We tend to take our vast network of rail trails for granted. We cherish the neatly trimmed borders and the freedom to bike or blade from Burgy to Belchertown and back again without a single branch in your eye or an overhanging wildflower smacking you in the face.

That’s civilization for you, things just sort of happen. But if someone (preferably a crew) doesn’t come by to whack the encroaching flora into retreat, the fast-bending stalks on one side will reach across and conjoin with those on the other and in no time at all you’ll find yourself trapped in The Forest of Unyielding and Utter Despair with no machete and no way out.

Fortunately, there are a handful of denizens who beat back the green tide on a regular basis. In this city they are known as Friends of Northampton Trails. But they are elusive. There’ve been reported sightings, yes, like mountain lions spotted off Route 66, but this is more like the guy who stocks the company’s vending machines — you never see him but the French Vanilla always tastes fresh.

Paradise

The crack-of-dawn streets are deserted as you cross the iconic bridge overlooking the city, when you suddenly come upon four of these creatures, John, Joe, George and Karl, their “instruments of destruction” gleaming in the sun’s first rays.

“I started about 12 years ago. Just had to pitch in and help out,” said John Power, leaning against his shovel, his Woo Sox T-shirt already getting wet in spots. The longtime massage therapist has an office a mere few steps away in the Fitzwillys building. “I’d walk on the trail every day and become frustrated. I mean, this is one of the gems of the community.

“There was so much industrial trash, tires, bottles, things left over from the railroad,” said Power.

But this morning he’s doing what he enjoys most — digging up weeds with a round point shovel.

“We wanted to focus on this area today because for many people it’s a gateway to the bike trail,” said FNT President George Kohout, working down below the access ramp with Joe Holmes. “We were the first trail in western Mass. Our city said ‘OK, if we build it we will take care of it.’ When the later trails came, Hadley and Amherst, the state took care of them.”

“Can’t we renegotiate?” pleads Power, wiping his brow.

With eternal compromises to the city’s budget, things have changed in terms of upkeep. “The DPW once had the staff and resources to take care of the trail; they’re really stretched now,” said Kohout. “You have to step up to keep paradise going.”

Friends of Northampton Trails entered the fray 17 years ago. “We’re not a well-heeled organization but we do OK,” said Kohout. “We have 200 dues-paying members. Only the hardy come out in the heat so we abuse people, like these three guys who are regulars,” he laughed.

Rail trail’s public enemy #1: “Japanese knotweed,” said Kohout. “One of our worst invasives; looks like bamboo and you can’t kill it.” But battling it can be Zen-like, he says. “When you hack out a great pile of it, you tend to be pretty cheerful.”

The team is in constant contact with the DPW, who will swing by and pick up these giant piles of hacked overgrowth, a thing also in evidence Saturday.

“The rail trail is part of that economic engine, one of the things that bring people into town,” said Kohout.

FNT’s mission, as spelled out on its colorful website, is to improve the trail and promote activities to get people on it. They do a lot of collabs with Easthampton counterpart, Friends of the Manhan, along with All Out Adventures and its fleet of adaptive cycles.

“If we want to reach our climate goals we have to get people on bikes,” said Kohout.

People stop and chat as the day gets underway. “I really appreciate what you’re doing,” says a passerby.

Kohout sometimes fantasizes in the heat of a morning that some kind trail-user will stop by with a quantity of just-squeezed lemonade for he and his mates. “Might be better than a little ‘attaboy,’” he laughs, toiling away.

But it’s not just strangling weeds and poison ivy that stand before these intrepid teams. It’s what folks leave behind.

“It was particularly significant around COVID,” said Power. “A lot of homeless, a lot of stuff.”

Gray area

Homeless camps come and go, managing to sprout in the various ends of town, seen mainly by cyclists, joggers, and dogs and their walkers.

“There was a guy sleeping at the edge of the trail year-round. No bathroom, no water, pouring rain. This ain’t no camping trip,” Power said.

When a city, under pressure from taxpayers, clears out a homeless camp, the inhabitants generally head off in different directions, traveling light, leaving behind belongings that most of us would simply stuff in a rented U-Haul.

“It’s soaking wet tents, sleeping bags, clothes, hypodermic needles, the whole gamut,” said Power. “We fill dumpsters with this stuff. If we didn’t do it who would?”

Power says he’s learned from the street people. “We all have views and prejudices … but when you actually get out and talk to people and hear their stories, you realize how quick things can happen.”

“So it’s a little bit of a gray area but that’s our responsibility so we do it,” he says, bending into his shovel.

New blood

Holmes has only been a member of the group for a year, recently retired from a career in public service.

“We had a chance to move into cohousing and were looking for volunteer opportunities,” he said.

His indoctrination into FNT? “I pulled nine tires out of a swampy section,” he laughed. “The mud!”

He and his wife captain a team during the seasonal cleanups the organization sponsors, where over a hundred members report for duty. “But there’s always wildlife to look at,” smiles Holmes, “deer, foxes, fisher cats, turtles. So cool.”

The team’s youngest and by far tallest member, Karl Ahrendsen (6-foot, 5-inch), is vengefully wielding hedge-clippers against the aforementioned “Godzilla” weed. After grad school at the University of Nebraska, the Iowa native landed a job as a Smith College researcher in 2022. He started out living a mile away. Rode his bike to work, something he did regularly in college. Ahrendsen’s idea of a doable bike commute is no more than three miles one way, or 15 minutes. You arrive neither too sweaty nor exhausted, ready for work. He and girlfriend Molly considered moving to Easthampton, but that was five miles away, too far for a daily commute. “So we settled in North Hadley,” says Karl with a grin, “a seven mile commute, thirty minutes. I’ve expanded my horizons.”

He fell in with FNT during one of their events in Florence, celebrating the village’s anti-slavery past. “These are my people,” he said.

His technique for dealing with the drudgery of large-scale yard work: “You set goals for yourself. I saw a tree overhanging in the distance. I decided to trim back the weeds up to that tree. Well, the tree turned out to be a weed — a weed twelve feet high! Clearing all that out was more than satisfying.”

“It’s fun to go out and chop things down,” he says.

Bob Flaherty, a longtime author, radio personality and former Gazette writer and columnist, writes a monthly column called “Chance Encounters” in which he writes about our neighbors going about their daily lives.