camping on the harbor islands

June 22nd, 2007 by Lawrence David

the weekend before my quals, i decided to relax a bit and go camping on the boston harbor islands with some friends. we had a great time and i took some nice photos.

getting out to the islands is easy — you just take the subway to the ferry run by the national park service. two 30-minute ferry rides later, we found ourselves amidst uncrowded beaches and pastoral islands that totally belied our proximity to a major metropolitan area. fittingly, we camped on “bumpkin island.”

and come to think of it, “camp” is the wrong verb to use. it evokes images of hiking, sweating, and austerity. we did no such thing: jesse, christina, and i must have brought at least 30 pounds of food to the island (to feed 7 people for one night). all we did was make a small fire, grill meat, and sit on the beach. a handful of us braved the water — it was like swimming in ice water. the trick was to stay in long enough for your extremities to go numb; swimming was almost pleasant then.

we also collected about 36 wild blue mussels. i was actually quite proud of myself for first discovering that the mussels could be found at the low-tide mark. i chalked it up to my archipelago ancestry — the blood of robinson crusoe flows through all filipinos? we boiled and ate about a dozen mussels before we left. chris and i brought home the rest, and were just preparing them for dinner when, on a lark, i google search “boston harbor mussels safety.” turns out that eating these mussels carries with it the risk of: hepatitis A and crazy pollution-related illnesses. whoops.

photos live here. these are my favorites:

[view from the boston harbor ferry]