Wanderings
Venues for wanderings come in all forms—local woods, national parks, world cultural communities, and lonely mountains—but local woods take the wandering prize.
Sixty years ago, as newlyweds, when my husband and I needed to escape industrial Cambridge, where he was an astronomy graduate student, we drove out here to Harvard, to hike, and breathe the clean air—a real escape—and to wander the woods.
One February we hiked in to the beaver dam in the east valley, skated in our shoes, twirling around trees, and gawking at the high, massive wall of a glacial esker—shocking. Returning to the station via Old Schoolhouse Road, we crested the ridge into a brilliant winter sunset view of Mt. Wachusett, and a real estate sign on a roadside elm. The next day, we learned that my husband’s World War II Air Force corporal’s savings were sufficient for us to look into buying that view, and whatever house there was.
Our western sky view in Cambridge was high, behind a three-story broom factory and its rooftop water towers. Soon we bought the hilltop land in Harvard. House and woods drew us in, providing years of immediate adventure right here, with our four children. They, like other young neighbors, explored the local woods, played in the orchards, and fished Black Pond.
Jean McCrosky
Old Littleton Road
