Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Assabet's Portal Open Again

When I approached the box culvert (pictured above) last week workers were engaged in trying to clear a blockage which had effectively dammed Fort Meadow Brook.  Yesterday, in order to satisfy my curiosity and find out if the workers were successful, I launched into the Assabet River a mile or so downriver...
...and headed upstream. 

Along the way a solitary "young coot" greeted me...
...and another more stoic fellow served as a reminder that hunting season is underway...

Upon finding the workers had achieved complete success in clearing the culvert, I paddled on through and into Fort Meadow Brook.  A short way into the brook I passed the decorated lodge of the culprits who may have blocked the culvert in the first place...

The grass showed how high the water reached during the time the culvert was blocked and also some rather large pieces of timber which I suspected floated down from the old railroad trestle another tenth of mile up the brook...
Water must have been deep to move the timbers this far.

Upon reaching the trestle I found it had been destroyed by fire...

This is how it looked on March 14 of this year...
Back then it was in rough shape but still basically intact.

Yesterday, not so much...
Maybe this is what's meant when folks say "there's no there there"

According to information found in the Boston and Maine Railroad Historical Society's book The Central Mass. :  the trestle once supported trains traveling between Boston and Northampton...a distance of 104 miles.  The last train to pass over the trestle, a local freight, did so on June 19, 1980.

Also seen along the Assabet yesterday were a red-tailed hawk...
...and what I think is a broad-winged hawk...
...and then as I approached Crow Island an eagle flew overhead...
...and after rounding the next bend I found myself in the presence of a pair of mature bald eagles...
...on the Assabet River in Stow, Massachusetts.  Never thought I'd see such a thing so close to home.

These two eagles kept an eye on me as I paddled past them twice.  At one point one of them issued a loud and high-pitched call though neither of them moved.  I believe the lower eagle is the same one I saw last week and appears to be the more grizzled and senior of the two.

Some trash gathered up along my route...




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