Running/Health & Fitness

Uncommonly Lovely Boston Common

Uncommonly Lovely Boston Common [1:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Boston wears the spring season well. Maybe it’s that the preceding winter season sometimes seems just a little longer than absolutely necessary, but Boston in bloom is especially lovely and Boston Common, located southwest of the Statehouse, frames springtime especially well. As the oldest public park in the United States, the almost 50 acre tract has a colorful history that has included a British military encampment, public hangings, public rallies, and celebrations. At one time it was even used as a cow and sheep pasture.

Today, the grounds are dotted with artwork, monuments and shade trees that invite lingering and lunchtime picnics for area office workers. Adjacent to the Public Garden, a spectacular splash of nature within the heart of the city, the walkways of Boston Common are popular with joggers, walkers, roller-bladers and cyclists. The Frog Pond operates as an ice rink from November through mid-March. In the sweltering summer months it’s more of an urban beach with seating at the edges of the wading pool and a spraying fountain for a quick cool down. It wasn’t quite “beach” weather when my cousin and I walked through last month, but with blue skies and good conversation that didn’t really matter at all.

15 Beacon and W Boston provide alternate urban hotel experiences within easy walking distance of the park and the Massachusetts Statehouse on Beacon Street.

Tags: Boston, Running/Health & Fitness by Heather Dugan
3 Comments »

Goodbyes in Van Wert

While never my own hometown, Van Wert, Ohio holds enough elements of my family history to make walking its streets feel a bit like a homecoming. It’s the sort of place where mention of a family name brings recognition tied to the members of multiple generations. It is the town where my mother grew up, and the place we returned to for reunions, weddings and funerals. Over recent years the return trips were more often for funerals. This past weekend, we said our goodbyes to Grandma.

Death no longer feels like an unusual event but rather an inevitable transition. Her life was 93 years long and full of most of the things she had hoped for. I will miss her, but there is no tragedy in the ending of a long and fruitful life. I wonder if I will miss Van Wert, too. Her burial may have been my last reason to make the two and a half hour journey through flattened farmlands to this little town in northwest Ohio. Last Monday may have been my last time to sit in the church where my parents were married and where my maternal grandparents have now both been memorialized.

We stayed next door to the first home at which I remember visiting Grandma on Washington Street. Our rooms at the Hughes Inn, an Arts & Crafts Mission style bungalow now operating as a bed and breakfast, allowed me to peek at will into some memories next door. I wandered down to the stream that was off limits to me as a child and then ran past some other personal landmarks on my morning run. Yes, it was all smaller and fitted more closely together than I remembered, but I expected that.

As I ran past the fairgrounds, the reservoir and golf course, the unusual black squirrels common to Van Wert county, and my grandparents’ “dream home” on nearby Walnut Street, I remembered talking about the details of long ago visits with Grandma during our last time together in her care center’s dining room. She always loved listening to shared memories. The stories of playing “dress up” with her old clothes, putting on a circus for the neighborhood children and swinging from the willow trees that lined the lane behind her favorite home… The moments were singularly insignificant, but together they added up to her investments in me and her other grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I like to think that my retelling those old stories told her in a tangible way how very much she has mattered in my life.