Jeff Meller
4 Dec 13
570 words
One of the more intimate ways to explore a
city can be running: a good speed for observation; interaction with citizenry,
if only a cheery “hello;” exploration off the beaten track.
If you don’t like your run interrupted
every couple of hundred feet by a traffic intersection, these relatively
trafficless routes around Boston, Massachusetts, may be appealing.
The routes are listed by proximity to
downtown; all distances are round trip; each route, except Fresh Pond, also is suitable
for mountain biking.
Charles
River Reservation, Boston - Even though the Charles River flows through
the center of a metropolitan area of a million people, only 14 streets cross
this 17 mile loop on both sides of the River from the Museum of Science to Watertown
Square. Run past MIT, Boston University and Harvard. See scullers from eight boat
houses along the shore. Gawk discreetly at hundreds of other runners. Observe urban
wildlife including geese, ducks, swans, carp and turtles; one winter I saw an
American Bald Eagle right in Cambridge gnawing on carrion embedded in the
frozen Charles.
Emerald Necklace,
Boston - When F. L. Olmsted started what became the Emerald
Necklace in 1878, he was restoring a tidal saltwater marsh. After the Charles
River was dammed in 1910 the Emerald Necklace became a freshwater marsh. The
paths from
Charlesgate to Jamaica Pond are primarily
well-graded dirt, shaded in summer by stately oaks and maples, which were
saplings in Olmsted’s time. Run past many illustrious institutions: Harvard
Medical School, the Gardner Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts. But runners barely
glimpse these man-made edifices because the trails are nestled in the terrain
to screen the city from what Olmsted thought would be pedestrians and carriages.
Twenty-one intersections in 5.3 miles.
Fresh
Pond, Cambridge - This North Cambridge pond is a kettle hole, formed when a gigantic block of ice detached from the trailing edge
of the last retreating glacier about 12,000 years ago. In the mid-19th
century ice again returned to prominence at Fresh Pond: 35 ice houses, some up
to 300 feet long, ringed the Pond. Ice was pack in sawdust and shipped by sail,
a four month trip, as far as India. Now all the structures are gone and the 2.2
mile dirt circuit has mutated into an intensively landscaped natural state with
an obstacle course of doting dog walkers. There are no street crossings.
Minuteman
Bikeway, Cambridge - This trail approximates the route that Paul Revere and
William Dawes took on their famous nighttime ride in April 1775 to warn that
“The British are coming.” Twenty miles are paved from Cambridge to Bedford. Ten
miles from Bedford to Concord are a rough dirt track which follows the former
rail bed of the Middlesex Central Railroad; it is the whistle from this train
which Thoreau heard when he lived at Walden Pond. Nine street crossings in 30
miles.
Estabrook
Woods, Concord – And speaking of Thoreau in his Oct. 20, 1857 journal entry
he wrote: “What a wild and rich domain that Easterbrooks Country! Not a
cultivated, hardly a cultivatable field in it, and yet it delights all natural
persons.” There are many paths through the 1,200 acres now owned mostly by
Harvard University. You can run for hours on a variety of trails and never see
a soul though perhaps an occasional horse and rider or snapping turtle. Access
from the end of Estabrook Road, Concord. There are no street crossings.
- 30 -
Sources:
2.
City
of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Fresh Pond Master Plan
(2000), Chapter 4. “Ecological and Social History of Fresh Pond
Reservation.”
3.
http://www.minutemanbikeway.org/Pages/Brochure.html;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuteman_Bikeway
4.
“ ‘This Great Wild Tract:’ Henry David Thoreau, Native
Americans, and the Archaeology of Estabrook Woods,” James C. Garman, Paul A. Russo,
Stephen A. Mrozowski and Michael A. Volmar, Historical Archeology, 1997, Volume
37, No 4, pages 59 – 80.
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