Monday, March 14, 2005, 8:23am
Monday, March 14, 2005, 8:23am
Leaving Ashland we’ve made an unusual maneuver – switching to the north tracks just shy of Cheery Street. When arriving at Framingham Station we’ve come alongside the usual commuter train – but this time it is berthed on the south side tracks where we usually stop. None of this have I noticed consciously until an obviously anxious would-be passenger runs past my window after a quick trek through the crossover tower to reach our own train.
At West Natick we remain on these north rails, though here a simple crosswalk to the north side platform removes any reason for urgency.
Today Lake Cochituate is melting from the edges. I write this bare fact with the feeling that I’m simply reporting what I see out of habit — to pass the time — to fidget. I offer a better reason, attempting a better excuse.
Perhaps some historical record needs to be written…
Perhaps not.
Approaching Natick we move slowly enough that I do not notice our return switch to the south side rails until it is complete. Soon thereafter the Natick crowd climbs aboard not realizing how they’ve escaped a miserable trek across the roadway overpass serving as the crossover tower here in downtown Natick.
Mark reminds me to take my pass from its perch on the seat loop ahead. Though I’d likely have grabbed it eventually, I appreciate the suggestion more for his consideration than for the information.
Then I’m back to my window view. Perhaps I’m paying less attention to the train interior nowadays – too many dark evening commutes placing a premium on these morning daylight views.
Approaching Wellesley Square the two main line tracks drift apart to perhaps 25 feet between. The design seems very purposeful since keeping the rails running together would have been a lot easier and would have required less land to level and prepare. For a long time I have suspected that steam engines would park here briefly to take on water and coal from a central dispersing tower. But that’s just a guess.
Saturday’s new-fallen snow at Wellesley Hills sends bright reflections from the sunlit hillside into my passing window – sticky stuff rendering almost all major surfaces white as if fastens for a time like sprayed-on glue or foamed-on shaving cream. The warm sun yesterday removed most snow from the smaller cracks and melted away collections atop the thinner tree branches, but thicker limbs still show their load and the deeper crags of the hillside still hold their miniature glaciers.
Before Wellesley Farms the snow-covered woodlands undulate by tens of feet as the ground rises and falls with our passage and with this rising and falling the light level inside this cabin ebbs and grows. Soon the Route 128 version of civilization opens for all to see and from here until the end of our ride there will be no single view from this train that does not contain some overt ‘improvement’ – to use the human-centric real estate term. Some improvements are as tranquil and uplifting as the land itself – like the stone churches in Newton. Yet most architecture serves a more practical need for housing, shopping, and storage – and in the end resulting in a hodgepodge of unrelated forms.
I write only of physical design, though, and not of how communities may form cohesion from whatever conglomeration of buildings that may arise there. All improved places contain a local history in its most physical form. A hodgepodge of design does not happen in a vacuum – there has to be some intent and underlying reason, even if a concrete garage there to make a fast buck parking cars in a city where parking space is at a premium.
Elegant buildings and abject monstrosities may seem very different, yet both share the same fact that somebody had the desire to build them; only in one extreme aesthetics are a consideration, whereas at the other – pure practicality and greed.
