Someone walked into the police station last Wednesday afternoon with the unwelcome news that crude drawings and ugly figures had been spray-painted on rocks and trees in one of Harvard’s most beautiful spots, Hoskings Point, along the shore of Bare Hill Pond.
The point is part of the conservation land south of Bellevue Cemetery known as the Clapp-Scorgie-Tufts-Smith land after its former owners. Hoskings Point is a small, rocky peninsula with sweeping views of the pond. Tall, old trees cast deep shade almost to the water’s edge. A few rhododendrons, planted long ago, bloom soft rose-red at this time of year amid the forest’s greens, grays, and browns. The site is so lovely that couples have sometimes chosen it for their weddings, says Wendy Sisson of the Conservation Commission.
And now pictures of genitalia, cartoonish human figures, slang words, symbols, staring eyes, and a large “2019”—all in blue and white paint—mar the massive boulders and even the tree trunks.
“In my 20 years of being involved with our town conservation land and in the years before that of prior caretakers, I have not seen or heard of such a serious defacement of the land,” Sisson wrote in an email to Bromfield School Principal Scott Hoffman and Police Chief Ed Denmark. She noted that the prominent “2019” suggested a connection to Bromfield’s graduating class. Blue and white are also the school colors.
“Another reason the defacement is so disturbing,” Sisson wrote, “is that while graffiti on man-made surfaces can be sandblasted or painted over, it is not so simple on living trees and lichen-covered rocks.” In a phone conversation, she said the Conservation Commission and its Land Stewardship Subcommittee that she chairs will research the best way to clean up as much of the graffiti as possible.
