Back roads of Hadley

Between Leverett and Northampton is Hadley, mostly flat farm country along the eastern floodplain of the Connecticut river. The straightest and widest road through Hadley is route 9, but since the late '60s it's gradually been filled in with a successions of malls and traffic lights. So the fastest route is not along the 4 lane roads. The fast route from Leverett to Northampton is along North Amherst back roads to route 47, then through the Hadley farms, dropping into route 9 right at the Coolidge Bridge. It's very dark at night, and there's one bend in the road that I managed to miss last nght. I ended up on a dirt road through the corn, right on the banks of the Connecticut. It felt very remote, even though I was just a few hundred yards from the bright lights.