"Dog" spelled backwards

Bad luck or divine intervention in Worcester

Tambako The Jaguar CC BY-ND 2.0

This week’s newsletter was supposed to go in a different direction. But sometimes the best laid outdoor reporting plans are torpedoed by deterring forces that you can’t predict—a dangerously high water crossing, perhaps, or a bunch of people climbing a mountain with a boombox that’s blasting that one song by Of Monsters And Men. And if you’re lucky, a new story will rise from the ashes of what you set out to report. So this week, I’m going to talk about something that’s both controversial and unavoidable within the hiking community—angry and unleashed dogs.

It was a Friday afternoon, I was meeting up with a friend in Central Mass., and along the way, I decided to make a pit stop in Worcester to visit something strange that I had heard about from a handful of urban hikers: Deed Rock. Hidden in a parcel of woods known as God’s Acre, located on the hilly west side of the city and managed by the Greater Worcester Land Trust, Deed Rock is a boulder with a self-congratulatory declaration of intent etched into the rock. The carving was commissioned by the former land owner, Solomon Parsons Jr., who bought the acreage in the mid 19th-Century with plans to build a holy temple on the site. It’s a bizarre, almost unreadable thing—essentially a land deed mashed up with allusions to God, Mark, John, and the rest of the apostle posse. (I want to say “Aposse,” but that just makes me think of “Apizza.”) The temple never came to fruition but the rock endured, as a memento to man’s theological aspirations.

A little research on Deed Rock yielded another curious discovery. The trail to the rock connects to Worcester’s cross-city East West Trail, which I wrote about back in 2022. To find Deed Rock, I would have to re-climb the wooded haunch of Tetasset Ridge. But this time, instead of heading northwest from the ridgetop to The Cascades, I would head south to enter God’s Acre, making for a roundtrip hike of 2.1 miles. An ideal midafternoon jaunt. After cruising past Coes Reservoir, I parked my jalopy at the end of Esper Avenue (watch out for the potholes), I backtracked down the road, located a blue and white East West Trail sign nailed to a tree, and started my ascent.

There’s a subtly beautiful, overlooked event in the March-April window of New England, which some of us have experienced in a happenstance way. The trees are still bare, the ground is a carpet of crunchy and gloppy leaves, but the lingering sunlight paints everything in a sheen of warmth. You can smell and feel life returning to the thawing forest. As I made my way up Tetasset Ridge, a foot would sometimes shoot out from under me as I stepped on a patch of leaves that obscured a mud slick. And I swear, I could detect the musky aroma of that mud. After branching away from the East West Trail and following a lesser known path with reddish blazes, I rock hopped over a couple of stream, passed vernal pools, and noted how the faintest ripple seduced my ears harder than anything I had heard since the Dune 2 sound mix.

And then, without warning, my bucolic reverie ended in a rather alarming way.

I reached the boundary of God’s Acre, where a couple of houses stood at the edge of the forest. A sign on a tree confirmed that Deed Rock was close, camouflaged within the mess of boulders in this part of the woods. And as I followed the path along the woodland perimeter, a huge dog suddenly tore out of a front yard up ahead, barking and growling. I froze. I was alone and I didn’t have a hiking pole, pepper spray, or anything that would deter this vocally perturbed pooch—if it decided to charge and enter God’s Acre. Having read a thing or two about what to do in this situation (which, again, will happen to practically every hiker at some point), I avoided making any eye contact with the dog and assessed the obstacles that stood between us. The trees would slow the dog down, if it gave chase, and if I had to, I could climb atop one of the nearby boulders. I actually had to do this once when hiking in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, when five unleashed dogs suddenly appeared from around a bend in the trail. They charged, I scrambled onto a nearby glacial erratic, and when the owner finally appeared and calmed the dogs, he saw me on top of the rock and laughed. “What are you afraid of?” he guffawed. I wanted to force-feed him his Red Sox hat.

I started to backtrack into God’s Acre slowly, not quite turning my back on the dog. (You do not want to do this.) By now, the dog was in the street, mulling whether to retreat or cross the line between suburban sprawl and sanctified acreage. And then I heard it. The crunch of the dog’s paws on leaves and sticks at the edge of the woods. Just like that, the rulebook disappeared from my brain. I mentally cued up A Flock Of Seagulls, I turned my back on the dog, and I ran. Frankly, I’m not even sure if the dog just teetered at the boundary of the forest or if it actually came after me. I wouldn’t know because I didn’t look back and I didn’t stop running until I had rock-hopped across the streams again. I figured the wobbly rocks might deter the dog, if it made it this far. I’m not sure why. When you’re fleeing fauna, you look for solutions everywhere.

Once I arrived back at the junction for the East West Trail, I finally stopped to catch my breath and allow my nerves to stop firing. There was no trace of the dog pursuing me. So as I began descending back to Esper Avenue, I indulged myself with 20 minutes of seething—wishing a septic tank leak upon the homeowner who neglected to either socialize their dog or install a yard fence. I have nothing against dogs on trails, but medium-to-large dogs running around off-leash can really ruin a hike for other hikers; even if the dog isn’t acting aggressively, a lot of people experience do anxiety in the presence of dogs, especially if they’ve had a violent encounter with one in the past. I don’t know why it causes so much rancor in the hiking community whenever people bring this up, but I suppose it has something to do with the fact that bad behavior from dogs often isn’t the dog’s fault. Puppy kindergarten is a thing. More dog owners should try it; not only for the practical reasons, but also because it’s extremely cute.

Still, I was bummed to have not seen Deed Rock, thanks to the aggressive dog. And the more I thought about my shitty luck, the more I wondered if perhaps that old landowner had been onto something when he dedicated the land to God. Maybe it wasn’t just bad luck that this dog had chased me away from Deed Rock. After all, what is “Dog” spelled backwards? What if, for all these centuries, people have been gazing upward when they should have been looking down? When it comes to religion, I don’t have a dog in the fight, but I’m humble enough to wonder if there’s more to animals than we realize. In 2014, a study by Frontiers in Zoology suggested that dogs decide where to relieve themselves based on the presence of Magnetic Fields, which they can sense. When was the last time you took that into account when dropping a deuce?

Whatever the case, I didn’t make it to Deed Rock. (Hence the lack of a rock photo.) But maybe you can! Plenty of hikers have made it there without dealing with ornery dogs. And even if you run into the same pissed-off, four-legged obstacle that I did, you’ll still have yourself a resplendent walk in God’s Acre. Let me know how it goes for you. And maybe one day, like the son of God himself, I shall return.

DEED ROCK VIA GOD’S ACRE
Hike distance: 2.1 miles loop
Elevation gain: 387 feet

CLICK HERE for an AllTrails map
CLICK HERE for a Greater Worcester Land Trust map

Here’s the audio episode for this week’s newsletter:

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This week, I rather enjoyed this story in SFGATE by Lester Black, which chronicles the oft-overlooked southern half of California’s Lost Coast Trail—a nine mile hike through beaches and forests on the state’s northern coast. Unlike the super popular north half of the trail, which requires visitors to acquire permits, the unsung southern half (which is 9 miles long) can be hiked for a meager $5 day use fee that you pay at the parking lot. And the trail itself burrows deep through ferny, mistry woodlands, giving it a more Cretaceous vibe than the beachy north portion. Throughout the story, Black expresses disbelief that more people haven’t embraced the southern segment of the Lost Coast Trail. This immediately reminded me of the Maine Paradox. As in, how could a place with so many beautiful, unspoiled forests be primarily known for its exterior coastline?

The Puritans who founded America were scared of what might lurk in the neighboring woods. Maybe that superstition still clings to many of us, like an undetected dog tick.

Oh, and speaking of northern New England…I’ve been on the fence about whether I’m going to publish a list of recommendations for where to hike and watch the coming eclipse from. A *lot* of people are going to beeline to northern Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire on April 8th, and I’m mindful of not wanting to contribute to overuse of trails that are vulnerable during mud season. (Here’s an explainer from Vermont Public Radio on why the state is urging people to stay off mountain trails during the event.) But I’ve come up with some ideas that are both accessible and more able to handle heavier hiker traffic, and I’m looking forward to sharing them next week. You’ll need a paid subscription for that newsletter, but on top of unlocking the eclipse hike intel, you’ll get all the requisite perks of being a Mind The Moss supporter; including the opportunity to request custom hike itineraries for your next New England voyage!