The Wild and The Tamed

4/25/2020 — Carlisle, Massachusetts

Carlisle, Massachusetts

4/25/2020 — Carlisle, Massachusetts

A friend of mine remains in his apartment for up to ten days in a row. Each afternoon he lifts the sash to lean out his living room window for sunlight. He cooks in a kitchen where everything is within reach. He talks on the phone to parents and siblings and friends. He is content, ensconced in a downtown apartment comforted with artwork and books. By late April, five weeks into the lockdown, his life has decelerated to a quiet, imperceptible motion, like the rise and fall of a sleeping body. Time is a steady, hefting silence acknowledging him in elongated moments. You’re still here. You’re still here.

You’re.

Still.

Here.

I’m not that friend. I gotta go outside. Big open skies, rolling crests of forests, swooping mountain ranges, oceans collapsing on buttery spreads of sand. You get the picture. The drama of nature keeps me alive, even if it’s a walk in the woods, footsteps silenced by decaying pine needles.

Each morning, after an hour or two of coffee and laptop clacking, an unseen force lifts me by the scruff of my neck, slaps on my pants and shirt and kicks me out the door. I’m soon on a country road or path in the woods and I’m like, oh, yeah, hey. This is me. Let’s roam.

It has to be walking. Not driving or pedaling or flying. Metronomic footsteps expand my tiny corner of the universe at just the right clip: I can sense and experience everything around me while motion brings me something new. If driving is destination, walking is witness.

Merrimack Valley

Over the past many long years, I mean, in the six weeks since escaping New York, I’ve explored the southern Merrimack Valley. The eponymous river flows south from central New Hampshire into Massachusetts until it curls northeast and empties into the Atlantic.

So what I wanted to tell you is that you should come with me on a walk. We don’t have to chat. Put on your earbuds to blast Norwegian death metal, hum a wordless Yiddish song, talk on the phone to your mom or listen to the birds. We’ll become forest flâneurs.

We’ll head out the barn doors of my favela, er, charming Airbnb.

Home from March 17th 2020 to May 18th 2020. Note the propped open doors and junked car. Keep it Classy, Carlisle!

Walk east, past the farm stand and then turn north, to the Concord River.

Ignore the signs that say “Do Not Enter” and “No Public Access.”

Off Brook Street we’ll check for beavers.

Wetlands in the Merrimack Valley watershed.

Then go off road to walk an abandoned fire trail.

Taking the more traveled trail, sorry Robert Frost.

Buds emerge on their own silent schedules.

Estabrook Woods

By Groton we’ll see the Nashua River, a southern Merrimack tributary.

J. Harry Rich State Forest, Groton, MA

Back in Carlisle, we’ll check out livestock real estate not on Zillow.

Concord River marshes

As the day wanes we will head back to town.

Western view by Brook Road.

Sunset over central Carlisle.

Back home, we’ll shut the barn doors as night falls.

Please note the Sapphire Dragon. Once a city splurge, now a (fancy!) necessity.

Later we’ll go outside to hear the tree frogs chirp and watch the southern sky.

Time to rest.