Well I am overdue for a post and I hope to make up for lost time with a two-fer tonight.

I took a long walk around the second landscape that I identified as part of my "assignment"- the Fresh Pond Reservoir, and I took quite a few photos which I will try to figure out how to upload. So far I've had no success with that, but I'll use them to help trigger the memory circuits.

First, a little background...

Fresh Pond is in Cambridge, MA and a link can be found in my first post.

It appears to be owned by the City of Cambridge since every time I try to find a place to park, I am told it is only for Cambridge residents. I have finally given up, after driving around it several times, and I park in the nearby mall parking lot--where a security guard told me, only those who were shopping were welcome. So I stop and buy dinner or a cup of coffee and am legit! But the territoriality of the place is clear. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Fresh Pond is northwest of Routes 2,3 and 16 (Why does this area have three names for one road?!!!). Fresh Pond Golf Course is at its northwest corner and the Cambridge water plant is (I think) diagonally across the reservoir, which is entirely surrounded by a chain link fence. There is strip development and a residential area around the pond, but it is separated by the loop road and vegetation, from the dirt path that circles the 2.3 mile loop. In most cases the vegetal barrier is sufficient to screen out noise and the view of the surrounding buildings. So far, I have found only one place to enter the loop, near the former Dunkin' Donuts and an existing Sunoco gas station. The traffic here is sufficiently heavy and fast, that I need to press a button that controls the traffic light, to be able to cross. There is also a bike path that surrounds the walking path, and about half way along the loop from where I enter, there is a small pond that is used by dog walkers to give their furred companions some off-leash play time.

The users are a mixed lot, from seniors out for exercise, to parents with babies in strollers and a contingent of college-age athletes. I have occasionally seen a child, but as I am usually there during school hours or at dusk, there aren’t many children here when I am walking. There are a sizeable number of joggers, a few bikers and a significant number of those who seem to be walking for exercise—and many of those come with their dogs. I have been struck by the number of off-leash dogs who seem well- trained and have little interest in either a passing stranger or another dog. Most users are singles but I would guess about a third are pairs of people, many of whom are walking groups of dogs. I would guess the users’ gender distribution is roughly even though I have not tracked this. As I am usually there in the late afternoon, it is not clear how the demographics of the users would change at night or on weekends, but I admit to feeling some trepidation as I walked there one day near dusk. There are many “blind areas” along the path where it would be easy for an attacker to find a victim, and I have never seen any police in the area. There are “emergency” kiosks, but they are few and far between.

The Surround: There is a Dunkin’ Donuts under construction near the entry point. Behind its chain link fence is a sign that notes they are closed for remodeling, and the sign urges customers to visit them across the street, but across the high-traffic street is the reservoir. There is a blizzard of signs along this section of the surrounding community, and anyone actually looking for something in the area would be hard pressed to find it in the signage chaos.

At some point, the signs actually add to the confusion rather than helping the passer-by find the desired taco place or pizza. Fresh Pond Mall is nearby with my holy grail—Whole Foods, and a PetSmart and Staples, and a hotel and Starbuck’s between the mall and the street access to the Reservoir. There are a host of other stores on the other side of the intersection, but the traffic is daunting enough that I make no effort to get to them.

Having crossed Route 16, there is a bike path with a white stop sign painted on the cement at the junction with the entry path, and a bit further on, a bike and rider symbol painted on the path. Just beyond it is a strip of grass and then, the pedestrian dirt path that loops the reservoir. Nearby is a wood stake with a dispenser of dog waste pick-up bags. Some distance beyond this is the water plant, and while it is clear I am not welcome as a non-Cambridge resident, there is a dog water bowl under the portico-- for Cambridge dogs only, I am sure. Across from the plant and along the side of the reservoir is a USGS marker indicating an ongoing process of water monitoring. Just past the plant, the road diverges and the outer segment climbs a slight hill beside the plant, while the lower segment continues along the edge of the reservoir.

The landscape here is VERY manicured even though it can appear as though the woody areas are pretty wild. There is a lush growth of funghi under a downed log near the entry, and a bit further on there is a stone circle that seems to serve no purpose, though it might once have been a seating area or something designed to stop erosion of the bank. Along the reservoir side of the path is a sign noting that the area is closed for landscape restoration, and further on, near the golf course, a number of small saplings have been marked with fluorescent pink paint and surveyor’s tape. They seem healthy enough, so I assume they are an invasive species marked for removal. Further, there is a sign near the Golf course that warns passers to “stay off the golf course,” and at about the 2 mile point in my loop, there is a large two sided information kiosk, with signs under glass. The signs include identifiers and some ecological information, but the reverse side of the display has an enormous list of regulations (the posters cover at least 9 square feet in fairly small type) and govern hours of operation, water quality, vehicles, recreation, commerce, animal control, and “laws, regulations and limitations,” that purportedly fall into categories other than those listed above. It is a stunning territorial marker in a place where one might be seduced into thinking that they were actually in a natural environment, were it not for the fencing around the reservoir that makes it inaccessible, the parking that makes it exclusionary, and the regulations make it potentially punitive. Other than that? It’s a lovely place for a run.

In social terms, Fresh Pond reservoir invites individuals and small groups to engage with a semi-public environment, but there are no places for gathering. Small groups could use the numerous beautifully crafted benches, but most people seem to see this as a place to move through rather than sit and lunch or read a book or chat with friends. There is little to no interaction between dog walkers at the pond, although I have had a few conversations that I initiated, with a parent and child, an older man walking for exercise (presumably because I passed him twice on the loop), and with several dog walkers. There is little other than public personal space as most people are moving through the space rather than engaging in social interaction, but have I said it? Territory is clear. It is not a place that has any great meaning for me, as it is new to me and has few layers of association. I DID get lost once and recognize the path I took that was the wrong one. Having been redirected by a couple who were walking along the outer loop road, I now associate that spot with the political conversation that ensued as we walked together toward the place they entered the loop walk and I continued on toward my car.

There are clear edges here and even districts where plantings change character. There is one enormously strong path and a number of other secondary ones, and there are a few nodes at the Water Treatment Plant, the dog pond, and the golf course.These are also landmarks, but apart from these places, it is still difficult for me to recognize where I am as I move through the loop. I am actually afraid to travel in the opposite direction for fear of once more getting lost, but I am working hard at identifying markers that will help me orient through the space.

Finally, let me compare the two walks. The Reservoir is some ways more “natural” as it loops around a large body of water and has heavy vegetation on both sides of the path. The Buxton loop is far less natural as it is a walk on a vehicular street, with housing and some limited commerce all along the route. But the territorial markers and the chain link fence make the natural qualities of the Reservoir seem like a sham and the real working landscape of the Buxton loop with corn fields, meadows, wild apple trees and little signage makes this seem much more “natural” than the Reservoir loop.

The Buxton Loop is an oddly social place though not in terms of proxemics. I know many of the people who pass in cars and we wave to each other, and I know the people who live in the houses that abut the street. Some are good friends and I have a sense of where they are at any given time of day and what activities they may be planning for the coming weekend. As I have already written, I have a firm cognitive map of the Buxton Loop and a fairly thin one of the Reservoir, and I am deeply attached to the Buxton Loop and barely committed to the Reservoir. Though both serve similar functions as walking paths and are nearly the same in distance, they are radically different places for me, and I am a different person in each one.

Thoughts of the loop walk:

I am sitting in my favorite leather armchair with sun on my shoulder from one of the west facing windows of the living room. If I turn my head to the right, I can see one of the old maple trees between the house I rent and the South Street section of the Buxton loop. There are two adults and a child walking past the window and a car just drove by, but with the windows closed, I can hear nothing but the sound of the dehumidifier and the occasional cracking of a log in the wood stove.

If perception is based in our senses--in what we see, smell, taste, hear and feel, I think of cognition as what we do with those senses, as how we make sense of the information we've taken in through memory and reasoning and projection. As I sit in this chair, I know something of what is going on, on South Street and Buxton and West Street, without having to see it for myself. The Post Office is open and Liz, our post person, is at the counter or sitting in the corner at the computer. Her car is parked diagonally in the corner of the parking lot and the mail truck has just left with its 2:30 load. In a few minutes, some of the town's children will be getting off the school bus at the Green, and they'll sit beside the town clerk's office waiting to be picked up, or they will start walking home along South and West Streets. Parents will be driving to pick up their children at the elementary school and there will be a brief surge in the number of children's voices along the southern end of the property where this house sits, abutting the school road.

It is this knowing of the patterns of the place that makes it feel like home for me. I walked blindfolded on Buxton the other day because it was safer there with less car traffic and better sightlines for the few drivers. The sounds are more distinct because there is less traffic, and so I could hear the cars from West Street, the changing sounds of the river, the distinctly louder "plopping" of my friend's walking canes as we passed the blue ranch house at the end of Rodney's cornfield,and I knew where I was, even if I couldn't see. There was a breeze on my face as I walked beside the cornfield and I was hyper-aware of the ridge in the road though I kept listing to the left and had to be pulled back to the center of the road.

So as I navigate this landscape, there are landmarks--the blue ranch house with its chained Golden Retriever, the home of the couple who celebrated a 60th birthday earlier this summer with a klezmer band, the family that doesn't take care of its pets, and the house that belongs to the woman who has cared for the town's toddlers for 50 years. Across the cornfield is Rodney's farm--and so I still think of it, even though he turned it over to his son, Brian, two years ago.

These are social patterns that are part of my cognitive map, but there are physical landmarks as well. There is the house I wanted to buy, and even though I can not see the inside from where I walk, I know the crazy-quilt of wood pieces veneered into patterns on the stair landing and around the edges of the rooms on the first floor. There is the edge of West Street with its summer crop of poison parsnip and the barbed wire fence for the cows. I can hear the dog-map in my head--Janna's two springer spaniels just past the Four Corners, the baying of the hound behind the invisible fence, the coonhound a bit further down West Street , the herding dog at the farm. There's the hill on West Street where I have to walk my bicycle. There's the place near Fox Bridge where lightning struck the tree and split off 10 foot long sheets of bark, and that's near the place where the 20-something kid, still high on the last night's partying drove off the bridge and walked away, injured but alive. When I think of this place, I think in layers. That boy is dating the daughter of someone I used to work with who lives diagonally across the road from me. Now that the State has fixed the guard rail, the volunteer fire company has put in a hydrant. And I know the firefighter who was there painting it bright red. He stood there with his child who has the same name as his father. And it is where an old boyfriend caught some trout that we had for dinner, when everyone else said the water was too low and too warm.

When I walk on the bridge, I think of Rich and Richie and of the trauma of that time for the other family. This is part of what I see, and part of what I know.

The river is an edge that shapes the sounds I like here. The fact that the path is a loop means I don't have to backtrack over the same route to get back to where I started. There are subsidiary paths through the cemetery and a field, and past the schoolhouse so I don't have to walk on dusty, high-speed West Street. There's the library, the town clerk's office and the post office if I want to multi-task.

There is a multi-layered cognitive map here, of years spent, walking these roads. I used to live at the other end of West Street, but rarely walked here then, because I chose other routes that were less traveled, through the orchard to the West, and on my friend Ed's land. I knew more about animals then, those orange red newts, the woolly bear caterpillars, the prints of coy dogs in the muddy edges of the fields. Here, there are passing geese heading south and yesterday a deer that stood and watched as I passed, but this is not a place of animal lives. It is a place of people, and the hard work they do to earn a living--the farmer, the milk hauler, the deli that couldn't make it, the Lamplighter whose sign is now gone, and the boy who missed a turn and flew down the length of the river.

I will look forward to reading about your places....