M&M Section 4

September 3, 2012:  second Labor Day weekend hike!  The day after Section 3, my lovely wife again dropped Peanut and I off for Section 4, agreeing to pick us up at the end and save us the return hike.  Twice, how nice!

Section 4 keeps along the Metacomet ridge, going 4 miles up along the crest of East Mountain.  The initial climb up from forgotten Old Holyoke Road was a wake up, and rewarded us with a rare eastward view, though through trees, to downtown Springfield.  An abandoned tower on the summit probably affords a better view, though its state of disrepair and the need to climb a vertical ladder prevented me from attempting the climb.  The sun was struggling to burn through the clouds and again the mosquitoes were out in force anytime we approached deep woods.  Thankfully, today's hike hugs the ridge's western cliff edge where the air stirred enough to keep them away.  The frequent views west were a great plus.

Snake Pond, hidden beneath the western cliffs, with the Westfield Airport in the distance and the Berkshires beyond.  "Pane! Pane!" my accomplice frequently noted as we saw small commuter and personal aircraft coming in for landings.

The beauty of the M&M is that it is a continuous footpath that lies within a relatively densely developed valley.  It dates from the great era of long-distance trail building that followed the creation of Vermont's Long Trail in 1918, which also saw the creation of the Appalachian Trail (completed in 1937), the John Muir Trail in California, parts of NY's Long Path, and several others.  By the 1950s Connecticut had already developed several of it's long distance "blue blaze trails", including the Metacomet Trail running on this same ridge further south, when UMass Professor Walter M. Banfield designed the M&M as a logical extension northward.  Of course most of these trails used existing trails and old forest roads where available and the M&M is no exception - some of its pieces have been hiked for over a century and a half as we will find in later sections.

The idea behind all of these long-distance trails is to allow regular people a way of accessing wilderness and making contact with the natural world using their own powers and senses - a chance to spend significant time away from working life and the machine-and-technology-driven 'real' world.  Which is why it is very frustrating to find this:

Hey look - I've mountain biked, I've off-roaded in jeeps, and I get the attraction.  I'm not saying riding machines is wrong or whatever, I'm just upset that instead of building their own trails in the millions of acres available for those uses, the lazy motorheads have taken over and destroyed existing footpaths that have been hand-built and maintained for three generations, by and for hikers.  At the top of this rise, Vivi and I had to stand aside (thankfully we heard them coming well in advance) as nearly two dozen dirtbikers roared by us, pursuing their Xtreme adrenalin rush, spinning up the soil and polluting the air with fumes and noise. 

After this experience, I quickened the pace, trying to get through this section as soon as possible.  We stopped briefly at the last vista for a goldfish snack, enjoying a view over Hampton Ponds State Park.  I was determined to get there and wash away the sweat and stress with a dip:

And we did!

 Today: 4.0 trail miles.  M&M completed: 13.6 out of 114 mi.