A Walk to Remember

        There was an activity I did way back in the year 2021 when I was a junior in my first ever writing workshop. The goal of the activity was to go into google maps and find a spot that’s familiar to you and basically write about it. The goal was to sorta basically draw out whatever memories and associations you had with that place in order to maybe see if there was some kind of narrative/story you could pull from it. To understand the rest of the story, I’ll explain a bit of my current routine while I am away from an actual gym facility. There are two routes I use to go on runs/walks to help spice things up and to accomplish different things. There’s the old airfield where I go because it’s closer and more convenient and the second is this road that goes along a marsh that ends in a CVS as well as a Dunkin that I like taking when I want to eat some breakfast on the way back or maybe buy some supplies. For the activity I decided to use the second route because that was the first place where I had really taken the time to schedule a routine around it. See way back in the covid era when I was at this place all the time for online classes and chilling in the summer, I would go down that route all the time for some quick exercise and pretty cheap donuts. Recently I haven’t really been using that route because of the summer heat, I would rather get back to my nice and air conditioned room over enjoying a blueberry frosted donut. Today was different though because I decided to go down that route on a complete whim and since it had been a while I was feeling a little nostalgic. So, unlike the google maps version I got to enjoy the views in person. I felt inspired and took a few pictures along the route so I’ll be putting here and talking a bit about what it all means.

This first picture is always the first true obstacle in this journey. I’m not the tallest person around, but the way this tree has been allowed to grow has made it so that I have to duck or go onto the road everytime I pass by it. As you can see from the lower branches, someone has put in the effort to trim these trees, but they have very crucially missed the whole point of trimming the tree. Like it still obstructs the path a little bit. Very unfortunate.  For as long as I’ve been regularly walking it has been there and even though the annoyance of getting around it has been there, I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. The routine of ducking in that point has honestly gotten so routine that not doing it might honestly feel a little too foreign and weird so maybe it’s a good thing it has been allowed to remain.

This plant hasn’t always been there, at least it wasn’t there the last time I walked by. I was a little interested in the position of the plant, having it stand alone amongst the other plants made it look like the arrangement was intentional. I’m no plant expert, but maybe it is a different type of plant from the surrounding ones and whoever was in charge of landscaping wanted it to stand out. Maybe they wanted to make a small secluded place close to the road, but away enough to maybe escape the modern world for a bit. I wonder if the plant has some sick flowers that don’t show themselves during the warm seasons or maybe it will find itself growing taller than its neighbors. Whatever the case I would indeed now like to track this plant’s progress anytime I am here. Also to see if something else is done with this neat little clearing. 

Something I also see everywhere near me are bunnies or are they rabbits? Whatever they are, they seem to be everywhere in the Boston area. When I was at college I saw these little guys absolutely everywhere and here definitely isn’t an exception. I would love to be around often enough to maybe see if I could keep tabs on whatever bunnies existed in the area, though to be honest they look similar enough where I most definitely could not tell the difference. It reminds me of this cat that would hang around my other house. They were an all black cat that would love to walk around our front lawn and sometimes came up to the window while I was gaming. Unfortunately, I never really felt brave enough to come out and try to greet it and my mother didn’t want a black cat around the house because of the superstitions of them being bad luck. A few years back, they stopped showing up around the house. I wonder if someone else was able to take them in or if they met some horrible fate. If they showed up now, I would 100% try to take them in and definitely regret not doing so back then. Now, I wouldn’t do this with the bunnies, but now I definitely have some greater appreciation for the animals that exist near the places where I live.

This is supposed to be a parking lot. To be honest, I never really liked it being here. Down the road there is a very accessible and free parking lot which really makes this place pointless. You can even see that a lot of people agree. It’s almost always empty and most definitely in need of some kind of maintenance. There aren’t even any painted lines, just some rocks laid out in a way to indicate some kind of direction. Admittedly, the one closest to the road is a nice place to take a quick break and tie my shoes. I would honestly rather they just tear it all up and let nature reclaim fully, instead of keeping it around like that. 

Here is that parking lot I was talking about. In a car, it’s literally less than five minutes, no effort required at all. Plus you even get to park next to a sick wooded park. I’ve taken the time to explore the park a few times, but in all honesty I’ve never really seen the appeal of stuff like this. Sure it’s a pretty good way to have a nice hiking experience, but it’s so short that you can circle it multiple times within an hour, especially if you are an experienced hiker. I would rather just continue on the path instead of taking what I can only consider is a side quest.

There is no deep meaning behind this photo. The trash can looks like a minion and I think that’s very funny.

Compression destroyed these pictures specifically for some reason, but these are a collection of some of the birds I saw during this walk. Birds have always been an easy top 3 animal for me on the tier list. I’m not really sure what it is, I just find them absolutely fascinating. Like the way they always seem to be moving conveys some really sick level of energy, the way they’re always chirping and singing sounds seems to always sound nice, or maybe it’s just how colorful they can get. There are a lot of things to like about birds. In fact, as I said a while ago, my favorite magic deck has a bird as the commander. So a lot of the time, while I’m out for runs, I take some small breaks and just watch the birds doing their things. There is that one in the nest that has safely been holding that fort down for a while. The robins and such are inhabiting the trees. There are even ducks I think just chilling in the marsh. It’s cool because it’s like low effort bird watching where I don’t need to get any special equipment, they just show up and hang out right in front of me. It always makes those runs just way more enjoyable than they would be without.

Thanks for getting to this point if you’ve been reading this far! This was just a nice thing to revisit from a long time ago and I think it was nice to see the same things that inspired me so much in the first place. Maybe I’ll even revisit the piece itself for tomorrow(no promises). There are definitely a lot of things I talk about revisiting, but don’t so I guess a goal I’ll set for myself is to revisit/revise a piece within the next few. No hard goal because I don’t want to promise something I know may not happen, but we will see. So without further ado, I’ll see y’all tomorrow!