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December 19, 2025

Walking Across the Fens

This is the last official Enthusiasms of 2025! [weakly] we made it.

Stay tuned for the 2025 Enthusiasms playlist next week, and see you for more musings on little things in 2026. Until then: Be good out there! <3 J

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Most of the Green Line was shut down so I decided I’d walk, making my way from Mass. Ave to St. Mary’s.

An old Instagram pic of a willow in the Fens just sprouting leaves in the spring, with some snow on the ground and someone walking
Spring in the Fens a long time ago.

The sun was just setting, snuffed out by the solid grey sky and casting everything in the in-between hues of twilight. People scurried across the park. Hands in coat pockets and shoulders hunched against the wind. On the paths, spots of fallen snow had been stomped to ice, but a dusting still clung charismatically to the lawn, the little Victory Gardens, a pine tree strung with lights.

How many times have I walked this way? I thought. Less since I moved out of the neighborhood, stopped working downtown long ago. But still: I saw myself, arms full of groceries and sweating in the summer heat, racing down a muddy hill in the rain, days when I was lonely and others, with someone I loved. Years unspooling one after another and me, like always, on the way.

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