Park – The Cambridge Placebook

December 5, 2021January 4, 2022

Autumn Again

I was taking a retrospective look at my blog recently, and was stunned by how much I wrote last autumn. I kept a treasure trove of field notes on everything the season was giving me during a time of quiet and isolation. This season, the hustle of community is back, along with the haze of attempting to write up my thesis, and I’ve found it hard to get into the headspace of word-crafting my surroundings. Despite this, the season has given richly and I’ve been fed by warm earthy palettes, frosty mornings, flame and lemon leaves, full moons, mushrooms and chestnuts, sunbeams and sunsets. In lieu of words I’ve captured as much as I can on my often inadequate camera. I’m going to attempt to decorate the images with some remembered notes, because this autumn deserves all the attention I can give it, even in memory.

November 6, 2021January 4, 2022

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is like the cool cousin of London. I wouldn’t be surprised if its popularity as a quick holiday destination has only increased during the pandemic, domestic travel being a hot commodity. I’d only ever heard good things about it but hadn’t managed to get there, despite it being only a 5-hr train ride the length of England from Cambridge. I was determined to squeeze it in before the term got into full swing or any unforeseen disruptions *cough* Covid *cough* got in the way, so my friend Marie and I made a long weekend of the Edinburgh bucket list. Hills, castles, kilts, neogothic grandeur, bagpipes, haggis, hipster art—we fit all of it in.

May 2, 2021July 5, 2021

The Cam Towpath to Bottisham Lock

My favorite way to explore:

Look at Google Maps on satellite mode
Find the green patches
Think about where I haven’t been recently (or ever)
Click around for general cycling directions
Get on my bike
Deviate from that route as much as I like.

On Easter Sunday, a month ago now, my afternoon was wide open after Easter observances and the weather was perfect. So I opened Google Maps and consulted my map feelers—where I felt like being and where I could extend my exploration coverage—and decided on the direction of Jesus Green and Fen Ditton. No endpoint in mind, just a place to be and see where I ended up.

Well, I ended up seven miles down along the River Cam. The pull of the path was irresistible, and only a sense of daylight waning turned me back.

March 14, 2021July 5, 2021

Parker’s Piece and Christ’s Pieces

Parker’s Piece

Almost exactly a year ago, the world as we know it fell to pieces. I was in a cozy flat on a lane just off of Parker’s Piece, gathering with my church friends for what turned out to be the last time under normal circumstances, when the global response to the looming pandemic began to accelerate at whiplash speed. Earlier that morning President Trump had announced the closure of the US border to Europe and my sister had been called home from her internship in Spain. I was still imagining a modified version of the life I was used to: staying in Cambridge, probably working from home for a little while, still going to church on Sundays, gathering in some form in this small flat every week with our young adult church group. But when I got there on March 12, I learned that the older missionary couple who had just arrived a few days earlier to fill the role of young adult support in the congregation, living in the church-rented flat and hosting our gatherings, had been called home. They had 24 hours to pack and fly out. Later that night, all church gatherings were cancelled for the foreseeable future. So we ate our last weekly dinner and Jenny played the banjo and we said goodbye to our friends, bracing ourselves for the changed world.

February 28, 2021July 5, 2021

Here Comes the Sun: Jesus Green, Midsummer Common, and the Lower Cam

When the sun comes out in Cambridge, so, of course, do the people. When I wandered out to Jesus Green today to catch some sun myself, I knew it would be busy, but I didn’t realize I was going to soak up people as much as sun. Pandemic lockdown is to human presence as winter is to vitamin D, and sitting at my desk for months has starved me of both. The warmth, the colors, the spread of people in all their shapes, sizes, accents, and energies; people out in the world doing things, talking, relaxing in shared space—is it possible I had started to forget what this is like? Jesus Green began to give this bounty back to me today.

Jesus Green (St John’s College Chapel in skyline)

March 24, 2019July 5, 2021

A Cycle Ride from Cherry Hinton

My first open Sunday in a month or so turned out to be a perfect, sun-touched spring day. On the 3-mile cycle ride to church in the morning I knew I would be taking my time on the way home—I’ve long been itching to properly soak up the green corners I whiz past on my bike every week, catching them only in my peripheral vision. A full schedule, bad weather, and bike-sapped energy have kept me from deviating much from that route until today.

The Cambridge meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is in Cherry Hinton, one of those outlying suburbs of Cambridge. Few members with cars live near me, and the bus requires an extra 20 minutes of walking, so most weeks I put on leggings and cycle to church. The route from my flat in Newnham (the neighborhood surrounding Newnham College, which is also considered a Cambridge suburb) to the church takes me through several parks and fenland, over the Cam, for a stint on a tree-lined cycle path, and finally down a long commercial road. The green space makes the ride worth it, even when I’m only glancing. Today was even better.

Here’s a tour of the ride I went on today, in church-to-home order.