Fresh Pond
Enjoying a cotton candy sunset at Fresh Pond in July 2021
One of my favorite places in the world is Fresh Pond.
It is a reservoir and park in Cambridge near where I live and grew up. It was one of the first places my mom brought me after I was born in stroller. In 5th grade, we walked Fresh Pond as a family the day of 9/11 when I had to come home from school early. It was one of the first places I began to fall in love with running as a sophomore in college. My partner Tim and I walked Fresh Pond as one of our first dates. Fresh Pond has been a place I have visited almost weekly throughout my life.
When Tim and I got our dog Bodhi in January 2019, it became a daily part of our lives as it is the closest off-leash dog space in the city. The loop around Fresh Pond is around 2.2 miles and Bodhi loves to explore every inch of it. At the end of 2020, Tim and I were discussing our goals for 2021. In a spirit of playfulness, we began setting goals for Bodhi, including keeping track of how many Fresh Pond walks he did. We didn’t have a pond walk number in mind and instead were just curious to see how often we went.
To keep track of our pond walks, Tim made a paper form that we kept on our fridge with the categories of date, pond walk direction (clockwise or counterclockwise), R or W (run or walk), who (did we walk it with friends or other dogs?), and any other significant notes from the walk. Filling out each pond walk on the form was a powerful way for us to soak in the little joys of the walk, from noting a beautiful sunrise, including the name of a new dog we met, to recording what friends we ran into.
As I write this on the last day of 2021, we have gone to the pond 512 times. That means Bodhi has ran/walked over 1,126 miles around Fresh Pond! Some of the miles were just with Tim, some with just me, and some of us together. Every pond circumnavigation was a gift. Every walk or run around the pond was a time for us to connect with one another, our community, and mother nature. Often times we would leave our phones at home so that the pond walk could be a time to unplug and slow down. Prioritizing connection and unplugging has been paramount to our mental and physical health in 2021 and I know we will continue that in the new year. We don’t have any Fresh Pond goals for 2022 as we want to keep the pond a place of joy and freedom for our family. I have no doubt we will continue to walk Fresh Pond in 2022 and am eager for the lessons and experiences to come.
Where is a local loop or place you have frequented the most in 2021 or in your life? What does this place mean to you? What have you learned from it? Please feel free to share your experience in a comment below.
Thank you for being here and sharing!
