The Wellesley Community Loves its Nature!
Ben Matejka: Avid Trail Runner
Q: What is your favorite trail in Wellesley?
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A: “My favorite trail in Wellesley is the trail around Lake Waban that runs through the Wellesley College campus. It's only two miles long but running along the water is beautiful at any time of the year.”
“One of the coolest runs we do on our team is called Grand Tour. It's a combination of almost all of the Wellesley trails. However it is quite long (around 10-11 miles).”
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Q: How have the trails impacted your XC experience and your enjoyment of running?
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A: “I was very surprised my freshmen year to discover the vast amount of trails in Wellesley and in the surrounding towns.”
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Q: What do you like about running in nature?
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A: “Cross country is my favorite running season mainly because we get to race on trails and we are able to train on trails for the whole season. Trails break up the monotony of running. It's a lot more enjoyable to twist and turn throughout beautiful surroundings in the woods instead of having the constant view of black asphalt in front of you.”
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Q: Could you recommend a shortish run along some trails?
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A: “A shorter run that you can do is the trail system at Elm Bank. The trail runs along the Charles River and is fairly wide and flat.”
“A hillier run that you can do starts by the Wellesley Country Club on the red arrow trail and winds its way around Longfellow Pond (you can take the red arrow trail all the way to Newton Lower Falls).”
“Almost all of the trails in Wellesley are only a couple of miles long and are easily accessible.”
Baird Feeney: Outdoors Enthusiast
Q: What is your favorite nature trail/area in or near Wellesley?
A: My favorite outdoor space in Wellesley are the paths surrounding Morses pond. In the summer I go to the pond at least one or two times a day to swim and read. Even when it is too cold to swim, it a pleasant place to sit and walk a while.
Q: How does spending time in Nature make you feel? Do you think it helps with stress?
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A: Emotionally, one of the best things I get out of spending times in nature is a feeling of insignificance. There is no sweeter moment for me than to stand at the foot of some mountain filling have the sky and know that I and all my problems will be dust, gone and forgotten before this thing is a foot shorter. A fifty-foot granite slab doesn't care about how smart you are. What she thinks of you is no concern to a freezing rain or to a mountain goat. A journey to the untamed tracts is a journey to the real world. Life exists in such great volume outside of my petty thoughts and stress. When I can carry myself with a playful indifference, I am able to enjoy what’s around me to a greater degree.
Q: How would you persuade someone to spend more time outside or put in more effort to protect the great outdoors?
The world beyond our cities and towns is beautiful and unique. It is full of massive dynamic cycles and systems in which everything flows and happens and within which is incredible balance and certainty. Our lives depend on those cycles, on the natural world. To disregard and destroy the natural world would be like to burn the books from which we learn engineering in order to fuel a machine. I understand that not everybody enjoys being outside and that it ok, but to not respect and preserve the places from which we receive clean air and food and water and life itself would be idiotic.
Q: How does your relationship with nature influence your creative pursuits?
A: I believe that my creative process is derived from my personal experiences in the natural world. Just like when Hiking, there can be no wrong answer in art, no judgment in creativity. You can get lost, but that is part of the process and something is learned.
Furthermore, I motivated by the unfathomable beauty of the natural world to create something of equal worth. I like to think of a sunset over a lake as a playful challenge. Can I describe such a thing with words? Can I capture a moment, an experience, with lines? In art, one is often told to learn from the masters of the form, and what greater master is there than nature.
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Q: Why do you like spending time outside? What do you do outside?
A: Of recent, my favorite thing to do outside is climbing, but I take great pleasure in backpacking, swimming, fishing, boating, and skiing. Sometimes it is enough to just sit and read or toss a frisbee while breathing untainted air.
At the base of the Kangaroo Ridge in Washington, I heard a passage written by the surrealist Rene Daumal.
"You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this:"
There is more to the quotation which discusses most profoundly sight and knowledge in the low and high places, but to me, the quote is more whole when left unfinished. There is something in the unsaid, in the untouched and unseen which is more real than the defined, the scene, the said, the touched.
I spoke with a friend at length about a dirty river and why on it still lived a family of blue herons. There were many cleaner bodies of water nearby, yet the birds never wandered past the water's edge. The conversation was doubly relevant because as we watched the birds we were both rowers of that river, asking ourselves why we too did not leave the river.
My friend reminded me that some things must go unanswered, but he said it in the way you turn off your phone and look up to see a great winged beast float above the water, skimming for a moment her feet along the surface. From below she summoned a line of fading ripples, and in the ripples I saw a stream of water leaping from the heart of a glacier-mountain, only to disappear again into the snowy depths.
And in that stream, I saw a silver-green water, a green-silver sea that had no, nor needs no bounds. A ruthless sea that fills the sky above and earth below, and yet laughs with the gentle wind running across the surface. In this ocean, I was set adrift,
Falling, drowning, floating, breathing the ocean and the sky.
Once I watched a setting sun and closed my eyes for a time. When opened I saw no light and did not know if the sun was gone or my eyes closed or I was blind or if a sheet of stone covered my face. I took off my clothes and as the stars laughed at my madness I went to sleep in some tent.
Why do I enjoy spend time in the natural world? Why do I spend hours watching the herons wings? Why do I listen to my breath confront a screaming wind? Just this:
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