Two new groups have joined the effort to find new locations for playing fields in town.
The Bare Hill Pond Repurposing Committee is investigating the feasibility of putting baseball, softball, and lacrosse fields on floating pontoons. And the Grasping at Straws Coalition sees great potential in the median strip between the northbound and southbound lanes of Interstate 495 south of the Harvard interchange.
Both groups face serious opposition from environmental and state regulators.
Perhaps the most intriguing idea is using the median strip for soccer fields. On the plus side, motorists would be able to watch games while being stuck in traffic. And even opponents agree that stretch of highway is so dangerous it couldn’t get much worse. Anything that might slow drivers down is worthy of consideration, they say.
In the center of town, creating athletic fields at Bare Hill Pond has obvious advantages, as does teaching important survival skills there. If climate scientists are right, most of our offspring will eventually need to know how to navigate debris-choked waterways, in makeshift boats or up to their knees in filth. These are life-saving skills, along with swimming, diving, and building a boat out of whatever they have on hand.
In the time we have left to pretend that won’t happen, why not at least teach our young athletes to play sports on floating platforms? If there was ever a time to start thinking about that, proponents say, this is it.
