Earlier in the day I passed a sign pointing the way to the old cemetery I visited, to the town of Dublin, and to a pond. What’s at the pond I wondered so I took another detour down another dirt road to find out. Turns out it’s a sweet little swimming hole for local residents. Since I was there off season not another soul was in sight but there appeared to a boat launching site, a sandy beach, parking for locals (very limited unmarked – for visitors?) as well as picnic tables and BBQ pits. It was very quaint and cute! I have been finding a lot of swimming holes lately. I guess it’ll come in handy someday if I ever have kids.
If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!
Sunday evening Katherine and I chilled for a while after our adventures earlier that day and said hello to my brother and his girlfriend before eating what was left of our deep fried s’mores and attempting an early bedtime so we could get up and head into Boston, a little more than three hours away, in the morning.
I can’t say my history with Boston has been the best… I mean it’s a tough city, big, full of rude people and aggressive drivers, statistically the worst in the country, but maybe it’s not their fault. As my brother said, “Those roads aren’t meant for cars.” He’s right. Boston is filled with impossibly narrow roads and streets, many of which sport one sharp curve after another, and none of which make any logical sense. To add insult to injury half the roads are underground where the GPS no longer works and when you finally get where you’re 
going there’s no parking anywhere. And if that’s not bad enough the drivers… wow. They’re called Mass-Holes by the rest of New England. They’re real peaches. I felt like I was playing Russian Roulette at every intersection. But here too is proof of my personal growth in the past year. I only started driving myself to unfamiliar places less than a year ago and Boston was on my “uh-ah, not going to do it” list. But this time around I barely took notice, volunteered to head into the bowels of Hell without a second thought, I think shocking my brother and everyone whom I told. I used to spend my life constantly engulfed by panic and anxiety. These days I wake up and have to check my pulse because I wonder if my heart is still beating when I can’t feel it slam against my chest walls. It’s really odd but so peaceful and wonderful. Even babies don’t thwart me anymore. They used to make me super nervous but just recently I realized they’re not really made of glass. Now instead of being like, “Shit don’t get that thing near me, I may break it.” I actually find them kinda cute. Except infants. They’ll always look like raisins to me.
Back to the story… Katherine asked if we could take an adventure on the way and I said sure, why not. She chose Walden Pond because she wanted to see where Thoreau wrote 
Katherine put it. It was $15 admission and seemed to be… A swimming hole for Bostoners. There were paths around the lake, none marked very well but it didn’t much matter as there were roads and civilization everywhere. No one was going to die out here. A replica of Thoreau’s cabin stood near the visitor center where there was both information and oddly, a gift shop. We discussed how morally strange it was to have a gift shop honoring a man who was all about simplifying one’s life and cutting out materialism… Though this spirit did seem present when we found the sight of his original cabin. Here was a large pile of rocks (just like the rest of New England…) where people had made some sort of weird piled rock memorial to the man. Some used Sharpies to doodle messages and pictures on the stones they left behind.
It seems as if almost the entirety of the lake had been made into one big sandy beach. The one at the front had the shallow bits cordoned off like keeping a mass of people in a big fish net! Further out there was more nature-friendly bits, kayakers seemed to be enjoying the day on the water, and other people had found more isolated spots to swim. Katherine and I were not dressed for this, having no idea there might be swimming involved, but we decided it was a nice hot day and the water did seem rather nice. I pulled off my trusty Chuck Taylors and knee high nerd socks, rolled up my pants, and waded in. Katherine followed suit. OH! The water was so shallow it was warm and clear as the day is bright. Fish immediately came to my shockingly white calves and tried to nibble on them. These fish were weird though…. as they appeared to be a school of African Cichlids. Perhaps this lake was the “farm up North” fish disappear to when they’re no longer wanted. All I knew is these things did not look natural with their bulky silver bodies and fluorescent blue tails.
We stayed in the lake enjoying the day for quite a while, neither one of us really wanting to leave. We had found the site of the original cabin and stared at it’s sad foundation earlier on and now we were watching people stare up at the sky to witness today’s solar eclipse. A little girl near by reminded us about this and although it was slightly darker than usual neither one of us really noticed what was going on behind a large swath of fluffy clouds. Ah well, no eclipse for us, we wandered back to the car and continued on to Malden where a friend was waiting for us.
Screw Auger Falls was another one of the waterfalls listed on the
But with that all said and done Screw Auger Falls was an awesome little spot. Besides having two waterfalls within easy walking distance the smaller of the two allowed for a local swimming hole where children splashed about in the shallow water. Adults mostly loitered around the edges because this place was made of natural granite which had been worn very slick and smooth by the erosive nature of water and perhaps by retreating glaciers before that. On top of that algae grew over many bits which made for an intensely slick surface. None-the-less I had been driving all day and it was in the 80’s. Despite my lack of swimwear I decided to roll up my jeans, lop off my trusty Converses, and wade right in! The water was just above where I had rolled up my jeans at the deepest point across the river where I had started. It had taken me a good ten minutes to get this few feet because of the slick nature of the rocks. Children here knew how to navigate this danger as they slid around on their bellies like joyful seals. It was a sight to see! When I managed to get into this somewhat deep spot I bent down and splashed in the water letting it whoosh over my face and arms, essentially bathing in the river with my clothes still on.
The ice cold water felt almost baptismal in a way. I’ve been playing in a lot of rivers these past few months and every time it’s the same – the healing properties of the waters come from the psychological boost you get when you can almost feel all the negativity in your life just washing over your skin and tumbling down stream never to be seen again. At long last I was encouraging my true hippie nature to come out and play. How joyful I have been getting back in touch with the beauty of New England, and cranking up the radio as I go – singing along loudly and badly to Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and all the music I had stopped listening to over the years when I never should have. The raucous screaming guitars and belted out rhythmus soothing my soul. At night I escape into another long forgotten guilty pleasure – beatnik literature, now with far more bite and meaning with my age and life experience. It’s interesting to almost reach back in time and touch another generation with such a powerful wanderlust. In addition to this seeing all these new beautiful places and meeting so many wonderful people had relit something powerful and intense in my heart – such a strong feeling of connection and wonder. In remembering who I am I learned who I need to be.
