Ever since reading Anita Diamint’s The Last Days of Dogtown (FIC DIA), I have had a hankering to wander around the site. The first house was built in the Commons Settlement area of Gloucester in 1650. The settlement grew and prospered but as trade flourished following the Revolution and Gloucester turned to the sea, the area declined. Now the Commons is populated by cellar holes. You can download a pdf of Thomas Dresser’s Dogtown: a Village Lost in Time and it makes for fascinating yet sad reading.
We chose a lovely spring Saturday afternoon, drove to Gloucester, and realized we had forgotten the map. So, instead of exploring the Commons area, we settled for the Babson Boulder Trail which borders a great terminal moraine. Roger Babson was a descendent of early settlers. He was a philanthropist who founded Babson College. In 1932 he donated 1150 acres in Dogtown to Gloucester for a watershed. During the Depression, Babson hired 36 Finnish quarry workers to carve mottoes on the rocks left by melting glaciers from the latter Pleistocene Era. In his autobiography he wrote “I am really trying to write a simple book with words carved in stone instead of printed on paper.”
Neither my husband nor I are usually affected by place but we both felt a sense of sadness there. The light was silvery on all the tree bark and granite boulders. Forgotten stone walls marked areas which were covered with boulders. A lone field oak made us both say “Blair Witch.” Every so often, a solitary walker would appear and vanish. Having missed finding some of the carved mottoes due to flooded areas from the earlier rains, we are planning to return but will wait until the leaves are out. Maybe then the aura will not send our imaginations to wonder how lonely walking home during November twilight must have been.
We chose a lovely spring Saturday afternoon, drove to Gloucester, and realized we had forgotten the map. So, instead of exploring the Commons area, we settled for the Babson Boulder Trail which borders a great terminal moraine. Roger Babson was a descendent of early settlers. He was a philanthropist who founded Babson College. In 1932 he donated 1150 acres in Dogtown to Gloucester for a watershed. During the Depression, Babson hired 36 Finnish quarry workers to carve mottoes on the rocks left by melting glaciers from the latter Pleistocene Era. In his autobiography he wrote “I am really trying to write a simple book with words carved in stone instead of printed on paper.”
Neither my husband nor I are usually affected by place but we both felt a sense of sadness there. The light was silvery on all the tree bark and granite boulders. Forgotten stone walls marked areas which were covered with boulders. A lone field oak made us both say “Blair Witch.” Every so often, a solitary walker would appear and vanish. Having missed finding some of the carved mottoes due to flooded areas from the earlier rains, we are planning to return but will wait until the leaves are out. Maybe then the aura will not send our imaginations to wonder how lonely walking home during November twilight must have been.
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