Pre-NECON Boggery
Thursday
Melinda and I have spent the morning knocking around Jamaica Plain, as I wanted to show her my old stomping grounds. Some things had changed - more Asian restaurants, fewer coffeeshops and some had stayed the same - the unidentifiable odor in the local organic grocery, for one thing - but on the whole, tromping up and down and popping into stores while I related stories of my misspent years at Boston College was a deeply pleasant thing to do.
Those of you familiar with downtown Jamaica Plain, however, will know that it's not endlessly trompable. In fact, it's kind of short, even if you tack on the stretch from Anson Street up to the local library branch. And so, even with a stopover at my cousin's place for various and sundry purposes not worth going into here, we still found ourselves with a few hours free before we needed to head down to NECON (or, to call it by its proper name, the Northeast Writers Conference. Or something like that). We kicked around a few ideas - Doyles? (No, we'd just eaten) Cambridge? (Wrong direction) Newport? (Seen it, done it, didn't feel like waging Conan-like war for parking spaces).
And then I sparked on a faded memory from days of yore: The Quaking Bog. Apparently down near Blue Hill there was something called a Quaking Bog, and I'd always meant to get there while I was in Boston and never did, and, err, umm, yeah. Quaking Bog.
Was it on the way, Melinda wanted to know.
Yes, I said. Yes, it was.
Then let's go see it, she said. It's a Quaking Bog.
This was, I found out later, to be her first bog. Apparently Missouri is not bog-rich, being made entirely of limestone and thus sadly lacking in bog-friendly geology.
So we did some digging online and discovered that the Quaking Bog - one of only two on the East Coast! - was located next to Ponkapoag Pond. And when Google Maps searches on Mysterious Quaking Bog Of Blue Hill didn't work, we instead zeroed in on Ponkapoag Pond.
Which got us lost. And honked at. And down a dead-end street. And lost again.
Finally, desperately, we stopped at a Dunkin Donuts, because in New England, all answers can be found at Dunkin. Well, that and Melinda needed some coffee. So we went in, and we ordered her some orange juice (she'd changed her mind) and me an iced hot chocolate, and a bottle of water because there was a slim chance we still might find the Fabled and Legendary Quaking Bog Of Blue Hill and it was 97 degrees out and I'd be damned if I keeled over of heatstroke in the middle of a nonexistent and likely mythical bog, and I asked the cashier if he knew where the Quaking Bog was.
He said, and I quote, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
The woman next to me, however, who'd just gotten her coffee, heard me. Turned to me. And said, all as one sentence:
"The bog yeah you're not faah from it go outta heah and turn right then take 93 if you hit the 95 innerchange you gone too faah but the exit will be theah you just get off and go ovah the highway again then you pahk and get out and it's a ways down a dirt road but it's theah but it don't quake no more."*
And she was exactly right.
The bog itself, incidentally, is gorgeous. Multiple ecosystems cheek by jowl, chock full of carnivorous plants, wild blueberries, wildflowers and more - and much to my surprise, completely free of any methane or sulfur dioxide funk.
And how did we get into the bog? On foot. Apparently, years before, a professor at one of the local colleges had decided that this loveliness - and it is lovely - must be made accessible to the public, so he laid down a plank path into the heart of the bog, right up to the shores of Ponkapoag Pond. By "plank", however, I mean "plank". Narrow strips of wood, laid down by the wonderfully mad professor and his students, maybe a foot or so across leading all the way into the bog. Halfway out, Melinda started wondering how we were going to get back.
"Maybe it curves around," I said.
It doesn't curve around. It's just a narrow plank path with no rails and no room for error, and if a body going in meets a body going out, they're either going to get friendly or someone's getting marinated in bog juice.
But it was 97 and Google Maps can't find the place, so there was nobody else out there, and we were safe from that.
What we were not safe from, however, was me. Or at least I wasn't. We got out to the end of the path, and there were two final planks there, side by side. They reached out from the bog into the lovely blue waters of Ponkapoag Pond, which were blue and lovely and most un-bog-like.
Melinda stepped gingerly onto the first one, barely putting any weight on it. It started to sink into the water. She pulled her foot back, and turned around to admire the boggy scenery.
I decided that since the first one was mushy, the second one - which was, after all, closer to shore - was likely to be solid. And so I gingerly put my foot down on it...
...and nearly went straight in, which caused my calf to seize up, which caused Melinda to think I'd blown out my ankle when really all it was is that I had suddenly gotten nature all over my foot, as opposed to on television where it belongs.
And so, with one soggy foot out of four, we hiked back to the car, tossed the fairly volcanic remains of the frozen hot chocolate (terrible) and orange juice (slightly better) and headed off to NECON.
*That may not be exactly what she said, but regardless, we are in that woman's debt.
Melinda and I have spent the morning knocking around Jamaica Plain, as I wanted to show her my old stomping grounds. Some things had changed - more Asian restaurants, fewer coffeeshops and some had stayed the same - the unidentifiable odor in the local organic grocery, for one thing - but on the whole, tromping up and down and popping into stores while I related stories of my misspent years at Boston College was a deeply pleasant thing to do.
Those of you familiar with downtown Jamaica Plain, however, will know that it's not endlessly trompable. In fact, it's kind of short, even if you tack on the stretch from Anson Street up to the local library branch. And so, even with a stopover at my cousin's place for various and sundry purposes not worth going into here, we still found ourselves with a few hours free before we needed to head down to NECON (or, to call it by its proper name, the Northeast Writers Conference. Or something like that). We kicked around a few ideas - Doyles? (No, we'd just eaten) Cambridge? (Wrong direction) Newport? (Seen it, done it, didn't feel like waging Conan-like war for parking spaces).
And then I sparked on a faded memory from days of yore: The Quaking Bog. Apparently down near Blue Hill there was something called a Quaking Bog, and I'd always meant to get there while I was in Boston and never did, and, err, umm, yeah. Quaking Bog.
Was it on the way, Melinda wanted to know.
Yes, I said. Yes, it was.
Then let's go see it, she said. It's a Quaking Bog.
This was, I found out later, to be her first bog. Apparently Missouri is not bog-rich, being made entirely of limestone and thus sadly lacking in bog-friendly geology.
So we did some digging online and discovered that the Quaking Bog - one of only two on the East Coast! - was located next to Ponkapoag Pond. And when Google Maps searches on Mysterious Quaking Bog Of Blue Hill didn't work, we instead zeroed in on Ponkapoag Pond.
Which got us lost. And honked at. And down a dead-end street. And lost again.
Finally, desperately, we stopped at a Dunkin Donuts, because in New England, all answers can be found at Dunkin. Well, that and Melinda needed some coffee. So we went in, and we ordered her some orange juice (she'd changed her mind) and me an iced hot chocolate, and a bottle of water because there was a slim chance we still might find the Fabled and Legendary Quaking Bog Of Blue Hill and it was 97 degrees out and I'd be damned if I keeled over of heatstroke in the middle of a nonexistent and likely mythical bog, and I asked the cashier if he knew where the Quaking Bog was.
He said, and I quote, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
The woman next to me, however, who'd just gotten her coffee, heard me. Turned to me. And said, all as one sentence:
"The bog yeah you're not faah from it go outta heah and turn right then take 93 if you hit the 95 innerchange you gone too faah but the exit will be theah you just get off and go ovah the highway again then you pahk and get out and it's a ways down a dirt road but it's theah but it don't quake no more."*
And she was exactly right.
The bog itself, incidentally, is gorgeous. Multiple ecosystems cheek by jowl, chock full of carnivorous plants, wild blueberries, wildflowers and more - and much to my surprise, completely free of any methane or sulfur dioxide funk.
And how did we get into the bog? On foot. Apparently, years before, a professor at one of the local colleges had decided that this loveliness - and it is lovely - must be made accessible to the public, so he laid down a plank path into the heart of the bog, right up to the shores of Ponkapoag Pond. By "plank", however, I mean "plank". Narrow strips of wood, laid down by the wonderfully mad professor and his students, maybe a foot or so across leading all the way into the bog. Halfway out, Melinda started wondering how we were going to get back.
"Maybe it curves around," I said.
It doesn't curve around. It's just a narrow plank path with no rails and no room for error, and if a body going in meets a body going out, they're either going to get friendly or someone's getting marinated in bog juice.
But it was 97 and Google Maps can't find the place, so there was nobody else out there, and we were safe from that.
What we were not safe from, however, was me. Or at least I wasn't. We got out to the end of the path, and there were two final planks there, side by side. They reached out from the bog into the lovely blue waters of Ponkapoag Pond, which were blue and lovely and most un-bog-like.
Melinda stepped gingerly onto the first one, barely putting any weight on it. It started to sink into the water. She pulled her foot back, and turned around to admire the boggy scenery.
I decided that since the first one was mushy, the second one - which was, after all, closer to shore - was likely to be solid. And so I gingerly put my foot down on it...
...and nearly went straight in, which caused my calf to seize up, which caused Melinda to think I'd blown out my ankle when really all it was is that I had suddenly gotten nature all over my foot, as opposed to on television where it belongs.
And so, with one soggy foot out of four, we hiked back to the car, tossed the fairly volcanic remains of the frozen hot chocolate (terrible) and orange juice (slightly better) and headed off to NECON.
*That may not be exactly what she said, but regardless, we are in that woman's debt.
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