On the Waterfront
This Sunday, the Sprout and I took a lovely walk from Boston’s North End down to Faneuil Hall. It was one of those crushingly beautiful early Spring days: a vibrant blue sky, with light wisps of cloud to accent the purity of its coloring; a constant, cool breeze brushing our faces, a foreshadowing of the following week’s gray dreariness. Altogether, a magnificent day.
Our path took us along the wharfs of the North End and Financial District. Looking out at the harbor reminded me of a picture I’d once seen, in a coffee-table book I happened upon in some-or-other bookstore. It was a book about the waterways of Boston, and it contained a fascinating map of Boston, hand-drawn in the late 18th century.
I’m not sure if this is that picture or not, but it certainly is striking. Imagine all that land, created the hard way: Man-Made Land, “terra infirma”, if you will. The proper name is something like “filled land”, or “claimed land”, I’m not entirely sure. Imagine all those throngs of Bostonians, living, working, playing, what-ever-ing on places that didn’t exist two hundred years ago. Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Charlestown, Southie: like pieces of dried fruit that have been pumped full of hydration, and swelled to twice their customary size. Gives new meaning to “Back Bay”, doesn’t it?
As a kid, I remember hearing that should Boston’s long dormant fault line (a fairly active one, by geological standards) once again start quaking, the motion would cause all that fill to assume the physical properties of a liquid, compromising scores of buildings and crippling the city. Perhaps there’s some validity to that story, or maybe its an urban myth, best kept in a drawer with stories about Pop Rocks and spontaneous human combustion.
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