I stumbled upon this memorial near Flint's Pond.
It reads:
AUREET BAR-YAM
Sept. 8 1957 - Jan 7, 1991
SHIVER TO THINK OF HER LIGHT, HER WARMTH,
FOREVER FROZEN IN THIS CLEAR COLD POND.
MAY ITS GLIMMER GIVE YOU PAUSE..
FOR ICE BROKE HEARTS THE DAY SHE DROWNED.
I took a two-hour hike around the Lincoln trails system today. I didn't have a map, so I just followed one of the major bike trails.
My blistered heels didn't bother me in the least, fortunately. Instead, I suffered a bit of a cramp in my left hamstring, and decided to cut short the hike. I had planned on doing three hours.
At around five hours, my body started complaining more bitterly. "Whose idea was it to take a @&# six hour hike!?" However, by that time my brain was fried from the heat, and it simply replied "Don't bother me, I'm too whatever from the thingy... la-la-la..." My body heaved a sigh, muttered under its breath "this is so typical" and carried my brain off to a stream, where it soaked its feet for a good 10 minutes. Thus refreshed, it staggered off on autopilot, sans brain function, back to the car.
I'm not sure why I hit the wall at four hours. Last week I did four hours without trouble. I think the main cause was a lack of sleep - I didn't get enough last night. And the extra weight of the backpack probably didn't help... plus, I didn't hydrate so well during hour four, when the mosquitoes were so thick that I didn't want to stop to get water from my pack for a good thirty minutes.
Despite those little difficulties, I wouldn't have spent the day any other way. What a wonderful day to be outside! Blue sky, little fluffy clouds, and a stream to soak your feet in!
Once you exit Leominster, the Midstate Trail seems to be squeezed in on all sides by suburbia and farmland. It crosses a highway overpass, and at another point it goes under a railway underpass with no sidewalk.
At three hours into my hike, it was time to turn around. I felt good, not tired at all. It was a good stopping point, at the intersection of several streets - Bragg Hill Rd, Oakmont Ave, and South Ashburnham Rd - so I'll know about how far I got once I get the trail map.
At four hours, my body said "hey, we've been going for a while now, and I think it's about time we should end this hike." However, calling in an extraction team was not an option, so I told it to shush and keep going.
I decided to do a longer hike today, planning on six hours. My daypack is too small to hold more than two liters of water, so I took my backpack; first use of the backpack this year. Good to get a little training effect, too.
I took the Midstate Trail, heading north from Leominster State Forest.
I started reading Banker to the Poor because I wanted to find out more about how microlending started, and how it works. So why did I stall out while reading the first two chapters?
The book unexpectedly begins in a very autobiographical way, talking about the author’s childhood and participation in the creation of the nation of Bangladesh. All interesting stuff that can stand on its own, but not what I set out to read. Further, Yunus has a pretty dry writing style. It’s almost like he can’t decide whether it’s worth writing about personal details or not. So we get autobiography, but in very broad strokes.
That being said, things get more interesting when Yunus addresses a subject that excites him. Here’s an example [p 35]:...What I did not yet know about hunger, but would find out over the next twenty-two years, was that brilliant theorists of economics do not find it worthwhile to spend time discussing issues of poverty and hunger. They believe that these will be resolved when general economic prosperity increases. These economists spend all their talents detailing the processes of development and prosperity, but rarely reflect on the origin of poverty and hunger. As a result, poverty continues.
This is content which makes me want to stand up and cheer, and motivates me to keep whittling away at this book.
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived"
Thoreau
According to Katherine Lussen:
Thoreau's problem was with society and the direction in which it was heading. As society became more consumer oriented with the new and revolutionary technology of the late nineteenth century, Thoreau saw people losing sight of basic values. His call to "Simplify, simplify" (Walden) was not a request to save the wilderness, but a request to save society from the impending evils of an increasingly material culture.The more things change, the more they stay the same!
Some of the stones at the cairn on Thoreau's cabin are marked with little messages.
Another look at the cairn on the site of Thoreau's cabin. It has been here a loooong time. Walt Whitman wrote that he dropped a stone in the pile in 1881. Wow, very neat!
The cabin site was reportedly discovered in 1945, 100 years after Thoreau lived there.
I wasn't expecting anything like this when I visited - I didn't research it at all before hiking over there. I got a great feeling, imagining Thoreau hanging out where I was now tramping, getting eaten alive by the skeeters, just as I was today.
There's a large pile of stones that have been left by visitors to the site in the foreground. People have written all kinds of inscriptions on the stones... it is pretty cool.
There's a beach house at Walden Pond. I was somewhat taken aback to discover this. A beach? With lifeguards and kids screaming and waterwings? That is so completely out of keeping with the book, the spirit of the place, and seems so unnecessary. What were they thinking?
What Massachusetts trail would be complete without a little legal cutting?
Visiting Walden Pond was a weird mix of the mundane with the historical... Here we see a swimmer cutting straight across the pond. It's not really clear to me that swimming outside the beach area is permitted, but people were doing that with wild abandon, insisting on their right to risk their lives as they please (presumably inspired by Thoreau). I saw several such swimmers. It is a pretty tempting idea... I've never been fond of fenced-in beaches with lifeguards, myself.
I went for a hike at Walden Pond today! This was a momentous occasion, since I admired Thoreau very much as a child. When I grew up, less so. But coming here reminded me of the way I used to feel, and made me curious to learn more about Thoreau, so I'm going to look for a good biography, and maybe revisit some of his books.
I came in to the Pond via Emerson's Cliff Trail. I found it a little ironic that the trail around the pond is fenced in. I climbed through the fence, which you're probably not supposed to do. I was probably violating some rules about trail erosion, but I trumphantly felt like I was stickin' it to the man.
Locke: "Hey, was he talking about what I think he was talking about?"
Linus: "If you mean time traveling bunnies, then yes."
This area has the finest display of flowering rhododendrons I've ever seen while hiking. Perhaps they are doing so well because they are out towards the cliff side and get lots of light.
This little garter snake did not seem to be the least bit perturbed by me. It just sat there getting its photo taken. Very nervy.
This is the second snake I've encountered this year. I've been seeing lots of tiny frogs (or toads) on my hikes, as well.
A sign along the trail pointed to this glacial boulder. Not the biggest one I've ever seen, by far, but kinda cute.
This section of the Midstate Trail is wonderfully hilly... best hiking in the state, so far!
Another neat little surprise is this shrine, as you head towards Redemption Rock. It's really quite amazing how much effort went into this. It looks out towards Mount Wachusett.
There must be a very big fan of BOC up in these hills! This engraving of the "cross of questioning" is very nicely done, and a neat surprise along the Midstate Trail.
I did a four hour hike along the Midstate Trail at Leominster State Forest, today. This is a view in the vicinity of Crow Hill Ledges (at the top, of course). I think that's Mount Wachusett, where I hiked last weekend.
There was a lot of rock-climbing activity at Crow Hill Ledges. I scoped out the parking lot - it was jam-packed. I guess if you want to go, you'd better get there early.
My lunch consisted of a Lara Bar with a "best buy" date of April 2008. I figured it would still be quite edible, and it was.
I like Lara Bars because the ingredients are ridiculously simple, and pretty much soy free (I think I may be getting an excess of soy in my diet). If I didn't loathe food preparation, I might actually be able to cook something up like this myself! This here chocolate coconut bar consists of "dates, almonds, walnuts, unsweetened coconut, and unsweetened cocoa powder."
Still, it was a tiny lunch, and by the time I got back to my car at around 4:30 I was ravenous... one of the fun parts of hiking is getting home and scrounging up some dinner, which, no matter what it is, always tastes ten times better than usual.
The temperature really soared today, but I managed to stay reasonably comfortable, although I'm usually pretty sensitive to heat and humidity, especially early in the hiking season.
When I left this morning, the thermometer in my apartment read 78 °F. At the peak of my hike, here at the ski lifts, there was a thermometer reading in the high seventies as well. But when I got back down to my car, it told me the temperature (outside) was 93 °F. Whew, that is blistering!
It looks like there's a nice little trail system at Wachusett Mountain State Reservation. I will definitely be back for more.
This is my new method of searching for a hiking area: Go to google maps, center the map in my general location, and hit the terrain button. Look around for anything that looks vaguely like a high point, and zoom in there.
That's how I found Leominster State Forest, where I planned to go hiking today. I was going to do some of the local trails in the forest, but I wound up going south, on the Midstate Trail. With 92 miles of ground to cover, I figured I wouldn't run out of trail! And since I could see the Wachusett ski area nearby, I knew there had to be some substantial elevation change (relatively speaking).
Today I did a four hour hike on the Midstate Trail. I started at Redemption Rock, and went south to climb Mount Wachusett, finally turning back at the intersection of Stage Coach Trail with Harrington Trail. The peak of Wachusett is around 2000 feet high, and I think I was coming from somewhere around 1000 feet up. Good times!
Redemption Rock has an engraving which is barely visible in this photo. The reality of the history here is pretty horrifying!
It is hoped that every student will at some point attend class six days per week.That kind of attitude strikes me as cult-ish. If I went to such a class six days a week, I'd literally have no other time for any other activities (and I get the feeling this studio thinks that's dandy, since their brand of yoga is all that you need in life). I guess I might have time for this sort of class once I'm retired... and live around the corner from an Ashtanga studio.
Understandably, some lifestyle changes may be required to achieve this, but generally these are well worth it. Where a student has work or other commitments that do not permit daily class attendance, he or she is still welcome to enroll in the school and come fewer than six days per week, in consultation with the teachers.
After coming down off Buck Hill, I followed an unmarked trail all the way down to Old Route 128. The road is no longer functional. I always get a spooky feeling around abandoned human structures. Blue Hills is peppered with some interesting artifacts.
This is where the Skyline Trail meets Rt 28 at Blue Hills Reservation. Rt 28 is a 55 mph zone that's generally quite busy, so I scampered across the road like a squirrel.
Coming down from Chickatawbut there's a beautiful little area with lots of wildflowers blooming right now.
You can see a little hut from outside the fence at the Nike Missile site on Chickatawbut. Since I'd been listening to the Lost soundtrack on my drive over, Jacob's cabin came to mind. However, this hut is a bit small for that.
At the top of Chickatawbut Hill, there's a fairly large area that's mysteriously fenced off. I wondered if it was a Nike Missile site, but the idea seemed far-fetched. It turns out I was right; there's an old Nike Missile site up on Chickatawbut!
I hiked for about three hours at Blue Hills Reservation this morning. I went up Hawk Hill, Chickatawbut Hill, and Buck Hill, which all told probably amounted to less than 1000 feet of climbing.
Up near the top of Chickatawbut there are a lot of little pink corydalis plants flowering. Weirdly shaped, but pretty colors.
