Train at Coachlace and Concord's Rude Bridge

 

My past paddling week started on a cloudy, cool, and quiet Sunday afternoon in Clinton, MA.  I'd launched into South Meadow Pond which is connected with Mossy and Coachlace ponds. A light dusting of snow lingered on the hillsides...

After paddling S Meadow and Mossy I entered Coachlace and paddled to its unusual-looking outlet structure...

This black-crowned night heron seemingly held court over the area...

Wood ducks, common mergansers, and mallards were also present.

While paddling west on the pond the quiet was broken by the distant horn of an approaching train echoing off the hillsides as it followed the Nashua River valley.  The rumbling sounds of three locomotives grew louder as the westbound CSX freight train finally appeared...

...and passed alongside the pond pulling some 80 plus boxcars, tank cars, and center beams.

Once quiet had been restored I squeezed through the culvert beneath the tracks...

Plastic trash gathered up along the way...

On Thursday, two days before the April 19th festivities, I paddled to the Old North Bridge in Concord, MA...

Tomorrow the bridge will be hosting the 250th anniversary of the battle where ordinary farmers dared to rebel against a king's tyranny.  

The Minuteman statue depicts one such farmer looking across the river...

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

  Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

  And fired the shot heard round the world."   ~  from Ralph Waldo Emerson's Concord Hymn

Signs of the expected crowds...

Not far from the bridge, in Mill Brook, stood this beaver lodge duplex...

Trash from bits of the Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord rivers...