We visited family on a recent weekend and as we approached our family’s home we noticed that few others were at Edmands Park on Blake Street. We headed over there to do an afternoon explore and found wide, level trails that provided very Easy Walking. My husband grew up within walking distance of here, so he spent lots of time here as a kid. But his memories of the park are quite different from what we found on our recent visit.
He recalled a large pond where kids skated in the winter. But he also talked of lots of broken glass on the trails, and flat tires on their bikes because of the glass shards. As we walked, we saw such positive changes from how the park was in years past. Packed dirt trails now offer solid footing, and wide paths make it easy to avoid others as we continue to use care spending time around others. The pond that offered a place to ice skate is now almost completely filled in with cat tails and other water-loving plants.
A very small stream flows through the the park on its way to the nearby Charles River. We spotted lots of sprouting skunk cabbage along the banks of the stream. One trail in the park climbs a hill, and soon I heard memories of sledding adventures in days gone by.
A large culvert at the outlet of the pond used to be marshy, a difficult area to cross. In the years since we last visited, a bridge and bench have been installed and now allow for easy passage from one side of the former pond to the other.
We spent an hour or two wandering the park on a sunny weekend afternoon, and saw only a few others on the trail. Some visitors looked like students coming from the adjacent Boston College property. Nearly everyone wore masks. In our continued quest to find less crowded spaces to spend time in outdoors, this town-owned park was a real surprise. On street parking limits the number of cars that can access the park.
Marjorie
Marjorie Turner Hollman is a writer who loves the outdoors, and is the author of Easy Walks in Massachusetts, 2nd edition, More Easy Walks in Massachusetts, 2nd edition, Easy Walks and Paddles in the Ten Mile River Watershed, and Finding Easy Walks Wherever You Are. Her memoir, the backstory of Easy Walks, is My Liturgy of Easy Walks: Reclaiming hope in a world turned upside down.
Marjorie Turner Hollman 
Thanks for the memories. It was called Cabot woods back in the 70’s and had one of the first dirt bike tracks that had races in the summer. I loved jumping bikes there 😁(BMX bicycles)
I can see the hills and ups and downs would have offered some thrills. We saw a few kids on bikes, but no racing now– Thanks for commenting.
Hi Marjorie
I loved the poem… it’s good to know that they’re keeping clean of glass now, too lovejan
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace — not in the infantile … sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth. – James Baldwin, from his book The Fire Next Time
Yes, there is a whole series of poems along the ling line of cement posts on that section of trail. That was the one I was able to get–a few were damaged. A lovely idea. And no evidence of glass–very clean now.