I Need Spy Pond

Spy Pond is a place where we can all be quiet together.

It’s very rarely deserted– maybe in the early evening, when the sky is a dim purple. Usually, though, even when the water is filled with early-spring ice floes, there is always someone there sitting and thinking and sharing the quiet.

I discovered Spy Pond the first year I lived in Somerville’s Davis Square. The MinuteMan Bikeway cuts through the square’s center and takes you beyond to Arlington and Lexington, and one night before there were lights on my bike I rode into the darkness with a few friends. Biking without lights is foolish, especially on unlit bike paths. My friend Dmitriy led the way under the blackness of the trees and whistled old songs so we could make our presence known to anyone traveling in the opposite direction.  We were a bit more careless and carefree, then. Spy Pond is just off the bike path, and I remember stopping a short way in by the cool dark water, watching the distant lights reflect off the pond, talking about how we would all spend the summer riding our bicycles and having adventures.

I returned to Spy Pond often after that evening, alone. It was my escape from real life, from the unrewarding job that wore me down, from the oppressive glow of my computer screen, from the complicated knots of interpersonal relationships that inevitably occur in your early 20’s. After work I would hop on my bike and zoom down the bike path to my quiet, my peace, my Spy Pond. I would sit and write in my notebook, or take pictures, or maybe just let my mind go blissfully blank. I rarely went with company, except for special occasions: with my sister during our summer of Somerville adventure, with my boyfriend after a long pointless fight. The joy and calm of this bubble around Spy Pond always reset my emotions, let me be myself again. It just feels so anomalous in the middle of a hectic life: the soft lapping of water, the hush of green trees, the space for contemplation.

I was bikeless in Boston when I returned this summer and fall, so in August I walked from Davis Square to Spy Pond—a longer trek than I anticipated—and found my oasis as calm and glorious as I remembered. I wasn’t alone, but it didn’t matter: at Spy Pond, everyone seems to find their own quiet. The setting sun made the surface of the placid pond dance with gold and blue. It’s easy to idealize Boston from a distance in Istanbul, but Spy Pond was ideal. My memories weren’t skewed.

On my last day in Boston before I flew back to my expat home, I found myself back at Spy Pond out of necessity. I was a mess of emotions. Some of it was simply because of autumn—whether it’s the intensity of the colors or the crispness of the air or the feeling that everything is in upheaval, New England autumn has always been tumultuous for me. Some of it was because I was transitioning between my homes again, and I was panicked about the change. I’d been away from Boston for a year and a half and I’d convinced myself it wouldn’t feel like home anymore, but it did—it was comfortable and nostalgic and complicated and beautiful and it hurt to leave again. So I went to Spy Pond.

I listened to the lapping water. I watched birds fly across the trees. I let myself feel everything. And I breathed.

There might have been people around, but it didn’t matter. Spy Pond is not far away from civilization. It’s not a secret. It’s not mine.

Spy Pond belongs to everybody, and everybody can find their own quiet at Spy Pond. I need Spy Pond as an anchor, to center myself, to steady myself. In Istanbul, when the pace of this city and the crush of the crowds overwhelm me, I think back to Spy Pond, and I can find my calm again.

If you’d like to visit Spy Pond, you can walk or bike up the Minute Man Bike Path– the water will eventually be on your left once you cross into Arlington. You can also take the 77 bus to Linwood St at Mass Ave; Spy Pond is a two-minute walk away at the end of Linwood St.