Thursday, September 23, 2004, 4:12pm
Thursday, September 23, 2004, 4:12pm
From aboard the 4:10pm Worcester Express I see and feel afternoon sunlight pouring through the windows of this ancient rail car. Soon the overhead canopy of I-93 snips the sunlight into a pattern matching the shapes of the elevated highway and its partly finished access ramps. Minutes later we grind to stop a mile west from the Back Bay tunnel where outbound commuter trains wait as inbound traffic passes through the one and only freight yard track allocated to the MBTA. Soon we are underway again passing beneath Commonwealth Avenue and a moment later below the half-mile long Mass Pike overpass.
Occupying very little land compared to Manhattan or Chicago, the tall buildings of Boston drift quickly into the distance. At the freight yards and just beyond, nothing at all stands in silhouette against the sky – a landscape suddenly flat all the way to a horizon defined only by the height of idle railroad traffic. Further west, still only three miles from South Station, the city now takes the form of triple-decker houses with apartments upstairs and shops on the ground floor. And in stark contrast to the recently departed landscape I see how these homes are assembled from wood rather than from the stone, concrete and steel of a glistening downtown metropolis.
Once again I’m on my way to ‘group.’ Sometimes it helps to talk things through with people much better at seeing things in me than I can see inside myself. If I hear an observation about me from someone I trust with no vested interest or axe to grind it’s pretty hard to ignore. Sometimes I’m the one dispensing commentary, yet I’m always glad to let Arthur conjure the hidden meanings. At best, I’m just an amateur shrink.
Without fanfare we cross to the north side tracks. I’m not sure how many of these switches can be found along the way between Boston and parts farther west, but there is little doubt when a switch is made. At some point the wheels have to bridge spaces in the joints and when this happens there is whole lot of clacking and banging. The diameter of a crossing wheel is a lot more than the gaps in the switches, so the transition is no worse than in the days before one-piece rails with similar gaps every dozen yards or so. I can barely imagine how the clickity-clack of those bolted-together tracks must have been for an old-time passenger – a ¼ inch gap at the end of each rail segment every forty feet, mile after bone rattling mile.
Arthur has been running groups for years. Based upon my own observations – along with stories he tells of those moving from an overwrought lifestyle to a more balanced life – it seems to help. It’s likely he tells stories of long term progress not just to encourage us but also to say how growth takes time. Often mentioned is the notion of ‘the book’ we write defining who we are and what we believe about ourselves. Based on how we are seen and defined by those most influential in our lives, the book is written early on and contains all sorts of misconceptions and outright falsehoods along with the truth all mixed together. This is the book we have written ourselves based on all of this, and it is our own responsibility to see it for what it is and rewrite the parts that fall short of reality. Arthur uses the notion as metaphor, yet as I continue to type this train journal, I’m beginning to wonder if I might be taking his advice more literally.
As we approach downtown Framingham we pass a small hill that feels noticeable out of place. I rises quickly from the surrounding plain like a stone planted in beach sand. From a worn-away gravel embankment I suspect a moraine left when the tongue of some retreating glacier dropped its load of plowed up and pulverized rock. The surrounding land is otherwise flat and for a moment I envision a shallow pond filling the whole of what became downtown Framingham where this hill an island amidst a large expanse of inland water. In New England, the only truly flat terrain was once a shallow pond or lake like this – slowly replacing water with silt as the glaciers continued to melt. Eventually grass builds enough topsoil at drier times to make a meadow. Soon meadowlands become forests, then farmland, and much later – shopping centers, car dealerships, factories, rail yards, and just about any other use where flat land has a practical use.
At the west end of this Framingham meadowland the two parent swans and this year’s nearly fledged signet patrol the last of the remaining lakeshore at Farm Pond.We roll along and they paddle at a slower pace beside and below the tracks. And from this I sense a fruitful season for the swan family having produced at least one viable offspring in a space bounded by railroad yards, a submerged aqueduct, and giant concrete warehouse.
Into the Sudbury River valley we enter, and so I must pack up once more.
