Day Hikes: Bedford: North Segment, 11/19/2006.

The leg from Great Road, north, is a well defined rail bed edged by variegated wetlands. Oak and maple swamps, alder swales, vernal pools alternate throughout a recharge aquifer. A few cattail marshes of fairly recent formation lie west of the VA Hospital and then there is the pond called Fawn Lake. White Pine groves appear to be in their decline phase of succession with a few really large specimens capable of housing owls or raptors grow along the western edge near Fawn Lake.

In this quiet lull time before winter’s onset, the “Pik” of the Downy Woodpecker makes a solitary tone nearby with a distant background wash of Blue jays and Flickers and bass tone booms of a rod and gun club firing range. It is a Sunday and a few pooch walkers are using the main trail. The York Conservation Area has a few well marked spurs to the west and a cryptic royal blue blazed one north of the VA parking lot.

This trail offered a flat lichen dappled boulder for a sit down moment and winds through the rise of returning oak land containing the percolations of the aquifer. Fawn Lake Trail. Further north lays the pond ambitiously called Fawn Lake even though it’s smaller than Walden. A spur trail toward it is larded with risk aversion signage soon after it parts from the Bay Circuit.

A discarded sign warns of a hornet nest probably abandoned several years ago. Another sign warns of an aquacide algae treatment due to be complete by 8/27 with the year unspecified but a reference to the former DEM suggests it must precede the facetious renaming of the latter by one of the corporate GOP looter administrations the commonwealth stupidly imposed on itself to dodge taxes. There is also a trail closure sign for an inundated segment along the “lake’s” west edge mounted sturdily on a post and framed in Plexiglas with credit accorded to Alex Washer and Boy Scout Troop 114.

The Fawn Lake parking lot on its NW corner marks the current end of the BCT but another segment of the rail bed is slated for use when the extension to Andover through a seemingly reluctant Billerica. Signage indicating the existence of the BCT hasn’t appeared yet. I decided to follow the rail bed a bit further north to see if the Bedford/Billerica border is noticeable or marked.

The trail passes one last conservation area, north of the Fawn Lake parking lot, Buehler Ponds. These are so tiny they are already quickly becoming marshes. Attempts to impose a Japanese garden have already failed as the upland native forest inexorably returns. There isn’t much to indicate the border between prim liberal Bedford and slovenly neocon Billerica beyond the sudden appearance of trailside yard middens mainly comprised of rusty metal stuff. I once found it unsightly but it now looks more like quaint archeology and probably shelters voles and other small critters.

The commonwealth has become a subset mirror of the nation with blue and red towns and, oddly the red towns have the same down at the heels look as the red states I passed on a cross country rail trip while the blue towns have the same glow of prosperity. The rail bed loses its coat of rock dust and a cover of the old sand serves as a replacement. Before long, the rail bed vanishes beneath a newer development road guarded by a stern ‘No Trespassing’ sign as Private Property outranks General Access. I turn back amid jealous encroachment and, later, a scolding from a red squirrel. I end up walking a northeast trending spur trail along the north edge of the Buehler Ponds site and later discover it is the likely continuation of the Bay Circuit toward Andover.

The feverish burst of real estate speculation over the past decade has left the North edge of the spur trail hemmed by a bulwark of bulky particle board palazzos of recent vintage redolent with more private property jealousy probably attended by considerable debt burden anxiety. These poor lummox homes will be horribly vulnerable to spikes in energy costs and represent the odd boomer bloat era one day to be derided or pitied as the nation inevitably rediscovers common sense.

If one mainly looks to the south with gaze respectfully averted from these overstuffed sucker traps, the aquifer mosaic of vernal pools, mini swamps and enveloping oak resurgence is its own reward. Flocklets of chickadees and their titmice cousins gambol through it all with a comforting subdued staccato of orientation chirps that will probably enhance this sturdy biome remnant long after the palazzos go the way of ghost towns.

Downeast Sojourn, Part 3, The Great Heath.

Sunday a.m.:

Well... this is it. I'll take a Heath walk and be back in time to hit Route One by noon.

I walked in foul weather through the Barrens skirting the edge of Pineo. This consists of a sculpted gravel moraine interlaced and skirted with wavy edges like landform sized scalloping. You can't see into these due to tree density. This is comprised of red and white oak, aspen, sugar maple and other wt soil hardwoods. I'll check it all more thoroughly when I have USGS topo maps instead of DeLorme.

My tracking was sloppy and I wandered with no idea of direction. The overcast stole visibility so I couldn't use Schoodic or Lead Mountain as a benchmark. And by mistaking the alignment of an east-west power line, I only sank further into confusion. The wind might have an answer but I didn't get it.

I flushed a spruce grouse as soon as I stepped onto the Barrens. There were few signs of mammals. I hiked through one plateaus patchwork of side lanes sprouting clusters of portable migrant shacks. I looked into one. It's a crude plywood box frame with an average roof pitch and a stove hole, pallet frames for bedding and a few windows. The bunk frames are two tiered.

The road to Deblois looks ok on DeLorme but it's really only fit for high clearance vehicles capable of fording a stream. Four wheel drive may even be essential. A long slope section is washed out and Schoodic Brook needs a bridge. Bear and moose appear to find it more useful than people do.

It was awful and late by the time I stumbled onto 192. A twelve-mile walk in cold, grim rain dark beckoned. But, another kindly pair of old locals saved my dim bacon.

Yvonne and Wendell Otoury have a flatbed truck and are blueberry tenant pickers. Yvonne is a Mic Mac lady with a fondness for Camels. Wendell has a corresponding fondness for canned beer. He sports a small hat and a large gray beard.

They were pissed because they had leased a field from its owners and were dragooned into picking a lamer one while theirs went fallow. All of this, according to Wendell, smacked of blueberry harvest office politics.

This was a record blueberry year for the Barrens but the local blueberry barons got cold feet early and contracted to purchase cheaper blueberries from Canada as a hedge. They ended up writing off a number of their own fields. Wendell had gathered a crew and lost some due to the slimmed pickings.

Another complaint addressed the crews' supervision. Bosses had em all fan out from the center instead moving in from the edges like a closing seine. This left boxes scattered everywhere.

Last nights rain led a minor stampede of elements, particularly wind. There, under the frail bubble of tent in waning autumn light, I felt an urge to immerse myself in it all. Reveling in my embrace of insignificance I strove to belong to this howling Living World. I battened the tent against the wind and layered a poncho over it to hedge the rain. 

Then I slid into the sleeping bag and read passages of St. John Perse aloud to it all choosing excerpts from "Winds", "Rains" and "Exile". Perse lived for a while along this coast after the Nazi's drove him from France and the texts have a marvelous resonance.

"...very great winds over all the faces of this world,

Very great winds rejoicing over the world, having neither eyrie nor resting- place,"

"These were very great winds questing over all the trails of this world,"

"For a whole century was rustling in the dry sound of it's straw, amid strange terminations at the tips of husks of pods, at the tips of trembling things. Like a great tree in its rags and remnants of last winter, wearing the livery of the dead year. Like a great tree shuddering in its rattles of dead wood and its corollas of baked clay-- Very great mendicant tree, its patrimony squandered, its countenance seared by love and violence whereon desire will sing again,"

" The banyan of the rain takes hold of the City,

A hurried polyp rises to its coral wedding in all this milk of living water,

And Idea, naked like a net fighter, combs her girls mane in the people's gardens".

"Sing, poem, at the opening cry of the waters the imminence of the theme,

Sing, poem at the milling of the waters the evasion of the theme..."

" Hatching of golden ovules in the tawny night of the slime

And my bed made, O fraud! On the edge of such a dream,

Where the poem, obscene rose, quickens and grows and unfurls."

" I have chosen a place glaring and null as the bone-heap of the seasons,"

"...To desire the barest place for assembling on the wastes of exile a great poem of nothing, a great poem made from nothing..."

" I have built upon the abyss and the spindrift and the sand-smoke. I shall lie down in cistern and hollow vessel,

In all stale and empty places where lies the taste of greatness."

There it was, the distant percolation of the bog stream, the robust incessance of raindrops, branches and soaked leaves shivering in the wind to the hem and haw of a flapping tent. The lone little voice floats old words in a corresponding percolation to the stream. This is what 'to be' means. The voice fades with the light, as the pages grow dim.

When sunrise returned this morning, the birds rooted for it strenuously. It's just now rising over the trees.

Wow! Distinct shadows!

Sunday: Midday.

Made it!! I walked to the Pleasant River canoe launch. I found an inspired cabin owned by R. Lambrek about 100 feet up road from the river. It had a spring well, bunk beds, gas and stove hookups and a downhill outhouse. On one wall was a faded cartoon of a boy and a girl with the girl's hand in the boy's pants. The boy looks dismayed. The caption: "Now I know why you can run faster, you have a stick shift with two ball bearings". Clever.

The Pleasant is quiet, slim, somewhat bog tannic and obviously perfect for birding and quiet canoe drifting. There is a rickety log bridge that might bear certain kinds of vehicles, a jeep maybe. A stretch of meadowland fringed with acres of hemlock, fir, larch and birch faces westward. Upriver toward the Great Heath an alder corridor makes an awning for the river as tree tips from both banks meet in the middle.

This is the last river in the U.S. with a remnant native Atlantic Salmon population. They once ranged all the way to Chesapeake. Facing north, it's possible that the distant summits are Boarstone or even Katahdin.

The most remarkable thing about this astounding semi-wilderness vista is its provenance. The vast tracts shepherded by these silent mountains exist by default. The region has defeated a few centuries of human effort to wrest much more than comfortable subsistence from it. It punishes speculation and is too far from urban centers, too inconvenient to be wrecked for recreation.

The Pineo Delta marks a glacier's retreat. Boulder trains form eskers running all the way to Katahdin. The moor slopes are strewn with erratics up to the size of a small garage. The moraine lines are wavy and still distinct while the plain is pocked with kettleholes. It must have been a jaw dropper when the glacier first departed.

The ridge top wears aspens searing yellow with detail work provided by fir and birch. Colors elsewhere mottle, dapple, splatter and splash a counterpoint of red, straw, lime tinged evergreen and a flock of varied browns beneath a white laced azure. The pale blonde sand ribbons weave a slender trace of lanes and trails through all.

This is land overlooked. A meager and diminishing road net with a few modest scuffs from the Human Boot Heel are minor intrusions. The living world has room to stretch and express itself with a wealth of ecotones, habitats, patterns of succession and the many attending serendipitous surprises.

This is a scruffy way to hike. The complete absence of any infrastructure to accommodate the usual bloated and boisterous form of American Outdoor Recreation makes it all resemble the way Thoreau wandered through the Maine Woods rather than the RV incongruity of dragging a compact slice of suburb to the edge of Nowhere. It really is Away.

Having got what I wanted, thoughts turn to return along the long run back. I turn back to the campsite to pack it up for the highway. With luck, I'll make Boston by midnight.

The walk back to camp provides an opportunity to collect. Along with pine cones and stones, I find someone's blueberry quota book, an Innu religious pamphlet, (Christian), rules governing employment of migrant farm workers, an odd sign warning of bee swarm hazards and, in a ditch, another about pesticides applied. That completes documentation.

At camp I finish a meal of crackers, cheddar, sardines and wild mushrooms and began road stowage.

Downeast Sojourn. Part 2. Wickyup.

Thursday, October 3^rd, morning:

I ended up camping alongside Schoodic Bog, south of the mountain.

At this writing, I'm on Beech Ridge. I hear loons on the lake to the Southeast a slow, rising flutter. Some rattling motor gear passed to the North, (Blueberry Harvesters). The emerald sphagnum understory exudes the charm of things tiny and vivacious. A brief strenuous downpour passed through the night to strew glistening droplets over it all.

A Schoodic Bog sunset of a windless day's stillness is a beauty of weather bleached tree skeletons rising over the reed dense marsh framed by undulating copse lines of hemlock and larch. It is bisected by a long abandoned rail fill escorted by a telegraph line long bereft of voltage. The extremes of a centuries seasons have ennobled this human imposition with patinas that slowly submerge it beneath the more robust living world. The Central Maine Railroad tracks lay rippled and rusted beyond repair and the ties beneath draw lichens to their core.

I plan to make it to Cherryfield by noon to top up my larder and get to the Great Heath by sunset. A hitchhike down 182 will squeeze time. Traffic is audible from here. It's a five mile crow fly but a nine mile man walk.

Tunk Lake Settlement: Well, I've crossed another page of the DeLorme Atlas, around the same time as yesterday (from Map 16 to Map 24). Now I'm on Map 25 where I'll spend the remainder of my journey.

This is a 'no trespassing' zone. It might be logging land or some oligarch's hideout. I listen and remain alert to the possibility of inciting property anxieties. I look for signs of recent passing.

I found an abandoned disheveled barn garage containing archaic rust crusted auto parts strewn around a Model-T chassis wearing an old moldering coat of deer shit. Yet another human thing slowly meets obliteration from the grasp of the robust living world.

The road up, (183) passes the Tunk Lake Settlement, which seems to be more prosperous than North Sullivan is. It climbs a ridge offering a long rolling vista west of small hummock mountains amid heath hollows. This forest mixes a bit of pine with the fir and beech with the birch. This is prime color season for leaves lending a soft claret hue to the heaths.

Whoa! I've found a fire wrecked lodge shell. A few stone chimney columns and a crumbled wall remain giving it a resemblance to something left by Shermans March to the Sea. The basement cavity is strewn with charred and rusted stuff. It sits near a cove at the South end of Tunk Lake. The fire was a fairly recent event and may explain why the road was gated. What party and family rituals was this ruin witness to?

It's siting is imperious, commanding a long view North up Tunk Lake's length to 182. I should be within a mile of 182. I think I can hear traffic. I head toward it, pausing to pilfer a large spatula before passing another rotting garage. This one had room for five cars, several of which were giving up their 1930s ghosts to that ravenous living world.

Tunk II: I'm sure I can hear traffic, but I've walked a painful distance since my last scribble.

Again, a red squirrel scolds, there's always one. More southbound warblers filter by. A newer lake cottage lies at the old roads end. The lakeside mantle of forests new to Somerville eyes rewards a long bumpy lope along a rutted skidder trail. A few larger mammals duck my noisy, hunter fearful approach. I've been using the sun to navigate but clouds at times obscure it. Locals would likely shit themselves laughing at the joke of some clod flatlander trying to get around the Blueberry Barrens with a Maine Atlas.

Cherryfield: I made it through the long Tunk Lake stretch. It took hours longer than I predicted and was rendered drab by a long segment beneath a dense balsam fir canopy. A lively old local bearing apples and newspapers to East Machias got me here. Maine grocery outfitted me with crackers, deviled ham and tuna in tins, chaws of smoked dried fish and peanuts.

I'm looking at a placid silvery sliver of Narraguagus framed with the vivid scarlets, oranges and yellows of leaves just turned.

This is a miniaturist's dreamscape. Everything, even Route One, exists on a tiny town scale. The homes gathered about the town center are Reconstruction era Victorians. Many have colorful paint coats with stencil thin detail trim.

Future trips will begin in Cherryfield. It's a clear dooryard for the whole wonderful Down East coast.

The ruin was a huge family lodge set afire by one of its crazier members. Locals say the money made him crazy enough to try an insurance fire. He got caught and couldn't collect but prominence kept him out of jail. So... some strange Fat American owned the whole exhausting walk along the East Side of a good-sized lake. What weird rages were those crumbled walls witness to?

Note: I discovered much later that the ruins were 'Wickyup', the retirement home of Antarctic explorer, Admiral Robert Byrd. It must have been some local scandal when his kid torched it. 183 was built by the government as the Admirals glorified driveway. I later lost his spatula along the East Swift River in Central Massachusetts.

I'm now laughing at wrothful elements while still at their mercy. It rained soon after sunset and on through the night eating sleep and launching an occasional micro-flood invasion of the tent floor. The walk up was wrapped in some confusion. DeLorme is only partially useful here. I'm left with a clouded notion of location. I may be near Pineo Ridge and the fork to the heath. I can't be more than a mile from it.

I saw a harvested blueberry field all nut brown with stubble and carpet flat. The harvest is collected with combines. Edges and terrain unsuitable for machinery are hand raked with short raked into wooden boxes. I could hear the harvesters today and realize they made the sounds I heard yesterday.

Their commencement signaled rains end though the dampness seems to have shortened their day some.

The gentle rain was hardly merciful.

Damage: Pack of papers: Totaled.

Lighter: Lost.

Binoculars: Fogged.

Bird Book: Sogged.

DeLorme: Gettin' tattered.

Flashlight bulb: Dead.

Some other shit got wet that didn't matter. I've got one serious toe blister, another minor one. A day off walking is sorta welcome. I'll just move things up a day and go home Sunday or Monday.

The first note in this crescendo of doom was the spent flashlight bulb. Fucking thing! I bought batteries but forgot to get an extra bulb.

It's good that I didn't camp at night. From that poor beginning unraveled a parade of petty disasters. My last coupla' joints got soaked. I couldn't start a fire to save my soul and dry the bird book. I hope there's sun tomorrow.

I picked a campsite along the curve of an old road that fragments into trails lacing the backside of Pineo. After last night's soaking, I moved further along the road to a more level grassy site with better drainage and a spot of bare sand for fires. A lichen, fern and heather understory merges into upland fir woods along the well drained west edge of the road. The east edge slopes down to an alder filled swale bordering a stream fed boglet. Lichen draped larch and hemlock clusters occupy the drier heath stretches while swamp maples soak up seepage along the streambed. I love this little bog stream filling my canteen! It's awash in thick bright emerald sphagnum padding undulating underfoot. More warbler flocks follow thermoclines toward the Caribbean at dusk. Geese head to Chesapeake far overhead at dawn.

There are a few vesper birds a phoebe peet-peets and some other avian melody defies identification. All is wrapped in a fluvial ambient blend of stream trickle, wind whisper and rain on stiff soaked leaves. I spotted moose tracks near Tunk and late season black bear scat spotted with blueberry remnants.