Yesterday was another perfect summer day in New England: low temperatures in the 50’s, dry air, perfectly clear, and a forecast for a high temperature below 80. What better way to spend a perfect day than to go canoeing with Abby and Jim. Except that my car wouldn’t start. The rest of the morning was spent getting the car towed to the garage. After lunch, I finally cleared my head enough to decide that I was going to up to the Middlesex Fells to go hiking.

You can take the subway to the Middlesex Fells reservation — the Orange Line all the way to the last stop, Oak Grove. The subway comes out of the ground at the Charles River, and you ride through a stark landscape of heavy industry, a major railroad corridor, and highway ramps leading to the Central Artery. When you get past that, light industry and unrelieved inner suburbia stretches along the Orange Line the rest of the way to Oak Grove. The train emptied out, and I could hear the African American man several seats away as he answered his cell phone: “Yo, what up.” Except that there was a soft New England flair to his words, so they came out: “Yo, wha ‘tup” — the “t” sound moving to the next syllable in just the same way that older New Englanders still say, “Ih ’tis” instead of “It is.”

There’s a half mile walk past suburban houses and renovated brick mill buildings, and then suddenly you’re on the Cross Fells Trail in the green trees of the Middlesex Fells. The occasional broken liquor bottle testifies to the fact that you’re not in the wilderness. But as I climbed up a rocky ridge, what I really noticed was how loud the cicadas were.

From one rocky prominence, I could see the skyline of Boston, the Hancock Tower with Great Blue Hill beyond it, and elsewhere the trees of suburbia with an occasional building showing through the leaves. The low-bush blueberries were bare of fruit, except for one last shriveled blueberry. A few leaves on some of the bushes had turned bright red. Across the paved Fellsway East road, I did see quite a few huckleberries still on the bushes, but they, too, were shriveled and past being edible. In one little open spot, Goldenrod and Purple Loosestrife bloomed right next to each other, with nodding Queen Anne’s Lace in front of them, all flowers of mid-August.

It was a shock to reach Highland Avenue, a four-lane highway. I lost the Cross Fells Trail here. The trail is poorly marked:– the old blue paint blazes are badly faded, and several of the new blue plastic blazes have been torn off trees. So I wound up taking an unintended detour to the shores of Winchester Reservoir, shining in the afternoon sun. I saw a few sailboats, some kayaks, and even one skinny-dipper slipping illegally into the water.

I managed to rejoin the Cross Fells Trail, following it along the paved Fellsway West under Interstate 93, but then I lost the trail again — the blazes were completely missing. I realized I should have brought a map. AFter another unintended detour, I managed to rejoin the Cross Fells Trail, but the sun was getting lower and lower and I knew I would probably not be able to get to the far end of the trail. I made it across South Border Road and up to the top of Ramshead Hill when I decided to turn around — I didn’t want to be looking for faded blue paint blazes after the sun had gone down.

The trip back was much faster — I didn’t stray off the trail for any unintended detours. It was after seven o’clock by the time I got back to the start of the trail, and since it is mid-August the sun had already slipped close to the horizon. During the whole of my walk in the Fells, I saw only half a dozen people who were more than a couple hundred feet from a paved road.

Nine or ten miles, depending on how far off the trail I actually got.