Lizkdc Dislocation

East of Boston: Great Brewster Island

Sandspit at Great Brewster Island

Yesterday I travelled with the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands to one of their islandy flock, a  worn, ancient nubbin called Great Brewster Island, nine miles out from the busy bustle of the waterfront.

Long ago, Native Americans paddled out to these islands in search of fish or refuge from enemies.  For a very long time in recent centuries,  they were part of a busy, messy, fast-changing Boston culture that lived and died by the sea.  For four centuries, Boston built on these islands,  lighthouses and docks, forts and prisons, hospitals for contagious diseases and catch-alls for orphans and delinquents and those who fell under wartime suspicion.  Families lived out here on some of the islands, fishing and managing tiny farms and crafts, connected to the mainland by small boats and an incredible hardihood. On others, wealthier sorts seeking peace from the reeking city built the occasional summer home and played at boats and picnics and watercolor painting. The guide showed us old black and white photos of Gilded Age ladies in enormous hats, posed on the beach with their long skirts sweeping the wet sand.

During the Second World War, a fear of dark dangers that might track across the Atlantic caused the US armed forces to take over almost all the chain, building in great guns and mines and radar nearby the crumbling forts from the Civil War and War of 1812.

An Urban Wood, and Mysterious Bits

Don't you love it when a weird little bit of mystery wanders into your life?

First off, one of the great things about postmodern city living is the empty spaces that open up even in the middle of dense development, and the way the woods creep and sneak back into the gaps.

And from something neglected or overlooked comes something cherished.

A Lesson in Winter Sports and Frozen Hubris

(Yeah, tomorrow all we'll care about is the stupid election, so I'm publishing my ridic own life post tonight)

For years, I've been telling people that skiing is like riding a bicycle--a bit tricky to learn, but once you learn, you can always recover the skill again with a little practice, and be off and enjoying yourself amidst the beauties of the snow-covered outdoors blah blah blahdy cakes.

I based this wisdom on my experience in my 20s and 30s, when for a decade I did a mild bit of beginner to intermediate downhill in Maine and New Hampshire every year with various clumps of family and home town friends.

Back I would then go to Washington, DC, for the nonce, where the entire nation's capitol is halted by two inches of powder three times a year, and as soon as a flake falls, everybody panics, leaves their offices and crashes directly into one another.

I'd be all smug and "I'm from Boston," and secretly laugh at my fellow office workers who "made it in" from Northern Virginia two hours late in their North Face jackets during a snowfall about as deep as the top of their coffee cup.

Apparently, though, karma was hiding under the desk and hearing all this and totally about to disprove my thing about skiing. It seems I've been lying about those skills staying with you, or at least, they have an expiration date, like milk. And expired skiing skills will kick your booty even worse then milk gone bad which you only discover after you have poured it over the last bowl of cereal in the house.

Snowflakes and Insufficiency

The camera--well, as wielded by me, right now--can't do justice to what the eyeball can see. 

The Arboretum's collection of evergreens from everywhere mean that in this small corner of Boston you have a winding Japanese pine and a towering Serbian spruce and a stand of skinny hemlock and some dense English gardeny ornamental shrubs all living together on a few hillsides, wound through by the original little brooks that shaped this neighborhood.

And then an especially clinging snow sifts down on it all and traces out all the detail -- long needles and short, small, personable little Christmas trees and 100 foot towers, evergreens with shapes that are dense, opaque and watchful, and others with open, swooping boughs like candelabra.  And it's so amazing?

It would be more admirable if I could truthfully write that I walked about this scene full of virtuous and clever thoughts about the natural world, its transformation in winter, and the oncoming New Year.

However, I did not.  I walked about it simultaneously overcome by a sense of sense-swamping beauty and complexity,  and my utter inability to *make* something of it. Each time I reach one level of satisfaction with picture taking, I seem to pass right into a sense of just how far down the learning scale I am with my camera, and get overcome with something very much like a nine year old child'lump-in-the-throat "WHO CARES ANYWAY!"

Maine, Danger, and Andrew Wyeth

There I was on the coast of Maine, and all the clams were singing.

On remote Route 73, the needs of man are reduced to the essentials: fried food, haircuts, truck repair, and Jesus. You can go for miles without seeing more then a tiny four-way stop sign village, but these core things will be for sale at each of them.

Hidden Harbor (Dorchester Shores)

IMG_2230.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Tat guy and his girl, Dorchester Shores

Whuh oh, a week without a post! Bad blogger.  I've got some committments today, so I'll just to this quickie to symbolically get back on the blogging pony.

Did a great walk last weekend along a long stretch of the harbor in Dorchester that most Boston vistors and even residents rarely get to see.

Wall

IMG_1306.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Faces of Dudley mural, by BYCC mural crew: Dedicated To The People of Roxbury

Little taste from my outing with the Boston Photo Mob walking tour of Roxbury.

Group Flickr photopool here.

Maine chance

IMG_1221.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Hiking with the Yees: Douglas Mountain, Sebago, Maine

Back from a weekend in Maine with my friends the Yees, featuring hikes up a mountain and through a bog, and board games and potluck supper, and a great visit to the Portland Museum of Art and the most Maine breakfast ever: blueberry pancakes and bear-meat sausage!

Fells

IMG_1115_sm.jpg, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Middlesex Fells hike, Boston Hiking Meetup Group

Out today on Middlesex Fells hike with the Boston Hiking Group Meetup.

The trip leader, Evil Mahesh, proposed in the hike description that this would be a very rapid seven mile hike with a lot of cardio challenge (eg steep stuff) and few stops. I thought this was a good chance to get out of "stroll in the woods" mode and push myself to get back in shape for some serious hiking.

Oh. My. 

First stage: I follow the strategy of losing race horses everywhere and try to keep up with the fastest people in the pack in the hopes their blazing pace will magically empower me to greater speed then I actually have.

There are no big hills in this reservation, which secretly made me believe that the "challenging" thing was overstated.  But the place is like a meringue made out of granite, with crest after rocky crest of small steep hillocks, so the experience is one of walking a hundred yards at a fast lope, then climbing a Stairmaster for ten minutes, then repeating--for three hours.

Horizon

IMG_1042.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Distant Boston skyline, Hancock Hill, Blue Hills Reservation, March 22

Went up and down some trails at the Blue Hills Reservation with pal Bronia.  It's now officially spring, but there was little sign of it in the Massachusetts woods. 

The sky is blue and windy, but the rocky, brackeny woods are still a bare network of grey and brown, colored here and there with evergreens.  We clambered over glacial rock splotched with lichens and tromped through deep layers of old leaves sinking into soil.

It's not a pretty time, yet, in the New England woods, though you do get a great view of the distant horizon, since the branches are all still empty.  It was very quiet.  A woodpecker knocked.  Some geese flew overhead.  Dozens of tiny streams ran downhill.

We talked about our lives and our mothers, our worries and our houses, our psyches and memories.   The past is the mulch of the future, I guess.  We stand ankle deep in it, peering at the little green sprouts of tomorrow just now poking up through the mud.

*Edited to restore the end of the post, with which it *may* make more sense.