On Saturday’s taper long run of ten miles, I ran to Weeks Pond, tucked inside my town’s sparse and patchy network of conservation land. To describe Weeks Pond, I will earnestly deploy an overused idiom: It’s a hidden gem!
Weeks Pond and the adjoining meadow are part of the local Audubon sanctuary, but few people seem to know it exists. To access the trails, you have to walk down the road from the main entrance and take a sharp left onto an obscured, little-used spur. It took me years to realize it existed. The signage is tiny, there is no parking, and the entrance looks like nothing more than another grand backyard in a neighborhood full of grand homes.
In the middle of a lush, by New England standards, one-to-two-acre pocket of forest sits Weeks Pond. It is small, man-made, and covered in a thick skin of pale green algae. If you ignore the distant drone of cars and trucks from the Boston-area highways, it is the only outdoor place in my town that reliably offers solitude.
There are ducks. One gem-like quality of Weeks Pond: the rich guy who built it (i.e., Weeks) intentionally included an island so that ducks would have a safe place from the local coyotes.
I like watching the ducks swim through the algae. It is one of those oddly satisfying things. To lure the ducks to make tracks over to me, I tossed a small wood chip into the pond.
Of course, the ducks quickly discover that this is not one of the local elderly gentlepeople coming to feed them stale anadama bread. It was just a deceitful human with no food. I felt bad for undermining their trust. Still, watching their paths etched through the green surface remained pleasing, and I vowed to return someday with hot dog buns. At least I am not a coyote.
