6/20/2020 - Bedford - Middlesex Community College

June 20, 2020

Welcome to Susan's Bay Circuit Diary! This blog follows my adventures with my dog Sulu hiking the Bay Circuit Trail. To get new posts in your inbox, please subscribe (see the little "subscribe" oval above). The rest of the past posts can be found using the little menu on the left. If you are curious how this all started, go here.

This post is about the orange squiggle on the upper right

We are well into a heat wave that’s expected to last two weeks, with dog-hostile temperatures starting fairly early in the day. Fortunately or otherwise, Benny, my other, older dog, has taken the pandemic as an opportunity to house train me. Every morning between 4:30 and 7:30 AM, he gets up, shakes himself jingling his tags, and goes to the bedroom door. Three months into the pandemic, we have established that he won’t take no for an answer. So I get up and take him (and usually Sulu) outside in my PJs. Then I go back to bed. In the early weeks of the lockdown, I was staying up way too late and then sleeping in every day. I’ve been working on that, so it’s possible I might be able to benefit from Benny’s schedule and get up and hit the trail before it gets hot.

He looks so innocent...

Yesterday, Benny got me up at 4:30 AM, a new record (it is light out, by the way). But I was able to get Sulu out early enough for a local walk. Today, Benny kindly waited until 6:30 to get me up. I took the opportunity to jump in the shower, and he did wait for me. Sulu and I were out by 8 and to the destination by 8:30.

Today’s objective was to complete map 6 - from the Narrow Gauge Rail Trail to Middlesex Community College. I parked at Fawn Lake, as Walter and I did when we bikejored the Narrow Gauge Rail Trail. It was less than half a mile, before the end of the NGRT, that the BCT branched off into the woods. I followed the blazes through the Governor Winthrop Conservation Area, a buggy woodland.

By 8:30 in the morning in this heat the birds are already hunkering down for the day. And as June winds to an end and with this heat, there are no more flowers in the woods.

The universal alternative BCT blaze. Annoyingly nondescript.

Thank heavens for the blazes, because the trail directions are almost always written from north to south, and if you’re going in the opposite direction transposing them is not as easy as you would think. One road crossing and back in the woods, this time the Middlesex Community College property. One good thing about Bedford is that is really supports walking. There are far more sidewalks there than I have seen in any other suburb. They have well-marked town trails, and pedestrian crossings with flashing lights.

The MCC campus was a former seminary, and there are interesting artifacts from its history, including these signposts deep in the woods that must date from the days when Route 3 was just another road. There are also a surprising number of beech trees - is this by design or by nature?

Artifact #1: Bronze age tumulus (just kidding)

Artifact #2: What this niche needs is...a poodle!

Artifact #3: Signposts to and from nowhere, steps from Route 3

Once on campus, I flailed around looking for the trail even though it was Right In Front of Me (so close I though it must go to the place I had entered from). The MCC fitness trail is a lovely example of a parcourse, like I first thought the Staples Fitness Trail was.

So many ferns today!

Unfortunately, I assumed from the AllTrails map (all mistakes on this day were mine, no blame to the BCT blazers today) that the trail went counterclockwise around the pond. Some beavers have been making some modifications and the pond was greatly expanded toward Route 3. I could see where the boardwalk was underwater.

Inaccessible trail

The smoking gun

I made the rash decision to bushwhack around the pond (Sulu on leash, of course, in case he decided chasing cars on Route 3 was a good idea).

Very close to Route 3

It was slow and stupid but successful and eventually we regained the main trail. The beginning of the fitness trail marks the start of that branch of the BCT and the completion of Map 6 for us.