River Portraits > Night Walks
Along the Charles
By Martha Henry
It's dark when I get home and
take the dog for her evening walk along the river. Phoebe, my five-year-old
black Lab, shakes off an afternoon of sleep and pulls me exuberantly along.
After a difficult day at work, it's a relief to be outside and moving.
The quickest route to the Charles
is down Thorndike Street, past the Middlesex County Courthouse, where
TV reporters stand outside and practice their summaries of the day's big
trial. We pass the Galleria mall and finally reach the river. My breath
shows in the cold night air. In the years that I've owned the dog, we've
taken this walk a thousand times.
At this hour there's little
traffic on the Cambridge River Parkway. The cars driving by with their
lights on don't feel like a human presence. In the city you learn to live
with degrees of solitude. By the river at night I feel a certain aloneness,
though in truth, there are people all around me. I can see through the
windows of the Sonesta Hotel and the lighted offices of a software company.
In luxury riverfront apartments, people are turning on lamps, watering
orchids, pulling curtains one way or the other. A Red Line train rumbles
across the Longfellow Bridge.
If I feel solitude here, it's
not because I'm removed from others, but because I feel unobserved. At
the moment there are no other dog walkers or joggers or kids smoking pot
on the sidewalk. Half of the streetlights are out. It's dark, but in the
city, darkness, like solitude, comes in degrees. It's a clear night and
I can see where I'm walking, but only a couple of stars are visible in
the night sky.
With the dog I feel pleasantly
alone. Her presence doesn't spoil the feeling of solitude, but somehow
enhances it. I slow down and then stop. The dog sits without being told.
We've got the whole stretch of river to ourselves. For a while we're quiet,
just looking at the black water and listening to the wind in the maple
leaves. I feel as though I'm subsiding back into myself.
It isn't a long moment. Soon
we're walking again. Soon there are other people: three racing cyclists,
a guy talking loudly on his cell phone, the woman with the poodle named
Romeo. At the Longfellow Bridge, we turn around and head for home.
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