Thursday, January 13, 2005, 8:23am
Thursday, January 13, 2005, 8:23am
At the old salvage yard lying on the boarder of West Natick and Framingham, soggy gray slush lingers tenuously on the windshields and bumpers of long-dead vehicles. As well as any that could be mustered on a dismal night, old snow and drizzling mist this morning form an archetypal daylight gloom.
In 1973 I sent the burned hulk of a 1969 Oldsmobile Cutlass W-31 to that very junkyard. Failure mode – a wild ride through the back roads of Sherborn resulting the in main battery +12V cable dislodging to fall against a hot exhaust pipe header that, except for pure performance reasons, had no business being there.
In the last several months the scrap yard has undergone an amazing transformation – from mangled wrecks piled behind a property line marked by dilapidated fencing and mangy evergreens to a newly-paved parking lot where the wrecks are aligned almost like used cars at a dealership – bones at the ready to be cleanly picked by skilled technicians in white lab coats and latex gloves (if I let my imagination wander).
Along Lake Cochituate the misting motif takes hold to obscure all but the first fifty yards, rendering a feeling as though traversing the spine of a mountain ridge riding high above an unimaginable abyss on either side.
At Natick Station the mists lift enough to see a bit farther – as must be the case if I can see the ghostly form of a giant downtown church steeple looming against a formless slate sky.
With so little distant scenery to observe I am noticing more of the surrounding terrain near the tracks. As mentioned elsewhere, most of the rail line lies below grade in some fashion, though for the moment we are even with the surrounding terrain. Crossing into Wellesley a moment later the train rolls on tracks several meters above Route 135 on one side and perhaps a dozen meters above Morse Pond on the other.
But this is the exception, not the rule.
The trains follow the valleys, and as though the natural low-lying lay of the land weren’t enough – when forced to choose between roadway and railway – the railroad was most often routed below grade.
The trains of Worcester Line ride mostly like the waters of a meandering river channel, and only on rare occasions do we ride a Roman aqueduct of sorts – rising high above our humble surroundings.
Even on level ground the trains roll between unnatural walls of weathered brick depots, abandoned factory buildings, and the steel and stone of parking lot guardrails and retaining embankments – rising one after the next in a near-continuous litany – leaving the trains condemned to traverse the armpit of Western Civilization at parascope-depth.
The rails are set into the land according to lines surveyed and measured to create a graded terrain of its own particular design. The rails maintain an even course, whereas on either side of the tracks the passing terrain remains mostly as it has been since the great retreat of the glaciers, gently rising, and slowing sinking, and bending and rolling and turning. Aboard the train we follow the average of all those differences, riding on even keel smoothed according to our generalized locality.
Where the rail-river channel is obscured and the general lay of the land is uncertain, the channel is sometimes defined by trees both bare and needle bearing in a cloud of branches forming a natural wall of living happenstance to channalize our trek where no man-made channels can be seen.
Where the will of the land comes into direct conflict with the will of the track makers, as must always happen when human civil engineering is at play, and once a gentle approach or imperfect notion or uncomfortable compromise fails to reconcile the conflict – the glacial rubble is dug out like beach sand, and if needed, the channel chiseled down into the ancient bedrock foundations of the Earth, and blasted further if the blueprints so specify.
Many times she has faced the grinding of the glaciers, and until this happens next, the Earth must accept the new order of things in the form of railroads and crumbling factories and rusting guardrails – and Mother Earth must accommodate the will of the builders for a time. It will not last. She already knows this — even if we don’t. Nothing lasts, and one day all of this will be swept aside, repulverized and made anew like the passing of winter and the rising of spring.
Outside my window a low concrete wall running parallel to the tracks begins to rise until I cannot see the top anymore. We are approaching the crisscross once again and soon this wall will form one side of the tunnel running below the Pike. Reaching the south side of the highway, the train slows slightly until slowing even more when the engineer drops the throttle in earnest alongside the long white building of Barry Controls festooned with “space available” banners.
Rarely do I sit on the south side of the train in the mornings so it hadn’t occurred to me until just today how the Alston freight yards border Nickerson Field right at the old “left field” wall of Braves Field in those bygone days when the playing surface was made for baseball. Through the rail yards, the commuter trains are relegated to just one track in both directions whereby some definition handed down ages ago inbound trains are given the right of way. Here we will run slowly this morning, but are unlikely to stop.
Further inbound, avoiding the Charles River lying across our path dead ahead, we bend to the right. The natural inertia of the train is bound for Cambridge. The rails, applying the ancient will of the railroad builders are taking us into Boston through terrain already overused – forcing us across a narrow strip of dirt sandwiched between the old ball field and the river – as though downtown Boston almost forgot to include a way into the city from the west. Old sea maps of the area show how Mother Earth may also have forgotten as well, and most land around here is imported. Here, with no earth left natural or otherwise for yet another avenue of entry, atop its most congested half mile the Pike is raised onto concrete pillars like a heart bypass operation on steroids or the evolution of the cerebellum added to the mess rather than replacing it.
On final approach to South Station having written all of these paragraphs, I see how much I have still missed as we are now just now rolling through the rail switches that will define the details of our exact arrival – switching and rolling and switching some more without pausing beneath I-93 this morning – so it is time to shut down.
Despite the gloom and my feeble attempt at proving Zeno’s Paradox via extensive pontification, we have arrived.
