horse and oxen drawn wagons took from 3 to 6 months, in the 1850s, to go from the east coast to the west coast. This could take even longer if you had to make your own road, which was sometimes required. Walking would take about as long, but you didn’t need a road. Ocean-going sailing vessels could do around 7 mph, when the wind was blowing right, and it would require a trip around Cape Horn of 4 to 6 months, to go from New York to San Francisco.
You could go by boat on a river, but sailing was unreliable on rivers and steam boats weren’t available until 1810 (interestingly, Lewis and Clark’s adventure was 1804 to 1806). Rivers only flow one way, toward the sea, and even if you found one that was going where you wanted to go, it would really slow you down if you had to go upstream. It took Lewis and Clark 5 months to go 1,600 miles up the Missouri River from St. Louis to the Mandan villages (near present day Bismark, North Dakota).
Any way you did it was arduous and it took a very, very long time to go any distance.
And then, after the Civil War, railroads sprung up everywhere. After the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Point, Utah, quite suddenly, people were able to travel at speed! Sort of. Trains only traveled, at best, 22 miles per hour, but they could do it 24/7. The coast-to-coast travel time was reduced to 8 – 10 days. There was a lot of money to be made by building a railroad and connecting any place that had goods or people who needed to be moved “fast” and after the Civil War, railroads sprung up everywhere. The Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest corporation in the world, around the turn of the 19th to the 20th centuries, and was worth over a billion dollars. Trains were a big deal.
And here Waldo and I are, trekking down the fossilized bones of what used to be, not all that long ago, a wonder of human creativity. Trains were something that had a major impact on human society and served to reshape it into something totally different from what it was before and into something that could never have been imagined when the tracks were first laid down. And it all happened so quickly. Alas, most railways have now disappeared, rapidly becoming only faint memories and weed-choked bumps in the landscape, after the advent of the automobile and paved highways. In places like this, there is only a dusty suggestion of the magic that once was. There’s a lot of intriguing history passing under my boots.
By the time I’ve finished ruminating about all this, we’ve gone some 3.9 miles. I estimated the distance was going to be about 4 miles, but our planned trek turned out to be more like 3.5 miles. Because I wasn’t paying close attention, we ended up doing almost 4 miles anyway. We turn around and head back to the car and home.
There’s only about 6 more miles to do before we’ve walked what’s left of the entire Mass Central Railroad, 104 miles, from downtown Boston to Northampton, MA.
Straight and smooth!
Sometimes, all you have to do is cross the road and the whole world changes.
The older I get, the more I realize how rare it is to meet a kindred spirit.
-Ethan Hawke
It’s amazing how something as simple as crossing the road can change so much. I was a little hesitant to continue our trek on the Mass Central Rail Trail today after struggling so much on the last leg, on one side of the road, in all the brush and briar. The path we have yet to take, on the other side of the road, is all “proposed” and a bit longer. Given what we just weathered, it seemed likely it would be even more arduous. Ugh. But, as I stepped through the curtain of foliage at the edge of the road, I saw a clear path that continued on down the rails for as far as I could see. You never know what the path on the other side of the road is like until you walk it. There’s a bumper sticker in there somewhere, I think.
Waldo is off and gone at the forward end of the leash, trotting along and clearly happy at being on another adventure. I follow at a comfortable pace and we’re making good progress. The surrounding country is not that much different from that on the other side of the road; I don’t understand why the tracks are so much clearer. It’s not long and we cross a small bridge that spans a creek. It has the same 3-inch open spaces between the ties that the bridge over the Ware River had. Waldo doesn’t balk a bit. He seems to have learned that it isn’t as threatening as he first thought. A little touch of hubris, I think, because, at one point, a back foot goes through the gap between the ties and he lands on his butt. He extricates himself, none the worse for wear, and continues on, just a bit more slowly. It seems he’s learned not to put his weight on a foot until it makes contact with something more solid than the ether. Hmmm. Another bumper sticker?
After crossing over a street on another bridge, we pass next to a residential area known as Duckville, a part of Bondsville. We’re really out in the sticks, here, and I can’t help but wonder what industry supports the people that live here. We’re miles from any sizeable city, yet there are not only homes, but apartment complexes as well. The railroad bed runs close enough to these private properties that I was worried, when I looked at the map, that it would be disrupted and hard to follow. But the trail continues on as before, until we get to the Swift River. There, the trail ends at a bridge abutment, sans bridge, about 50 feet above the water. The river is, roughly, 50 feet wide and moving leisurely, north to south, over a weir. On the other side is an embankment at least as high as the one we’re standing on, but the brush is so thick, I can’t see where the railroad bed continues.
We climb down to a street that runs along the water and head downriver to a bridge, about a half-mile away. On the other side is a trail, not the rail trail, that we follow back upriver to a point close to being opposite to where we were. I look up the embankment and can’t see anything that looks like an old bridge abutment and decide to climb to the top and look for a railroad bed there. It’s a steep climb, covered in slippery dead leaves, but we make it without too much trouble. At the top, we push through the brush until we come across something resembling a path. We follow that until it abuts a road, maybe 1/8th of a mile. On the other side of the road is a large grassy field, no path. We continue in the same direction as the path we just left and cross the field until we come to its edge — brush and trees. There is no more path. We head into the woods and take a 90 degree turn to the north, figuring that the railroad bed must be over there. After about 100 yards, we find what we’re looking for in a deep cut. The path we had been following, apparently, was a red herring.
As we come to the edge of the cut, I see at its bottom, a guy squatting next to a mountain bike, doing something in the dirt. The railroad bed is clear, covered in dead leaves, but it doesn’t look like it would be comfortable place to ride a bike. The rails are all gone, but you can see, under the leaves, old weathered and rotting ties that would make the going washboardy. “Hello!” I call out, as Waldo and I climb down. “Whatcha doing?”
“This is an old railroad,” he says, continuing with his efforts.
“Yeah,” I say. “It was finished in 1887, but I don’t think this part has been used since about 1938. A hurricane came through here that year and a part of the railroad was washed out north of Ware and was never repaired.”
“You’re spot on! Look at this.” He shows me a nail, still in a tie, that has “37” stamped on its head. “Since about 1900, until the 1960s, railroads would put these ‘date nails’ on the ties to show when they were replaced.” He scuffs some leaves around on the ground with his boots. “Here’s another one.”
We talk a bit about our experiences exploring railroad beds. He likes to ride his bike on the remnants of old train tracks, but, obviously, ones a bit more “developed” than the ones we’ve been following. He gives Waldo a friendly pat on the head and Waldo and I trek on. He is the first person that we’ve met anywhere on a “proposed” rail trail. There are kindred spirits!
After about a mile, we come to the end of the day’s trek. We turn around and head back the way we came. Sometimes, when the going is rough, we’ll take to the streets and highways on our way back, but this trail has been easy enough that we just retrace our steps. The guy on the bike passes us, going the other way, and we wish him a good evening. We follow this part of the railroad bed back to the Swift River and I see where we went wrong and followed the wrong path from the river, going the other way.
It’s still daylight when we get back to the car, but it’s dark when we get home. It was a nice walk and we have one more leg done. We now only have 10 more miles, out of 104, to do. The next bit is about 4 miles long each way, 8 miles round trip, and is supposed to be an easy walk.
We’re getting close to the end!
On the other side of the river, the trail continues on as an easy walk.