This is the fourth of a four-part series by Emily Hiestand, a writer, editor and friend of History Cambridge. The series was first published for The Georgia Review and Beacon Press in 1998. It was updated slightly in 2021 for publication in This Impermanent Earth, and in 2024 for History Cambridge. The full series can be found on the History Cambridge website.
Part Two | Alluvial Fan
One afternoon, circumnavigating Fresh Pond with a photocopy of an 18th century map in hand, I see that our local pond was once linked by a series of rivers to the Atlantic Ocean, that for all but the past hundred years of its existence our inland region had a direct channel to the sea. On the old map, the river Menotomy rises out of Fresh Pond, winds through the Swamp, joins the Little River and flows into the Mystic, which empties into the Atlantic. I also see that some vestige of that former water route would still be navigable by canoe. The Little River is extant, and flows into a stream called Alewife Brook, formerly the last stretch of the Menotomy. A present-day river guidebook tersely describes Alewife Brook as “not recommended,” but Peter and I cannot resist taking our canoe down the olive-green stream. As we float past lilies and half-submerged shopping carts, we will be moving along the oldest artery of our watershed.
The route will eventually take us through a lock at the Amelia Earhart Dam on the Mystic River, which prompts Peter to say, “We should get an air horn to signal the lock keeper.” I say, “Great,” because I have learned that Peter is always right about gear, and when it is needed: There was the time with a Maglite in the Everglades; the spare bike tire on a remote country road; and a spark plug socket wrench on hand to fix a smoking car. Many times I have owed my happiness, and once my life, probably, to Peter’s skill with gear. He selected an air horn at the sporting goods store and together we read the instructions, which were very explicit, saying in essence: Do Not Use Your New Air Horn. It Will Destroy Your Ear Drums, So Just Never Use It. “Oh, they have to say that,” Peter said, hefting the little horn. “Some rude people take them to sporting events.”
The only other special thing we will need for this journey is an idea about where to land a canoe in a big-city working harbor. Our canoe is 17 feet of a dull green material called Royalex, a stable boat with a low-slung profile, named in honor of the Victorian traveler Mary Kingsley, who liked to paddle in African swamps. We want to land the Mary Kingsley somewhere along the banks of the inner harbor, near the Tobin Bridge. On the early summer evening that Peter and I scout the harbor, we discover not a single takeout site for a canoe, but many other interesting things, including a marine shipping terminal, the titanic legs of the Tobin Bridge, a burned-out pier, the U.S. Gypsum Co. and a mountain of road salt recently offloaded from an Asian freighter. Near sundown, an oblique red light slants over pools of steamy gypsum tailings. This extravagant light and the sheer muscle of the place make for a romantic landscape. As is often the case, Mr. Emerson has been this way before, admiring the potentially fine face of industry. He writes:
It is vain that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles in the old arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness in new and necessary facts, in the field and road-side, in the shop and mill. Proceeding from a religious heart it will raise to a divine use the railroad, the insurance office, the joint-stock company; our law, our primary assemblies, our commerce, the galvanic battery, the electric jar, the prism, and the chemist’s retort … The boat at St. Petersburg, which plies along the Lena by magnetism, needs little to make it sublime.
On the other side of the river lies the city of Chelsea, nearly all galvanic battery – a welter of scrap metal yards, weigh stations, warehouses, sugar refineries and gas yards, the last a sinuous complex of pastel pipes. As night comes and a hazy fog begins to materialize, we happen on the Evergood Meat Packing Co., where beams of light from mercury vapor arc lamps rain down on a parking lot, carving the lot out of the night and lighting up this scene: three meat packers in long white butchers’ coats, the men running through the lot passing a soccer ball back and forth expertly. The ball bounces from a corrugated wall, skims under the axles of a fleet of trucks. The long white coats are brilliant in the vapor arc light, the fabric flowing, flapping like wings. It is the quickest glimpse, as now the road climbs a dark hill. From the summit, the city’s financial district is visible across the river, its lights flickering, cleaning crews at work. Down the hill, on the river itself, and moored to the bank, we see the object of our search: a small pavilion and public dock.
The most succinct account of our river journey is that we launched a canoe among somnolent lily pads and took it out near a Brazilian cargo tanker. Our paddle begins on the Little River, where, passing the mouth of a narrow ditch full of appliances, engine parts and a sodden teddy bear, we are passing the paltry remains of the wide Menotomy. Along one stretch, the Little River is so shallow that it is more a skim-coat of water than a channel; the dorsal spines of carp crest the waterline, giving the river the eerie appearance of being alive with silver grey eels.
As it deepens again, the Little River becomes Alewife Brook, and when we pass the gas station near Meineke Muffler, we are at the old site of a basketry weir, a spot that both Native Americans and settlers used for harvesting shad and alewives – the latter still plentiful enough in the 19th century to move one observer to write, “I have seen two or three hundred taken at a single cast of a small seine.” Up to the present day, new citizens come to this watershed in spring to catch alewives. On another day at the Mystic Dam, we meet three slender Cambodian men whose fishing gear consists of a box of large pink garbage bags. The men are barefoot, wearing dated bell-bottoms and white dress shirts and they fish from slippery rocks, dipping the pink plastic bags into the causeway spill. Although the numbers of the fish are greatly diminished, at this dam in spring they look abundant, flowing over the spill into the thin plastic bags like grains of rice from a bulk bin.
An alewife is an anadromous fish (“running upward”), and its presence in our watershed is known as ephemeral. The fishes are seasonal transients, coming from the ocean to freshwater to spawn. Continuing south now on the Mystic River, we are following the young alewives’ fall route back to sea. They would pass, as we do now, backyard barbecues and hammocks, and then the backside of a downtown, where retaining walls read “Dragons Rule” and iron infrastructure swirls with organic patterns of rust and rain.
Here and there, trees overhang the river, dappling its surface of lily pads. As the river widens, the tree break disappears. We pass by an Edison power plant, and under a bridge that bears eight lanes of interstate traffic. The Amelia Earhart Dam comes into view. Peter readies the air horn, and when the dam is close, he presses the small button. It delivers one of the loudest bursts of sound I have ever heard – next to the time a lightning bolt hit the house. The lock keeper likes the air horn, likes being hailed in the proper nautical way, and gives Peter a crisp salute. As our canoe glides into the narrow chamber, two powerboats hurry in behind us. The doors of the lock slide closed, the water rises, and when the lock opens again, the still, olive river water has vanished and we are in an ocean-blue chop with whitecaps.
The powerboats take off like rodeo cowboys on broncos, and I am wishing that we had something with a throttle too. As we move more slowly into the harbor and the wind picks up, first tugboats, then small freighters appear. Conveyor belts, rigs and tall booms are cantilevered over the water; an inverted silver dome built to cover 20 tons of unrefined sugar glints on the bank. By the time the big bridge looms into view, our canoe has shrunk to a bobbin – a bit of flotsam below the gantry cranes. We are gawking at the cranes when a rogue ocean swell rises out of nowhere, tosses the canoe several feet into the air, spins us a little, breaks across the side, slaps us full-face with salty water. The pavilion and dock are just visible now on the other side of the river, and as we struggle toward the landing in the chop, we marvel at the first people of this territory who took their thinner, lighter canoes out much farther, into open ocean, and up and down much of the Atlantic coast.
At the dock we are met by two small boys, brothers, who shyly stare and smile at the canoe, and within seconds of our invitation are in it, are touching its sides, gripping the paddles, putting on lifejackets and not sitting too still but gently rocking the boat to get a feel for it. Their names, the boys tell us, are Ulysses and Erik.
I wouldn’t dream of making that up, and where else but a big-city waterfront would you expect, these days, to be met by the two chief heroes of epic seafaring? True to their names, the boys cannot take their eyes off our boat. They are intrigued by paddles. Fascinated by the weight and color of life jackets. Overjoyed by ropes, by tying knots. Eager to know what the canoe is made of. Running their hands over the cane seats and wooden thwarts. In love with all things nautical. Beside themselves with happiness when their father says, yes, they can take a short ride with us, just around the perimeter of the pier, not far. And when at last we must head home, the legends (as bold, as clever as ever) cajole us, insist on hauling some of the gear up the slight incline to our waiting car, where they are further enthralled by the every detail of mounting a canoe on a Subaru: how the canoe is lifted up by two people, how it is strapped onto the roof of the car, how foam clips are slipped over the gunnels, how ropes are laced and tightened.
Ulysses and Erik tell us that, yes, they were born here, in this city, but home is an island far from here, somewhere over the water. They each point out to sea, not exactly in the same direction. When the canoe has been secured in place, and all the gear stowed, the hero-boys shimmer away, and are last seen lying flat on their stomachs, their arms submerged in water up to the shoulder blades – as close to being in the ocean as boys on dry land can be.
The only other special thing we will need for this journey is an idea about where to land a canoe in a big-city working harbor. Our canoe is 17 feet of a dull green material called Royalex, a stable boat with a low-slung profile, named in honor of the Victorian traveler Mary Kingsley, who liked to paddle in African swamps. We want to land the Mary Kingsley somewhere along the banks of the inner harbor, near the Tobin Bridge. On the early summer evening that Peter and I scout the harbor, we discover not a single takeout site for a canoe, but many other interesting things, including a marine shipping terminal, the titanic legs of the Tobin Bridge, a burned-out pier, the U.S. Gypsum Co. and a mountain of road salt recently offloaded from an Asian freighter. Near sundown, an oblique red light slants over pools of steamy gypsum tailings. This extravagant light and the sheer muscle of the place make for a romantic landscape. As is often the case, Mr. Emerson has been this way before, admiring the potentially fine face of industry. He writes:
It is vain that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles in the old arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness in new and necessary facts, in the field and road-side, in the shop and mill. Proceeding from a religious heart it will raise to a divine use the railroad, the insurance office, the joint-stock company; our law, our primary assemblies, our commerce, the galvanic battery, the electric jar, the prism, and the chemist’s retort … The boat at St. Petersburg, which plies along the Lena by magnetism, needs little to make it sublime.
On the other side of the river lies the city of Chelsea, nearly all galvanic battery – a welter of scrap metal yards, weigh stations, warehouses, sugar refineries and gas yards, the last a sinuous complex of pastel pipes. As night comes and a hazy fog begins to materialize, we happen on the Evergood Meat Packing Co., where beams of light from mercury vapor arc lamps rain down on a parking lot, carving the lot out of the night and lighting up this scene: three meat packers in long white butchers’ coats, the men running through the lot passing a soccer ball back and forth expertly. The ball bounces from a corrugated wall, skims under the axles of a fleet of trucks. The long white coats are brilliant in the vapor arc light, the fabric flowing, flapping like wings. It is the quickest glimpse, as now the road climbs a dark hill. From the summit, the city’s financial district is visible across the river, its lights flickering, cleaning crews at work. Down the hill, on the river itself, and moored to the bank, we see the object of our search: a small pavilion and public dock.
The most succinct account of our river journey is that we launched a canoe among somnolent lily pads and took it out near a Brazilian cargo tanker. Our paddle begins on the Little River, where, passing the mouth of a narrow ditch full of appliances, engine parts and a sodden teddy bear, we are passing the paltry remains of the wide Menotomy. Along one stretch, the Little River is so shallow that it is more a skim-coat of water than a channel; the dorsal spines of carp crest the waterline, giving the river the eerie appearance of being alive with silver grey eels.
As it deepens again, the Little River becomes Alewife Brook, and when we pass the gas station near Meineke Muffler, we are at the old site of a basketry weir, a spot that both Native Americans and settlers used for harvesting shad and alewives – the latter still plentiful enough in the 19th century to move one observer to write, “I have seen two or three hundred taken at a single cast of a small seine.” Up to the present day, new citizens come to this watershed in spring to catch alewives. On another day at the Mystic Dam, we meet three slender Cambodian men whose fishing gear consists of a box of large pink garbage bags. The men are barefoot, wearing dated bell-bottoms and white dress shirts and they fish from slippery rocks, dipping the pink plastic bags into the causeway spill. Although the numbers of the fish are greatly diminished, at this dam in spring they look abundant, flowing over the spill into the thin plastic bags like grains of rice from a bulk bin.
An alewife is an anadromous fish (“running upward”), and its presence in our watershed is known as ephemeral. The fishes are seasonal transients, coming from the ocean to freshwater to spawn. Continuing south now on the Mystic River, we are following the young alewives’ fall route back to sea. They would pass, as we do now, backyard barbecues and hammocks, and then the backside of a downtown, where retaining walls read “Dragons Rule” and iron infrastructure swirls with organic patterns of rust and rain.
Here and there, trees overhang the river, dappling its surface of lily pads. As the river widens, the tree break disappears. We pass by an Edison power plant, and under a bridge that bears eight lanes of interstate traffic. The Amelia Earhart Dam comes into view. Peter readies the air horn, and when the dam is close, he presses the small button. It delivers one of the loudest bursts of sound I have ever heard – next to the time a lightning bolt hit the house. The lock keeper likes the air horn, likes being hailed in the proper nautical way, and gives Peter a crisp salute. As our canoe glides into the narrow chamber, two powerboats hurry in behind us. The doors of the lock slide closed, the water rises, and when the lock opens again, the still, olive river water has vanished and we are in an ocean-blue chop with whitecaps.
The powerboats take off like rodeo cowboys on broncos, and I am wishing that we had something with a throttle too. As we move more slowly into the harbor and the wind picks up, first tugboats, then small freighters appear. Conveyor belts, rigs and tall booms are cantilevered over the water; an inverted silver dome built to cover 20 tons of unrefined sugar glints on the bank. By the time the big bridge looms into view, our canoe has shrunk to a bobbin – a bit of flotsam below the gantry cranes. We are gawking at the cranes when a rogue ocean swell rises out of nowhere, tosses the canoe several feet into the air, spins us a little, breaks across the side, slaps us full-face with salty water. The pavilion and dock are just visible now on the other side of the river, and as we struggle toward the landing in the chop, we marvel at the first people of this territory who took their thinner, lighter canoes out much farther, into open ocean, and up and down much of the Atlantic coast.
At the dock we are met by two small boys, brothers, who shyly stare and smile at the canoe, and within seconds of our invitation are in it, are touching its sides, gripping the paddles, putting on lifejackets and not sitting too still but gently rocking the boat to get a feel for it. Their names, the boys tell us, are Ulysses and Erik.
I wouldn’t dream of making that up, and where else but a big-city waterfront would you expect, these days, to be met by the two chief heroes of epic seafaring? True to their names, the boys cannot take their eyes off our boat. They are intrigued by paddles. Fascinated by the weight and color of life jackets. Overjoyed by ropes, by tying knots. Eager to know what the canoe is made of. Running their hands over the cane seats and wooden thwarts. In love with all things nautical. Beside themselves with happiness when their father says, yes, they can take a short ride with us, just around the perimeter of the pier, not far. And when at last we must head home, the legends (as bold, as clever as ever) cajole us, insist on hauling some of the gear up the slight incline to our waiting car, where they are further enthralled by the every detail of mounting a canoe on a Subaru: how the canoe is lifted up by two people, how it is strapped onto the roof of the car, how foam clips are slipped over the gunnels, how ropes are laced and tightened.
Ulysses and Erik tell us that, yes, they were born here, in this city, but home is an island far from here, somewhere over the water. They each point out to sea, not exactly in the same direction. When the canoe has been secured in place, and all the gear stowed, the hero-boys shimmer away, and are last seen lying flat on their stomachs, their arms submerged in water up to the shoulder blades – as close to being in the ocean as boys on dry land can be.
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Emily Hiestand and her husband lived in the North Cambridge neighborhood described in this essay for 20 years. Her writing appears in magazines (including The Atlantic, Salon and The New Yorker); anthologies (including Best American Poetry, The Norton Book of Nature Writing and “This Impermanent Earth”); and many literary journals. She developed the communications program for MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and served as its director for 15 years. Earlier, Hiestand was the Literary Editor for Orion Magazine, working with America’s leading nature writers and introducing themes (including environmental justice) into the magazine’s pages. She has served on the boards of PEN New England and the Associates of the Boston Public Library.
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