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.

It’s still fairly dark out as we start.

Say what you will about aging, it’s still the only way to have old friends.

-Robert Breault

Today, Waldo and I had a predawn start to our walk.  We woke up at 4 AM, had a quick breakfast, then we were out the door and in the car.  Phyllis is meeting us in the Lotus Blossom restaurant parking lot at about 5:30 AM, so we can finish by 8, when the temperature is forecast to be 73℉.  Waldo and I got to the parking lot a little early and we’re outside, waiting for Phyllis to drive up.  It’s still dark out and there is next to no traffic.  I don’t know how he knows, but Waldo is out on the sidewalk, wagging his butt, as Phyllis’s headlights approach down the street.  As soon as she parks, he greets her with a torrent of ardent sniffs and licks, then, in true border-collie fashion, walks away with a been-there-done-that attitude.  The sun isn’t scheduled to rise until 5:55, so there’s just a hint of a pastel peach dawn to the east, and the suggestion of a pale blue sky above us, as we start out on the Mass Central Rail Trail.

It’s been a while since we’ve been on the Mass Central Rail Trail, or the Bruce Freeman Trail.  This piece of the MCRT is one that is not yet quite finished.  Construction has been going on for the past couple of years and we have walked it before, even though it wasn’t paved.  Now, it has a first coat of tarmac, but there’s more work to be done.  Even so, the going is easy and we quickly walk the 0.2 mile, or so, distance to the intersection with the Bruce Freeman Trail.  The BFT was finished and fully opened this spring and we want to see what it’s like now that it’s, finally done.

The intersection of the two trails has a small roundabout, with bare ground in the middle.  There used to be a small train station just to the northwest of the intersection, but that is now long gone.  Off in the weeds, to the northeast of the roundabout, is the “X” section of rails that was the intersection of the two railroads.  The MCRT runs, more or less, east-west from Boston to Northampton, Mass.  The BFT runs from Framingham, to our south, north to Lowell, MA.  We turn right and head north, with the idea of seeing what the finished trail is like.

As we walk along, the world turns lighter and Mother Nature’s colors become more vibrant.  We are soon in thick forest, surrounded by old-growth stands of maple, oak and white pine.  After a good half-hour, the sun finally broaches the horizon and we are bathed in the long shadows of early morning.  Emmy birds are out and about and I carry on a short conversation with one.  I don’t hear any cardinal-song, but I know cardinals are out in the foliage somewhere; they’re just not talking right now.  Waldo is out front at the end of the leash and not continuously stopping to look behind us as he is wont to do when there are bikes around.  There are bikes out here, I think he’s just excited to be on a walk in a place different from our usual haunt and, while not ignoring them, he’s too interested in the new countryside to fret about them.

The trail itself is different from the last time we were here.  The fences that attempted (and failed) to block adventurous people from exploring the unfinished trail are gone.  The tarmac is thicker and more solid, there are rail fences on the sides, here and there, and there are granite posts, every half-mile or so.  The posts display the history of the place.  Some describe how the railroad was built.  Others note how the railroad was run, talking about signal lights and whistle posts.  There is a large sign showing a map of the MCRT and BFT, along with some historical facts of the town of Sudbury.  The icing has been put on the cake from the last time we were here.

Phyllis is leaving on an 8-week trip to five different countries in Africa in less than two weeks.  We talk a lot about her plans and my past experiences there.  Among the countries she’s visiting are Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe and South Africa.  This will be the first time she’s been to the second largest continent in the world and she’s quite excited.  Africa is someplace she’s wanted to visit for a good part of her life.  This is her fourth attempt to scratch that itch – the other trips had to be canceled before they could become reality, for various reasons.  It would take an act of God to stop her this time.  She’s running out of time, you know.

All too soon, we turn around and head back to the Lotus Blossom.  It’s been a really nice 6-mile walk and we successfully beat the heat.  Waldo got to sniff new smells and Phyllis and I got to reconnect and experience the finished BFT.  She won’t be back until toward the end of October, but by then, things will be cooler and we’ll be able to take longer walks.

And there’ll be plenty of time for her tell me about her African adventures.

It’s really nice to be walking with Phyllis again.

The grounds where we live provide Waldo and me some great places to walk.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

-Helen Keller

Waldo and I woke at 6 AM this morning.  Every night, I look at the forecast and pick the latest time we can leave the next day for our walk and finish before it gets hotter than about 74℉.  We need a three-hour window to get up, get dressed and finish our six miles, and this summer, that’s meant getting up pretty early.  Lately, we’ve been able get out of bed as late as 7 AM, but today, it’s going to be a bit hotter a bit earlier, so we had to get up at 6.  4 AM sucks, but 6 isn’t too bad.  Usually.  This morning, I got up and put on my socks, so it was for real.

I was feeling a bit tired, but nothing abnormal for that time of day.  I was all set, except for putting on my boots, to head out the door.  Waldo was lying on the floor, waiting patiently for me to get my act together.  Suddenly, I felt a little sleepier than normal.  That’s very unusual for me.  Once the juices get flowing, I’m good to go.  But I had the urge to nap, not walk.  The forecast says the next few days are going to be 4 AM walks, or none at all, but, even so, I caved and decided to put off our trek for another day.  Still, the dog has got to get out and do his business, so out we went.  The plan morphed into doing our half-mile poop and pee loop, then come back home, have some breakfast, then hit the recliner for a couple-hour nap.

Once outdoors, I heard an Emmy bird, hiding somewhere in the foliage in her catbird seat.  We talked a bit, as Waldo lifted his leg on the bushes, then, having said whatever it was that needed saying, we moved on.  I can speak Emmy bird well enough that I can sometimes induce one to flit down to a perch near me, or land on the ground not far away.   Once seeing that I wear a very peculiar set of feathers, and I have a companion who is a… predator, they take then off and go back into hiding.  However, I don’t understand the language at all and I have no idea what’s being said.  This morning, the bird does not show itself and, after exchanging a few bon mots, we move on toward the pooping grounds.

The other day, while we were out on the rail trail, a gorgeous red cardinal flew right in front of me, across our path.  I pulled out my phone and searched for an audio of cardinal birdsong.  Hearing that, I listened carefully to the woods.  It wasn’t long before I heard a cardinal off in the bushes, making the same song.  It’s a whistle, sliding from a low to high tone, repeated three or four times.  I did my best to imitate it and the bird answered.  This morning, when I heard cardinal-speak, I answered as best I could.  Like the Emmy bird, the cardinal, who I couldn’t see, answered and we spoke for awhile.  About something or other.  Like is often the case with human interactions, what was said was not so important as the expression of the desire to interact.

Moving on, Waldo and I rounded the corner of a building and saw an elderly woman sitting on the ground, just outside the back door to the building, with her legs folded under her.  I asked if she was okay and she said she tripped on the bottom step and couldn’t get up.  She said that her wrists were a bit sore, especially the right, but otherwise, she was fine.  I told her I understood completely and that I made it a practice to do my best not to go down without a solid plan about how I would get back up.  But, hey, shit happens.

Obviously, I needed to help her get up.  But first, I needed to figure out what I was going to do with Waldo.  I told him to stay, locked the retractable reel of his leash so it wouldn’t retract and set the reel on the ground.  I was pretty sure that if Waldo did wander off, he wouldn’t go far.  As a puppy, that was a worry.  These days, not so much.

There was no one else around, so, with the woman’s consent (I did mention that I am a retired doctor, she said she is a retired nurse), I got behind her, put my hands under her armpits and lifted.  She was a short woman, but large.  We got her onto her knees, but I couldn’t lift her all the way up without changing my position.  So, I leaned over some more, changed my grip by running my arms around her upper chest and, grasping my hands together, I tried again.  Lifting and leaning backward, doing my best not to join her on the ground, I finally got her onto her feet.  She was good to go and refused further help.  On the way to church when she fell, she continued on and went around the corner of building.

I turned to look at Waldo.  The leash reel had not moved an inch.  Anyone else watching might have been amused seeing two old farts wrestling around on the ground, but not Waldo.  During the whole episode, he just stood there, watching.  He gave me a “Are you done?” look and, as I picked up my end of the leash and unlocked the reel, he continued on his way as if this kind of thing happens all the time.  What a great companion.

You see, adventure is out there, even right next to home on a short half-mile jaunt around the neighborhood.

You just have to be open to it.

There’s even some funky foliage, like this tree that looks like a crucifix.

Waldo doesn’t spend much time ruminating, as far as I can tell.

There is never enough time to do all the nothing you want.

-Bill Waterson

It feels so good to be out walking in 60℉ weather.  Finally, Waldo and I can put in our 6 miles and finish while the temperature is still in the low 70s.  Later on in the day, it’s in the low 80s, but by then, we’re inside, chillaxin’.

Apparently, there are quite a few others who feel the same way, because we are not alone.  Many of the people and dogs we meet are fellow rail-trail denizens who we are used to meeting later on in the day when things are a bit cooler.  That’s not universal – not everyone makes an effort to beat the heat.  I’ve driven by the trail when the temps are in the low 90s and seen intrepid beshorted and beteeshirted people out here walking the tarmac.  It would be my guess, though, that they’re not going six miles.  The wisdom is that people can’t spend very long working in temperatures higher than 90℉.  At those temps, humans need to rest and cool down a bit or they get heat stroke.  It makes me wonder how southern plantation slaves survived in the cotton fields.

Nothing much has changed since the last blog, except the Canadian geese are nowhere to be seen.  But high summer is like that.  Like midwinter, things are changing, but only slowly — every day is very much like every other day.  In summer, the trees are fully foliated, the weeds are tall and densely packed and the world is soaked in green.  That only changes at the pace that grass grows.  In the winter, day after day after day, the trees remain barren, the ground is covered in snow and ice and the landscape is painted in dull shades of gray.  Oh, there are days, in the summer, when it rains, times when the wind blows in a gale, and weeks of the sun bludgeoning heat down mercilessly.  And in the winter, there are periods of frigid, icy temperatures that would freeze the soul and snow storms that bury the world in a thick icy blanket.  But in both cases, all that is just background noise to the slowly evolving seasons

In the spring and fall, things can change noticeably from one day to the next.  In just a few days, you can see the vernal leaves on the trees spring forth from tiny buds to light green babies, then to jade-colored, mature fully photosynthesizing organs.  Six months or so later, in the fall, you can see those same leaves, from day to day, give up their verdure in beautiful patterns of red and yellow, then end up as a soft crunchy carpet covering the ground everywhere.  In the spring, I like to follow the different rates of maturation of the different plants – which ones are the first and last to be fully leafed out, for example.  In the fall, it’s interesting to watch the growing patterns of color amid the still green trees and think about the causes.  Things change with a rapidity that makes it easy to notice and follow.

It occurs to me that my life is like that.  For months on end, every day was very much like every other day.  I would wake up every morning, roll out of bed and then go about the business of living.  Then, sometimes after many years, something would change.  I would start school, or get a new job, or get married, buy a new house, or have children.  The world would be a different kind of place for a while, then routine would set in, along with a certain amount of monotony.  Finally, the kids grow up, they have their own lives, the empty house is sold and I retire.  After that, like midsummer and winter, very little changes.  Oh, I go on trips and write books that get published, enjoy watching my kids and grandkids lives taking form and shape, but most of my life is set.  There no more grand schemes of career planning, no more tall hurdles to leap over.

It’s a quiet time of life, retirement.  A lot of time is spent on maintenance, just taking care of what’s required to live in twentieth-century America.  The older you get, the more that means medical appointments for this and that minor inconvenience of having a body that is slowly wearing out.  Everything else has a tendency to be entertainment.  Stuff like traveling, writing and even exploring.  It’s just a way of filling what time you have left.

I don’t find that at all depressing.  It’s just quiet.  Like going for a walk with Waldo on the rail trail.  The frenetic energy of a working life is gone, but life is still fulfilling.  It’s full of love, caring and sharing.  And I have plenty of time to revel in the magic of life in all of its countless facets.

And wonder about all that is.

I do think he wonders what I’m doing, though.

Uprooted common burdock.

August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born.  The odd uneven time.

-Sylvia Plath

It finally got cool enough that Waldo and I can go walking without getting up at 4 AM.  We did get out of bed at 6, which is still plenty early in my estimation, but at least the sun was up.  The temperature is a nice 60℉ and it’s a bit muggy.  There’s a light breeze, but even so, the air is hazy due to smoke from wildfires in Canada.  I can’t smell the smoke, like I have in the past, but I can definitely see it.

The common burdock is putting up flowers and tiny nascent burr balls on 4-foot-high stalks.  As I’ve blogged previously, I’m at war with the stuff.  In the fall, these things turn into small maces whose business ends assault Waldo’s fur and my peace of mind.  Once in his fur, the damn things are really hard to extract and they come in bunches of 6 to 10.  And they’re out there, threatening to attack, for weeks.  Last year, I had enough and I uprooted every one I could find.  This year, I’m starting early.  As I walk along, I look for those stalks (not all burdock plants have them).  When I find one, I grab it, near where it comes out of the ground, with both hands, and lean back with all my weight.  If I can’t get it out, I smash it down next to the ground and try again the next day.  So far this year, the score is Byron — 6, Waldo’s fur – 0, and burdock – 0.  This morning, I pulled out the last one I could find.  So far.

The presence of the burdock stalks is only one sign that summer is past its midpoint.  The sun is rising noticeably later and setting earlier.  Acorns and black walnut fruits are appearing on the ground.  The Japanese knotweed is leaving its tiny, not so tenacious, burrs in Waldo’s fur (for reasons I don’t understand, he likes to walk under whatever weeds are out there, picking up bits of flowers, sticks, burrs and probably ticks).  The grass on the new park above Fort Meadow Reservoir is green and long (it has even been mowed once).  The Emmy birds have not migrated south yet, but they aren’t nearly as vociferous as they were in the spring and early summer.

As we pass the athletic field belonging to the Assebet Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School, I notice two Canadian geese lounging on the manicured lawn.  Now that is really odd.  It can’t be a sign of a waning summer, geese don’t migrate south until late September into October.  As I write this, it’s still early August.  These guys should be up in Northern Canada making little baby goslings, not down here.  I wonder what kind of insult humanity has perpetrated on Mother Nature that made these geese wander so far south so soon.  I can’t imagine they’re on their way to their winter nesting grounds in the southern US and northern Mexico.  It’s still too damn hot.  Maybe they’re escaping the wildfires that are raging up in Canada right now?

The bugs this year haven’t been all that bad.  In the past, on a day like this, I have been beset by intrusive mosquitoes, intent on doing a little blood-letting.   There are some gnats that buzz about, making themselves a nuisance, but no mosquitoes.  It’s been wet enough that there are ponds, pools and puddles on both sides of the trail that can spawn a plethora of the little monsters, yet there are none.  Their absence can’t be due to summer nearing middle age, it’s still way too early for the buggers to pack it in for the year; something else must be going on.  Eastern Equine Encephalitis was detected here in the spring and they sprayed for mosquitoes back then to get that under control, maybe it was more effective than I could have hoped.

Waldo has been a bit off his feed for the past month or so.  I’m not sure why, but I’m thinking it’s because of the heat.  There have been days when he hasn’t eaten breakfast until midafternoon.  That isn’t like him.  He’s a very good eater.  I’m thinking it might be the heat because, now that it’s a bit cooler, he’s eating better.  At it’s worst, I could always prime the puppy by putting a treat on top pf his food to get him started.  He then eats the whole bowl full of kibble.  So, I’m not that worried about him.  Maybe his eating better is just another sign that summer is past its prime.

There are definite signs that summer is on its way out and some signs that may be unrelated.  Either way, I enjoy wondering about how things change and evolve over time.  Soon, I’m hoping, it’ll be cool enough that Waldo and I can once again wander further afield and accomplish some of the goals I have for us.  Notably, I want to finish the Mass Central Rail Trail and start the Mid State Trail.  It’s just not possible now, in this heat.  Then, before too long, it’ll be freezing outside.

And we’ll be wishing for just a bit of warmth.

The enemy.