Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Assabet River - Russell's Bridge to Ft. Meadow Brook & Back

With no ice cream being made today by my client, I was left to deal with another kind of ice.  The photo at left shows what greeted me after passing under Russell's Bridge on the Assabet River in Stow, this morning.  I had launched there at about 10 am and found ice extending for about 100 yards. Proceeding upriver would require utilizing my boat as an "icebreaker" and it peformed this task admirably.
Mute swans, mallards, a belted kingfisher, a mink, a blue heron, and a red-tailed hawk were seen while enroute to the site of my midday bivouac, where I enjoyed some lunch...


After lunch I continued upriver passing the humble abodes of beavers and musquashes.  This conical-shaped abode, however, looks to be the work of human hands and may serve as a duckblind...

I turned around at the spot where the Marlborough Branch of the B & M RR used to cross the river near Railroad Ave in Gleasondale Village.  On the way back downriver I decided to probe the area where Fort Meadow Brook enters the river and came upon this 'gateway'...


On the other side I was surprised to find a navigable channel leading into an extensive marsh. Following the brook's winding route for 1/4 of a mile, while listening to "Lark Ascending", brought me to this beaver dam and old railroad trestle...




There was no point in going up and over the beaver dam as the trestle, carrying the rails of the Central Mass Branch of the B & M RR, was completely clogged with debris.  Hoses and pipes had been installed to provide for the brook's passage.  The rail line was abandoned in the 1970s.  Just to the right of the trestle the ground beneath the rails had been washed away.  The area beyond the RR trestle is the large swamp/marsh that can be seen from Rt. 62 near Chestnut Street in Hudson.
Returning to the river I continued my trip downstream and came upon these bright red berries that, surprisingly, hadn't appealed to anyone's appetite...
Back at Russell's Bridge today's trash catch of 44 assembled on the small beach...
There were 26 recyclable containers (13 redeemable) and 18 pieces of miscellaneous rubbish such as the 5-gallon pail, a shoe, some plastic bags, nip bottles, etc.  My YTD total stands at 6206. 
Of the many songs I enjoyed listening to, while out on the water today, Gordon Lightfoot's "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" seemed the most appropriate for the last day of November!

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