Mystic River Watershed Kayak: A Photoessay

Despite growing up in the Boston area, I feel like a kid who’s been blindfolded and spun around trying to pin the tail on the donkey when I drive around Boston. When we moved here from Alaska three years ago, my then 9-year-old son Alder and I experienced acute disorientation. Our sense of dislocation was spiritual and social, but also profoundly geographic. In Juneau, the roads end in every direction. The mountains and ocean that bound Juneau tell you where you are, and which way is north. Here in the northeast amidst the tangle of asphalt and buildings we felt lost, severed from nature and nature’s guideposts. 

So the notion of following a continuous waterway from the suburbs to saltwater intrigued me. It took three years from idea to execution, but on Saturday we kayaked from the Upper Mystic Lake in Arlington to Boston Harbor (or at least, to tidewater). I pressed Alder into service as my adventure buddy, and three more friends joined. 

Our route took us from the Upper Mystic Lake to Little Mystic Channel in Boston Harbor. 

We launched in the Upper Mystic Lake at 10:30 a.m. July 4 in bulky borrowed kayaks that were more toys than sleek oceangoing vessels. A short paddle brought us to the dam dividing the Upper and Lower Lakes where we portaged over a parking lot into the Lower Mystic. 

Approaching the portage on Upper Mystic Lake through the Medford Boat Club parking lot. 

The Lower Mystic was pleasant but for the jet skiers. A Great Blue Heron waded by the shore. 

At the far end of the lake, the outlet to the river is hidden amidst thick greenery, becoming visible only as you get close. 

  

Just past the outlet where the Lower Mystic Lake becomes Mystic River, looking at the Medford shore. 

Once in the river, it was an easy, lazy, lovely paddle. The river and banks teemed with people swimming, boating, barbecuing, but it felt peaceful and remote, a world apart from the roaded surface. In places the foliage felt like a cocoon. 

Tunnel of green 

The lilies were in full bloom.

Under the first bridge – the one I cross when I run around the lakes – we tested the echo. Alder commented on the lack of graffiti. 

The first bridge, low and arched. Arlington is on the right bank, Medford on the left.

Just past the second bridge – River Street - we chatted with a guy fishing from shore. He was fishing for bass, he said. He was from Charlestown, caught a five-pounder last year, nothing this year. He told me he wouldn’t eat them, but the water is much cleaner than when he was growing up. (This is true; see water quality map below.)

We rounded a sharp bend where Arlington meets Somerville and Medford, and faced two comically huge swans, like something created by Pixar, big-beaked and unafraid. “They look mean,” Emily said. 

They were much bigger in person.

The riverbanks became more developed. It felt like discovering a secret world: the city that feels so featureless to me has this these hidden waterways running behind homes, under highways, next to Costco. In some spots it felt like Venice – or how I imagine Venice. In others, it reminded Emily and David of paddling the Bronx River in New York City. When we passed a line of pleasure craft tied to docks, I thought of Cape Cod. The Mystic is a chameleonlike, changeable river.   

One of many homes along the river. 

Alder ducked under a dock.

Each dock had its charm.

There are turtles in this photo.

David got a better photo of them.

I loved this bridge.

We stopped for lunch on a big float and ignored the goose poop, happy to get out of our boats, pee in the bushes, and eat. 

We languished over lunch. I believe we were by Riverbend Park.

After lunch, the river opened up and we saw the Boston skyline ahead, Assembly Square to our right, Encore to our left (“Encore, the failed casino, they serve cherries with extra maraschino” – one of Alder’s contributions to the song he and I made up). The view was colorful, with yellow construction cranes, the purple skeleton of a new building, the Orange Line crossing a bridge in front of us. We waited under the bridge, thrilled by the echoing rumble and tremor when the train passed over. 

Bridge graffiti increased as we traveled downriver. 

The river widened. You can see the Orange Line approaching the bridge. 

We came to the Amelia Earhart Locks, which separate river from harbor, fresh water from salt water. A friend had lent us a horn and told us to give two long and two short blasts to alert the harbormaster. It turned out there was no need, as the harbormaster was opening and closing the locks nonstop to holiday traffic. We waited our turn with a large pleasure craft. The family on board said they’d never seen kayaks go through the locks. 

Approaching the locks.

Kellie and Alder in the locks, ready for action.

When the cement doors opened, we paddled in behind the bigger boat, and the doors swung shut. I wasn’t sure how wild the water might get, and just as I was calling to Alder to paddle over and hold on to a cleat in the wall, the front gates swung open, and it was over.  “Well, that was anticlimactic,” Alder said. We laughed. If we had changed elevation, it was imperceptible. 

But the water smelled salty and had a milky, greenish hue. Fish were flinging themselves out of the water. We saw jellyfish. Cross-chop and swell and current buffeted our boats. The scale of everything was bigger. Every kind of vessel plied the water. Some sat abandoned and rotting. Pilings and docks lined the shore. The Tobin Bridge loomed long and high and minty-green in the distance. 

As we waited for Emily and David by the Sullivan Square Bridge (if that’s what it’s called), a sharp alarm rang. We looked up to see lights flashing and car barriers dropping, and soon the drawbridge opened up. 

A father and son fished while we watched the drawbridge open. 

Just past the drawbridge, Emily and David pulled out at a boat launch by the Schrafft Center. I had arranged a pickup at Little Mystic Channel, another mile or more of paddling. We were fighting the current and Alder was flagging, but I knew he wanted to finish what we’d set out to do. His biggest problem, besides being exhausted and suffering from too much sun, was that he had to pee. He finally solved that problem in a way I will leave to the imagination. 

It was work reeling in the Tobin Bridge. Kellie is trying to figure out where our pickup spot is.

Just as we reached the Tobin Bridge, seven fighter planes in formation crossed the sky in front of us. A group of five planes followed, and another and another flashed across the sky. It was hard not to take the show as a personal gift. 

We pushed on, under the Tobin at last, past a hulking boat moored to a wharf, and on the right a placid channel branched off. We turned in, sure-but-not-sure it was Little Mystic Channel, with about five minutes to meet our pickup at the far end. A shack on a dock advertised root beer and slush and ice cream and suddenly Alder perked up. I felt terrible rushing him by, but we had to meet our pickup. With the current in our favor, we made it to the boat ramp at the end of the channel just on time.

Little Mystic Channel in Charlestown. The boat ramp is at the end on the right.

  

We met our pickup, loaded the boats, jumped in a car we had dropped that morning, and picked up Emily and David at the Schrafft Center. 

We traveled 9.5 miles according to Kellie's GPS. I thought it might take Alder a day or two to forgive me that last mile, but the whole adventure - the surprises and hidden gems and variety and marvel of it all - dominated our stories that evening. Like most adventures, it was worth it. 

I will never know which way is north in this city laid out by cows. But I have a different sense of its anatomy and physiology. Two years ago, researchers “discovered” a new organ: the interstitium. Interstitial space is the space between structures or objects. Scientists are increasingly realizing interstitial spaces – the long overlooked negative space of the body – are critical pathways. It caught my attention as a cancer patient because these interstitial cavities and fluids may be key to the largely mysterious pathways of metastasis. It caught my eye as a writer because of its poetry: as one researcher said, “It was hiding in plain sight.” 

The Mystic River and all overlooked urban waterways are the interstitial spaces of our built environment. I had seen the river a thousand times but never seen it, driven past it but never apprehended its complexity, variety, and beauty.

* * *
"Overall, these reviews emphasize how vital it should be that we study what is important rather than what we can study easily."
-G.B. Drummond in "To the interstitial space - and beyond!" Journal of Physiology (2011).  

Our route (hand-drawn) from the Upper Mystic Lake to Little Mystic Channel is in red.

RESOURCES

*Mystic River Watershed Association: My dad helped found the MRWA, which has great resources like this map showing water quality. Our route was entirely Class A water despite the fact that the Class D Aberjona River, made famous by the book A Civil Action (which I recommend), feeds into the Mystic Lakes.

*Paddle Boston/Charles River Canoe and Kayak rents boats and offers guided tours. We did not rent boats but hired them to pick up our kayaks and shuttle them back to our starting point. Their trailer will fit 16 kayaks.

SAFETY TIPS

*Check weather forecast including winds and tides. Wait for the right day - we postponed twice.

*Use a personal flotation device (we all put them on before going through the locks and kept them on).

*Bring a horn for the locks and to alert vessels that might not see you. 

*Make sure someone knows your trip plan. Bring a communication device in a watertight bag.

*Know your limits, and be prepared to turn around or bail out if necessary. 

*If you are a beginner kayaker, consider staying upriver of the locks.