Category Archives: Sense of place

Walking in the big city

Today’s New York Times carries a story about one reporter’s six-day walking trip around Staten Island. In the story, “A Journey around Staten Island Gives a Glimpse of the City’s Wild Side,” Andy Newman reports on walking through landscapes and meeting people you wouldn’t quite expect to find in New York City:

Heading west, Richmond Terrace becomes the main street of several working class neighborhoods before petering out as a winding, rural-industrial lane. At its very end stands a lone country house with a barn and a chicken coop and a yard that merged into the marshy shore of the Kill Van Kull.

The door was answered by Tara Alleyne, a city employee and inhabitant of what was once a soap-factory town called Port Ivory. “I’m the only resident of Port Ivory,” she said proudly. “I’m on Mapquest.”

Newman even brings a tent and manages to find a few places to camp out a couple of nights. Those of us who love walking in the city and the suburbs can only hope for more such hikers, and more good writing about their adventures.

Day hike: Louisa May Alcott and walking to Boston

When we were children, someone told us about the time Louisa May Alcott walked from her family’s house in Concord all the way to Boston. I no longer remember the details of the story, but it always seemed to me that walking from Concord all the way to Boston was something I would like to do. So today I did. I walked over to Porter Square to catch the 8:45 train out to Concord. When the pleasant young conductor got to me, I said I was going to Concord. “Round trip?” he asked. “No, one way,” I said.

I walked from the train station though Concord center to get to Louisa May Alcott’s house out on Lexington Road. I stopped to talk with Pam, the owner of the Barrow Bookstore. She was just opening her store. “How’s business?” I asked. “Not as good as last year,” she said, “not as many foreign travelers this year.” We laughed together at some of the more ridiculous airline security precautions we had heard about.

Lexington Road was originally called the Bay Road, because it led to Massachusetts Bay. The first English settlers followed the course of the Bay Road when they first went out to Concord in 1635; no doubt parts of that road are older still, and were once paths trod by the Massasoit Indians. Not that you need to know this history; my walk wasn’t a historical re-enactment, it was more of a literary pilgrimage.

It was another perfect summer day, maybe seventy degrees, sunny, a nice breeze. Lots of cars passed me on the roads, but I saw very few people. Many of the houses I passed were perfectly painted, their yards perfectly landscaped — Concord is a very wealthy town now — but many of the houses and yards hardly looked lived in. I wondered how many people you would have seen out and about in Louisa Alcott’s time.

The Alcott family moved frequently, and lived in several houses in Concord. Two of them are right next to each other: Orchard House, the current site of a house museum devoted to Louisa Alcott and her family, and the Wayside which is now more famous as the house where Nathaniel Hawthorne lived. I don’t remember where Louisa Alcott was living when she walked to Boston, but I figured those two houses would be my official starting point.

Soon I got to the Battleroad Unit of Minuteman National Historical Park. The Battleroad Trail winds for five miles through the woods and fields of the park, connecting the towns of Concord and Lexington. At times I was walking along an unpaved road between two old stone walls, with grass growing between the road and the stone walls with open fields beyond. This, I thought to myself, must have been a little bit like what Louisa Alcott saw on her walk to Boston. But not really, for the fields were just rough grass and weeds and not planted with crops, there were no cows or horses or sheep grazing anywhere, no kitchen gardens thriving near the few houses I passed. Nor did Louisa Alcott see any bicyclists in spandex shorts, tourists with cameras around their necks, and park rangers dressed up in tricorn hats, breeches, and waiscoats.

At the end of the Battleroad Trail, I walked on the sidewalk along Massachusetts Avenue, up over Concord Hill in Lexington, through a neighborhood where the old 1950’s ranch houses are gradually being torn down so that McMansions can sprout up.

In Lexington Center, I crossed the Battle Green and passed Buckman Tavern, a historic museum where a man dressed up in 18th C. garb played a tune on a fife. Maybe, I thought to myself, I should have planned to follow in the footsteps of the Minutemen as they chased the Redcoats to Charlestown on April 19, 1775. But I was committed to my Louisa Alcott walk. I bought a sandwich to carry with me, and stopped to talk with Marianne, whom I knew when I worked at the Lexington church.

From Lexington Center, I followed the Minuteman Bike Path all the way to Somerville. The bike path follows an abandoned railroad right of way that roughly parallels Massachusetts Avenue, which is the modern name for that same old Bay Road that goes all the way to Concord. About two miles from Lexington Center, the bike path passes next to Arlington’s Great Meadows. I followed a little path in and found a knoll with a picnic table. I sat down to eat my lunch, gazing out at an expanse of marshland covered with Cattails, and Purple Loosestrife in full bloom. Away on the far side of the marsh, I thought I saw a few red leaves just starting to show on some Red Maples.

As I approached Arlington Center, two men passed me, one riding a bicycle and one on rollerblades. “Downsizing you car saves a lot of money,” said one. “Yeah,” said the other. “…Gas, insurance,” said the first. “Yeah,” said the other. Two women followed them, one woman on a bicycle and one on rollerblades, and they too were deep in conversation.

I stopped to rest in Arlington center. I wasn’t in a hurry, I wasn’t trying to set any speed records, and I had a cramp behind one knee. I sipped some iced coffee and read a newspaper.

On the other side of Arlington center, I came around a corner and there was Spy Pond. The pond was so beautiful — trees and house lining its shores, a small sailboat lazily moving along near the far shore, glints of sunlight on its surface — that I caught my breath. I left the bike path to walk along the pond’s shore. Children and dogs splashed in the water, a large extended family gathered around a picnic table, a woman typed on her laptop, a man sat reading. Regretfully, I rejoined the bike path.

After a while, when you’re walking for a long time, you tend to reach a state of mind where you don’t think about much. When I got to the Alewife subway station in Cambridge, where the bike path officially ends, I had to think because it wasn’t obvious how to get to the extension of the bike path that gets you to Davis Square. That’s all the thinking I did from Spy Pond to Davis Square.

I walked a couple of blocks over from Davis Square to Mass. Ave. and then followed Mass. Ave. to Harvard Square, and then I walked over a couple of blocks to the path that leads along the Charles River. I still wasn’t thinking about much, except that one knee hurt. I crossed over to the path along the Boston side of the Charles. Lots of people out sailing on the Charles. I watched one person sailing a Laser, a small fast sailboat, pushing the boat to its limit, coming about at the end of each tack with losing headway, heeling over until the lee gunwale was covered in foam.

Then I headed up Beacon Hill to Louisburg Square, and stopped for a moment in front of number 10, the house that Alcott bought with the money she got from her writing, and the house where she died when she was just 55 years old. Maybe I didn’t follow the exact route that she did when she walked from Concord to Boston, but that felt like a good ending to a good walk.

About 25 miles in nine hours of leisurely walking.

No better day

It got cold enough this morning for me to awaken and pull a blanket up over me. The night was just changing from dark to gray. I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up, ate breakfast, and decided to go walk at Great Meadows. It was five forty-five; I kissed Carol and left.

The moon, a couple of days past full, hung bright in the blue sky. It was higher than the sun. I stood on the dike in between the mud flats and cattails and pools of water looking at the swarms of sandpipers and plovers. Everything — mud, plants, birds, trees in the distance, one small puffy cloud, moon — could be seen with utmost clarity in the early sunlight and the cool dry air. Nothing seemed far away, not even the moon, which faded and sank towards the horizon as the sun rose higher. I turned my attention only to what was there, no stray thoughts or nagging memories of things I had to do, nothing existed but for marsh and birds and sky above and trees in the distance.

By nine, other people appeared, some with binoculars and some with cameras. Two men carried big cameras mounted on tripods, with huge lenses mounted on the cameras. They stopped to photograph a snipe that was less than a hundred feet from the path, poking its long bill into the mud. I talked idly with another birder. He said he wished he had worn long pants. I said it had been downright cold when I first arrived, even when I was standing in the sun, and there had been a chilly breeze from the north-northwest.

I walked along the old railroad embankment through the woods, and heard a the plaintive whistle of a Wood-Peewee: pee-ah-wheee. Back in the sun along the mud flats and cattails, the land had warmed up enough that anything seen through binoculars at a long distance shimmered from rising heat. But it was still chilly in the shade. Birds started up and flew madly in all directions, a dark shape twisted and turned just above the tops of the cattails: a Northern Harrier cruised over the marsh, hunting for breakfast.

On the way out, I ran into Dad. We went and got sandwiches and sat outside on a bench overlooking the river to eat them. The shadows moved around us, and finally I said I had to stand up. We had been sitting and talking for the better part of two hours, not conscious of the time going by. There can be no better kind of day than that.

Day hike: Mt. Wachusett

The huckleberries were no more than 100 feet from the broad, trampled parking lot on the summit of Mt. Wachusett. Not just a few huckleberries, either, for the low bushes were loaded with them. I bent down and tried one. It was a little dry, maybe a few days past its prime, but it had an excellent flavor. I started eating greedily. I must have gotten lost in the pleasure of eating, for I didn’t hear the man until he had come around the bend of the trail. You never want to give away the location of a good berry patch to anyone, so I quickly stood, but he had already seen me.

“Ha!” he said. He was an older man with a white beard, sensibly dressed with a bucket hat and daypack. “Don’t eat all the berries!”

“Look at them all,” I said. “These bushes haven’t been picked over at all. Tells you how far most people get away from their cars. And look how many there are!”

“Yes,” he said as he bent over to pick and eat berries. He looked up at me. “It must the all the rain we’ve had.”

“They’re a maybe little gone by, and they’re kind of dry,” I said, “but then huckleberries always are.”

“That’s because huckleberries are all seeds,” he said. He left soon after that. I don’t think he liked them as much as I did. They were a little dry, but they tasted so good; –not good enough to stop and pick a bucketful to take home, but good enough to stop for ten or fifteen minutes to pick and eat them on the spot.

***

I came up the steady incline of the trail to the top of High Meadow, breathing pretty hard because I was pushing myself pretty hard. But I wasn’t walking too fast to notice the black raspberries. I picked one and ate it, and it was so good, but then I had to stop to catch my breath before I could eat more.

I was most of the way back to the parking lot, and thirsty because the Audubon sanctuary didn’t have any drinking water available. The black raspberries had been well-picked over a few days before, probably over the weekend — you could see the empty stems where people had pulled berries off — but quite a few more had ripened since then. The ones I picked were perfectly ripe, and because I was thirsty, they tasted especially good. In among the black raspberries I came across some blackberry canes, and they too had ripe fruit on them. Blackberries used to be one of my favorite fruits, but now I don’t like them nearly as well as black raspberries; now I think they have a funny almost-dusty taste. I ate some more black raspberries to have a good taste in my mouth before I walked on.

Nine miles, four hours, total elevation gain about a thousand feet, lots of sore muscles.

Quiet in the city

It’s been so quiet at night here in Cambridge. The crickets sound louder than usual. The traffic is lighter, and I’ve been seeing far fewer people on the street than usual. It feels as if a large percentage of the city’s residents are away on vacation. The only places where the city has felt as busy as usual have been in the usual tourist traps: Harvard Square, the Freedom Trail, Faniuel Hall.

Day hike: Lughnasa at Great Meadows

Dad and I decided to take a walk in Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge this afternoon. We didn’t walk very far or very fast, though. The recent cold front brought a big wave of fall migrants to Massachusetts, and we spent less time walking than we did looking at sandpipers, plovers, egrets, and heron.

We strolled slowly down to the Concord River along the dike between the upper impoundment and the lower impoundment. I’m sure the slanting light of a perfect, golden summer day made the marshlands look especially beautiful, but I was too busy looking at the birds. While Dad was busy taking a photo of a Solitary Sandpiper feeding in the mud close to the trail, I watched a Spotted Sandpiper bobbing and pulling loose molting feathers out of its breast.

On the way back up the dike, a pleasant woman asked us if we would stand behind that camera over there because they were filming a segment for the Nova public television program (I had thought the two men were just another pair of wildlife photographers), or if we wanted to be in the shot when the joggers came along she’d ask us to sign releases. We stood where she told us. Dad found another bird to try to photograph. I got into an animated conversation with a woman about shorebird identification and migration. After ten minutes, all three of us forgot about the cameramen, and the nice woman from public television had to ask us again to step back, which we did. Apparently one of the joggers they were filming was some famous woman marathoner, but I never did get a firm identification on her.

Someone had a Wilson’s Snipe in his telescope, and Dad and I got a good look at it. The light was absolutely perfect, but Dad and I were getting hungry so we strolled on back to the car and went to dinner. I dropped Dad off at his condo, and as I was driving home I realized today is Lughnasa, halfway between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox, the time of year when you really start to notice that the sun is setting earlier in the evening. The excitement of watching the first big surge of the fall migration makes the loss of daylight a little easier for me to accept.

Less than a mile in two and a half hours.

Day hike: The Freedom Trail and the Charles River

Carol and I decided to be tourists for a day and walk the Freedom Trail in Boston. We set off from North Cambridge at 11 a.m. Since we weren’t in a hurry, we took the long way to Boston and walked there via Union Square in Somerville. As we walked up to Union Square, Carol that this would be a good place to consider living:– not too expensive yet, no subway but good bus service, pleasant houses, a real racial and ethnic mix.

We turned from Union Square towards Kendall Square in Cambridge, and crossed the Charles River via Longfellow Bridge. Lunch at the Sevens pub on Charles St., with mediocre food but good atmosphere — and an old sign saying “The Real Paper Best of Boston 1979, Best Neighborhood Pub, Beacon Hill.” I asked Carol if she remembered the Real Paper, the best of the underground newspapers in Boston in the 1970’s, but she didn’t.

We started on the Freedom Trail at the Massachusetts State House, at the top of Beacon Hill. This first stretch of the trail gives you lots of interesting buildings and sites for not too much effort: the Granary Burying Ground, King’s Chapel and its burying ground, Old South Meeting House, the old State House. We didn’t go into any of the buildings because we were really out for the walk.

Next along the Freedom Trail was Fanueil Hall, which was dreary and overrun with tourists and touristy things. Then through Haymarket, which was still open. All the vendors were down to the cheapest, most bedraggledy fruits and vegetables but that point in the afternoon, but it was fun to walk through the scene. Carol saw a bag of Bing cherries for a dollar and a half. “Are they any good?” she asked. “They’re as good as any you’ll see here right now, hon,” said the woman selling them. Carol decided to pass on the cherries.

Walking through Boston’s North End might be the best part of the Freedom Trail — lots of great old buildings, windy streets, and really good people watching. I noticed an older man walking towards us because he was neatly dressed in a fitted blue short-sleeved shirt and neatly pressed chinos; no un-tucked shirt or flipflops for him. When he passed us, I could hear he was speaking Italian, one of the older generation who holds on to the old ways. I stopped briefly to admire the facade of St. Stephen’s church, “the last surviving Bullfinch church in Boston” according to the plaque on it. Old North Church is more impressive because it’s older and larger, but it is not as beautiful.

Across the Charles River, Charlestown felt deserted, with none of the lively street life of the North End of Boston. Except for the tourists, we saw very few people on the streets. One boy, about ten years old, sat at the corner of Adams and Winthrop Streets. When someone following the Freedom Trail approached him, he would intone, in a surprisingly loud clear voice: “Ice cold lemonade, seventy-five cents, best deal on the Freedom Trail.” His voice followed us Adams Street as we climbed the hill to the Bunker Hill Monument.

The National Park Service is renovating the monument, so it was closed to visitors. We left the Freedom Trail there, and crossed back over the Charles River via the locks. We saw three pleasure boats in the locks, heading to and from Boston Harbor. Then through what used to be the old West End to Charlesbank Park, where we sat watching toddlers play in the wading pool (and where Carol got her feet wet, too).

As we walked down the Boston side of the Charles River, at first there was lots to look at. We saw people lying on the grass and bicycling and rollerblading and walking. We saw sailboats and windsurfers and kayakers and even a Venetian gondola in Storrow Lagoon. But for a long stretch there’s just the bike path, which is too narrow, between the highway on one side and the river on the other. We would have been better off on the Cambridge side of the river.

We crossed the footbridge over to Cambridge, and walked up to Harvard Square to get Carol some bubble tea, and me some iced tea. By this time, we were a little footsore, so we sat on a park bench outside Harvard Square and watched the people go by. From there, we walked straight back home for dinner; for it was after seven o’clock by the time we got home.

Approximately sixteen miles.

Day hike: Blue Hills Reservation

Rain in the morning, so I drove down to New Bedford to water the plants and pick up the mail. On the way back, by two o’clock the looked to be ending; right after Route 24 ended at Interstate 93 I got off the highway at the Houghton’s Pond exit, parked by the pond, and went for a walk in the Blue Hills. I started walking at two-thirty, having smeared sunscreen on, but also carrying an umbrella just in case.

From Houghton’s Pond, I headed up the Massechuseuk Trail, cut over on one of the innumerable smaller trails to the Skyline Trail, and climbed up Tucker Hill. By the time I got up to the open ledges on top of Tucker Hill, the sky was blue and clear except for a few small puffy white clouds overhead, and a line of grey clouds to the south. The observatory tower on top of Great Blue Hill to the west stood out over the intervening tree-covered hills. The intersection of Route 24 and Interstate 93 sprawled through the woods south of me, busy with hundreds of tiny cars bustling back and forth.

The north branch of the Skyline Trail from Tucker Hill to Great Blue Hill turned out to be fairly challenging. It was steep enough in places that I had to use my hands, particularly in Wildcat Notch. In other places, missing or badly placed blazes meant I should have been paying full attention to picking out the route; but I wasn’t paying full attention, and went down the wrong trail in one or two places. While none of the hills is particularly high, the Skyline Trail goes over as many hills as it can and the cumulative effect was that I got a pretty good workout.

I climbed Eliot Tower on top of Great Blue Hill, and spent a few minutes up there cooling down — the woods were still humid from the morning’s rain and I was drenched in sweat. The view to the east was worth more than a few minutes: the skyscrapers of Boston, Boston harbor and its islands, the rolling hills between. But I hurried on.

At the base of Great Blue Hill, there was no crosswalk to get across busy Washington Street. I walked along the edge of the road to the traffic lights at Royal St. and managed to make my way across to Dunkin Donuts, where I got a large iced decaf coffee. Hundreds of breast cancer walkers, mostly dressed in pink and white and black, were coming down the sidewalk along Washington Street, and I had to walk against them for half a mile in order to get to the start of the Red Loop Trail up Great Blue Hill. Mostly they ignored me, or almost ran into me (there were no other pedestrians or hikers out); except for one woman who, conscious that she was engaged in a virtuous and purposeful activity and I was a mere idler, said, “Hey, you’re headed the wrong way” — half humorously, half challenging me.

The Red Loop Trail, wide and well-worn, is supposed to be the most popular trail up Great Blue Hill. A man and a woman and three children came down the trail towards me. “Excuse me,” said the woman, smiling, “but there is a pond?” I told them they were far from the pond. I don’t know what their native language was, but they clearly didn’t follow what I was saying, even though we kept trying for a while.

At the top of Great Blue Hill, I went up Eliot Tower again, and this time managed to see Mount Wachusett off in the west. I wanted to spend more time looking at the view, but the sun was getting low, and I was getting tired. I set off back down the North Skyline Trail, veered south on the Houghton Trail towards Houghton’s Pond — but when I got to Royal Street, there was no crosswalk and I didn’t dare cross the heavy rush hour traffic. Up over Houghton’s Hill towards the crosswalk at the Reservation Headquarters. But the hill was pretty steep, and on the way down my left knee started to hurt and warn me that I was in too much of a hurry.

By now it was quarter to seven. The picnickers and swimmers had mostly left Houghton’s Pond. The sun, setting in what was now a clear blue sky, sent a golden summer light through the trees. By the time I got back on the Interstate, rush hour traffic was mostly gone.

Eight miles.

Day hike: Cambridge and Boston

The heat wave was getting to me. I went out at 12:30, thinking I’d climb on the subway and head off to find someplace air-conditioned to spend the afternoon. But the air felt drier, and even though it was hot it felt good. I went back home, ate a leisurely lunch, and started walking at about 2 p.m.

By the time I reached Harvard Square, you could feel the change in the air. I left Mass. Ave. and made my way to the Charles River. The air felt glorious. The wind backed around into the east, coming right off the ocean and up the river: a back door cold front. With the change in the air, my head cleared and I felt lighthearted for the first time in days.

I walked down along the Charles, past all the boathouses. The sailboats were having a good time beating up the lower basin of the Charles against the wind; right next to me, one sailor did two quick messy tacks and brought his boat up to the dock of the MIT boathouse. Crossing the Longfellow Bridge, the easterly breeze felt cool:– I was walking at a good clip, but not even breaking a sweat.

Down Charles Street to the Charles St. Meeting House, where there’s nothing left to remind you of the time when the white Universalist minister hid Huey Newton from the FBI in a Sunday school room. I went over the lower part of Beacon Hill — cool and quiet and very, very wealthy — to Boston Common.

The Common was crowded, not just with the usual crowd of summer tourists, but with all kinds of people enjoying the first good weather in days: office workers headed home, homeless people, construction workers carrying plastic lunch coolers, a gaggle of young mothers pushing strollers, older children splashing in the frog pond, a group of people sitting and talking and listening to a man playing a tenor sax.

Near the Public Garden, a crew was working on the lights at the stage for Shakespeare in the Park. Crowds of people on the path across the Public Garden: A group of Japanese tourists got their picture taken by a woman with a Boston accent. A child holding on to his mother’s hand looked down at the Swan Boats and said something I didn’t quite catch. “No, dear,” she replied. “We can’t go on them, they’re closed for the day.”

The lower end of Newbury Street was more chic and further upscale than I had remembered. Young women wearing chic dresses and chic flipflops walked the sidewalks, peering into the windows of the boutiques. Tourists held their cameras at the ready, and stopped in the middle of the crowded sidewalk to gawk at the stores. People got a little scruffier at the far end of Newbury Street near Mass. Ave. I stopped briefly at Trident Bookstore and inside no one was wearing a chic dress.

On Mass. Ave., people crowded the sidewalks getting on and off the buses. Around Berklee School of Music, young people with scruffy hair toted instruments cases for a variety of instruments — alto sax, guitar, woodwinds. But the quiet shaded back streets through Northeastern University were deserted all the way to the Museum of Fine Arts.

In the Fens, I paused briefly to look at the community gardens. A few gardeners managed to grow vegetables in spite of the shady trees, but mostly I saw flowers and ornamentals, gravel and even brick paths, trellises and chairs set out under leafy bowers. One woman industriously swept the path in her garden plot; in another, a family sat enjoying the green shade.

As I neared Fenway Park, I could hear them announcing the lineup for today’s game. People streamed towards the park wearing Red Sox hats and sometimes Red Sox shirts with numbers and names of famous players emblazoned on them. One little boy still had a shirt saying “Garciaparra,” even though Nomar hasn’t played with the Sox for a couple of years.

The M.I.T. Bridge across the Charles is still measured in Smoots, and on the far side I walked right up Mass. Ave. towards our summer home base above Porter Square. I stopped only twice: once to buy a quart of water (which was gone in minutes), and once to stop at Pandemonium Books (which has finally reopened in Central Square).

Ten or twelve miles.