#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Riverway, Brookline, MA

I wake in a dark, windowless room. There is flopping and banging on the other side of the walls. I wonder why Charlie is making so much noise. But it’s not Charlie. I’m in the hospital, I remember, across the hall from the Cardiac ICU where Frank is recovering. I have slept a few hours. Someone is in the waiting room emptying the trash. Charlie is at home, waiting for a walk. It’s 7:15 a.m. Morning. I only know this from the time on my cell phone in the darkness. It’s time to check on Frank, but they are doing tests. So, I will go for a walk. I hit the sidewalk, Longwood is waking up, everyone is rushing to work. I just head in the direction my feet take me, and, as it turns out, instinctively, they take me the few blocks to The Riverway. It’s sunny and the trees are coming to life along the Muddy River. I breathe and walk, stretching my legs, thinking about my gratitude for a successful surgery, for the few words we exchanged in the early, early morning when I got to see for myself, hear for myself, he’s going to be okay. And, here I am, walking along a river, and I am okay, more than okay, I am humbled, grateful, hopeful. And groggy and sleepy. But my feet are taking me exactly where I need to go to begin this new day with energy and peace. How incredible, the morning after a scary surgery, to get to walk in a magical place called The Emerald Necklace.

Brookline, MA

“The park system known as the Emerald Necklace stretches from the Boston Common to Franklin Park. Designed between 1878 and 1895 by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., with Charles Eliot, John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., it is perhaps the first urban greenway in the world. Olmsted himself felt that the “Boston work” was the most important of his career.

The core of the 1,100-acre system consists of five parks: the Back Bay Fens, the Muddy River Improvement (later named Olmsted Park and the Riverway), Jamaica Pond, the Arnold Arboretum and West Roxbury Park (later named Franklin Park). The parks were linked by a network of parkways resulting in a comprehensive system of water, meadows and woodland measuring five miles in length. The Necklace was one of the largest projects ever undertaken by the City of Boston or the Town of Brookline.” https://tclf.org/landscapes/emerald-necklace

Muddy River, Riverway, Brookline, MA