Your senses are different when you live in a city. It is
something that creeps up on you. You don’t feel much different, but somehow you
learn how to sleep in a not-quite-dark room that abuts your building’s parking
lot. You can pick up on the sound of a dump truck two blocks away and just know that it’s about to come make a
racket on your street. You are an expert at predicting which car is most likely
to cut you off (hint: it’s all of them).
These “city senses” were foreign to me when I came back to
Boston to start my service year. I had spent three months working for the
Appalachian Mountain Club, my current host site, running teen volunteer trail
crews in western Massachusetts. For all intents and purposes I lived in the
woods for three months. My home was either an 8x10’ canvas tent or a 1-person
backpacking tent. It was dark at night. Birds sang, coyotes howled. My commute
to work included mud-caked clothes from the day before, medical kits, extra
water, food, and tools. We worked with our hands. Teenagers are generally a
noisy bunch, but life was overall much quieter.
Although it was a big change, I was excited to start my
service with the AMC on Bay Circuit Trail. My first few weeks were jam packed
with meet-and-greets and field visits to the BCT. The BCT is a patchwork of
towns that all host a section of trail, so there were a lot of dedicated
volunteers to meet. I was looking forward to field visits, which usually meant
hiking sections of the trail with a point person for that section. Beth, my
supervisor, was attending a conference on my second full week of these types of
meet-and-greets. She set up a few hikes so I could continue connecting with
people involved on the BCT. One of those people was Al.
Al French has been a big name for the BCT since its
conception, and he has stayed involved in his retirement. I was to meet him at
his home in Andover, MA, at 8:00am on a Wednesday morning. As I ventured out into morning rush hour, I
realized how much my city driving senses had returned to me. I could ponder why
Interstate-95 North was a bonafide parking lot (shouldn’t cars be going INTO
the city?) while lackadaisically honking at the person that just cut me off
after crossing four lanes without a turn signal – and not rear ending him! I
watched the minutes tick by as I sat in another traffic jam at the exit for
Interstate-93. Why would they make the
meeting of the two biggest highways in the state so terrible? Who designed
this? I thought as I saw a BMW try to cut the line of stopped cars on the
exit ramp. Oh no, he was not cutting the line and sneaking in front of me. I
think I actually said, “No, you will wait your turn”, out loud as I closed any
potential gap he could get into. I looked in my rear-view mirror at the
18-wheeler behind me and silently rooted for him to join me in this vigilante
traffic justice. He heard my calls and made sure this rogue line cutter had to wait
his turn. I actually cheered. That’s when I knew I was back in the belly of the
Boston beast.
I hastily arrived at Al’s house ten minutes late, profusely
apologizing to him for the delay. He smiled, shook my hand, and invited me
inside. He offered me breakfast as we sat and chatted by the fire he had going.
I mused about how different my scenery had become in such a short amount of time. Al took me on one his favorite stretches of
the BCT. The first question he asked me on our walk caught me off guard: “When
someone asks you what this job is, what do you tell them?” I said, “Well, Al,
I’m an AmeriCorps member so I tell them that this is not my JOB, it’s SERVICE…”
Just kidding. The first time I answered I spit out the small blurb you develop
in any job, the standard response to “what do you do?”. He asked me again, and
I realized he was urging me to dive deeper. What is this thing I’m doing? What is
the Bay Circuit? Why am I here? I
was hooked.
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| Hiking with Al |
Al had a wealth of knowledge, stories, and advice to share
with me. I was fascinated, curious, and
eager to hear what he had to say. He said he loved to talk to younger people
and that’s why he enjoyed running his local outdoor store; he chuckled and said,
“The young folks there had to talk to me, they didn’t have a choice.” Mostly, I
think he was interested in bridging the age gap that exists in the conservation
world.
Al also enthusiastically answered every question I asked
him, and his answers always had a tidbit of advice or wisdom. I asked him how
many times he had hiked the entire trail. He gave his best guess, and then the
conversation turned to something else. A few minutes later he stopped in the
middle of the trail and said, “you know, I thought more about how many times I’ve
hiked it. I think it was three, my wife and I went together once. You should
really get out without your cell phone and go do something like that with
someone you love.” It was simple yet powerful.
We neared the end of our walk and stopped at a
viewing platform overlooking a large wetland area. Al said he loved this spot
because it was a great place to come sit, read a book, eat a sandwich, whatever
you wanted to do. I agreed, saying it was nice to have a place to get away from
the hubbub of everyday life, noting that technology distracts us so much
nowadays that we’re rarely ever truly present. His response was, “Ah, yes, now
that’s a good lead-in. I ask all of my grand-kids this – in your opinion, what
is the purpose of education?” It caught me off-guard, made me pause and really
think. Al had turned a simple meet-and-greet walk into something much more all-encompassing
and thought-provoking.
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| Viewing Platform on the BCT |
Our hike ended with a stroll through the Mary A. French
Reservation, where he showed me a beautiful bench constructed to memorialize
his late wife whom the Reservation is named after. We parted ways at his car;
he shook my hand and told me it had been a pleasure. There’s not many times you
can actually say “it’s been a pleasure” and truly mean it, but I was happy to
say it as a whole truth. Needless to say, it was a much more pleasant drive
home.
Molly Higgins
Community Engagement Coordinator – Bay Circuit Trail
MassLIFT AmeriCorps, Appalachian Mountain Club