The Gem that is Bartlett Pond

I guess it is predictable. Big national tragedy and I eventually turn to photography as balm. So yesterday just as I pulled out of the boat ramp at Chauncy Lake, where I had a wonderful canoe paddle checking out the shoreline for litter (there was surprisingly little), my car radio announced there had been an explosion at the Marathon finish line. The next nine or ten hours were spent near a television and my computer, where I started to find out about friends and fellow Rotarians who had run in the event, very often for charity.

So, as happened after Newtown I decided I would show something of beauty, and something we should be thinking about. A notice that the town meeting will be asked to fund a process of de-weeding Bartlett Pond reminded me of what a gem that body of water is, and how much enjoyment I have had there, pulling out bass for many years, and now taking out my camera and, whoops avoid dropping my cell phone in the water, which happened once.

This is a collection of photos, some of which I have published on Patch and elsewhere and you may have seen. Enjoy them and, if you have a canoe or kayak, head on over to the launch area off Lyman Street, entering past the beautiful butterfly garden. It takes about an hour to do the entire shoreline. Keep a sharp eye out and you will see swans, geese, wood ducks (stay as far as possible from their nest boxes), mallards, very shy herons, huge turtles, otters and more birds than I can name. It does get very weedy and one hopes that someday the town can afford a more permanent solution than dredging – but that it is proposed this year.

One last word, and that is that the town park at the boat ramp has picnic tables. But it also has too much litter: right now a desk by the side of the road that has been there for a couple of weeks, overflowing garbage bins, junk by the bins and too damn many water bottles on the shore by the ramp. I have chosen to not spoil this presentation with pictures of all this, but will publish pics if the place isn’t cleaned up. So enjoy this gem, on your screen and in person. I like running into friends there and so keep an eye out for a battered little Old Town pack canoe with a big guy with camera.

And, lets continue to think of our friends who were in the Marathon as well as those thousands we know not. And give thanks to the first responders and others who did so much to help so many at what was for many hours a beautiful event.