Thursday, March 17, 2005, 8:56am
Thursday, March 17, 2005, 8:56am
For the first time I’m arriving at Ashland Station from the west, starting today from Southboro Station after dropping my car at the dealer this morning for routine servicing followed by a courtesy ride to the nearest station. Automobiles require to two basic activities – regular maintenance and regular driving. From sitting too much in the driveway while I ride these trains my 1998 Maxima’s stuck brake caliper is the most recent example.
This train should become the 8:45am out of Ashland (departing Worcester at 8:16). Yet we’re running late. So more likely we will be the 8:56am train out of Ashland Station this morning.
East of Southboro Station where the Sudbury River runs southwest to northeast the rails pass over the water. From a long-forgotten upstream canoe voyage made many years ago the view is vaguely familiar behind these houses and through these woods. To the north, from these old memories, I recognize little league fields coming into view.
Like sneaking into a hidden backdoor, the abundantly familiar Ashland rail station suddenly slides into a glove made from far more recent memories – the common and everyday view of my home station bathed in rising sunlight. For just a second I hold both the old and the new memories together in mind – the everyday and the ancient canoe trip. In a passing instant I feel my commute in a very different way – not as a daily event, rather as a piece of some larger picture normally unseen, though there somehow anyway.
From Ashland the routine views return. Soon we pass Farm Pond and beyond this the two swans from last year are back roosting in sunlight amidst loosely piled snow along the frozen southern section of the lake. They seem nonplussed by winter ice, like vacationers getting used to soft beach sand in Florida. It’s new, it’s unfamiliar, but it’s also no big deal. For the swans the ice will melt soon enough bringing green shoots, and until then they can live off body fat and melting slush.
“Wellesley Square!”
There is no particular surge of boarding passengers this morning. Down the line with each passing stop the train is further filled in equal measure. Perhaps by now most people with regular jobs have already made their runs into the city and this train is collecting those with a myriad of irregular destinations, timelines, and urgencies.
At Wellesley Hills the sun has mostly erased the last of the clinging hillside tufts. Even down into the crags there is no snow in the darker outcroppings, and in its place I notice a steady seeping and trickling of clear ground water.
Normally the glare would be too much. For some reason this morning I am enjoying the bright sunlit as it arrives in segments broken by a regular parade of overpasses and scattered factory buildings. There are no bridges for the moment and my view is a continuous ribbon of stores and homes. Passing Frost Nissan I wonder if my car repair logistics might be easier here in Newton. To reach the Marlboro dealership I left the house this morning at 7:20 and will not arrive at my desk until just before 10:00. Very likely there’s room for improvement.
From beneath the turnpike overpass I collect the scene of white feathered sea birds — a flotilla bobbing atop the Charles River – probably herring gulls. At a distance of several hundred yards the image is more like white confetti sprinkled atop the heaving waves. Until I see one taking flight I am not entirely sure if these are birds at all. They are too far away to say for sure.
With the arrival of larger buildings the wide and uninterrupted view ends quickly. Now I am reduced to snatches of sight lines lasting no more than a second. I wonder how I’d missed a certain church spire or water tower or radio beacon after all these months – only just now seeing them for the first time. Then again, it makes sense when so many of these views last a second or less. How likely would I be staring in the right direction in the right moment on a day with decent window glazing, good lighting and clear air. But it is still an odd feeling after hundreds of commutes not to have seen something that seems so obvious in retrospect.
That is good sign, because without these reminders I might otherwise no longer bother to look or observe and cross-check my memories. What would happen? Would I lose fodder for ideas that seem to percolate as a result? Would I no longer feel challenged and reshaped by external inputs? Would I fall into the same trap seen everywhere where ideas are merely rehashed without examination – or worse, accepted from those who so carefully craft prepackaged baloney?
