Little Bang Theory

Lost In Boston! January 16, 2009

OK, this doesn’t happen to me.

I navigate by the sun, the moon, the stars, with an innate affinity for The North and The West which seems to originate from my medula oblongata, near as I can tell.  And when that fails, I’m a wizz with maps.

But this past Saturday, as I left Nahant on a mission to photograph a particular bridge on the northern edge of Boston proper, I had a couple of handicaps.

Firstly, I didn’t know what street/route the bridge was on, nor its name.

And secondly, I didn’t have any moon or stars to navigate by, as the evening had become entirely overcast.

Add to that my increasingly relevant far-sightedness, which doesn’t allow me to read a map in dim light without dime-store glasses (which render me unable to drive,) and I’m betting you can groc my dilemma.

So I managed to embed myself into downtown Boston without a plan for finding My Beloved Photo Op, other than rubbernecking and praying.

Huh.

If you’ve ever driven in Boston, you’re either clicking out of this clusterfuck or rolling on the floor laughing ’cause I’m an idiot.

C’est la vie.

But anyway, there I was, Hellen Kellering my way through a city which was laid out by goats.  I spent a lot of time in heavy traffic, trying to read obtusely oriented street signs in the dim light:

Pardon the three second hand-held shot through my filthy windshield, but I wasn’t getting out to clean it right at this point.

Now I’m no quitter, and I pursued this course for close to an hour, operating on the assumption that Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right, but Three Lefts Do.  Which would work like  a charm in Phoenix, but falls flat as a ninety-year-old tit in Boston.

Trust me on this one.  It’s the only place on Earth where you can find one way cul-de-sacs (and I have.)

Eventually I noticed a kiosk labeled, “City Map,” and being a map guy, yelled “Eureka!” ..but to no avail.  Parking in Boston is a non-starter, and worse than that in winter, when many “spaces” are lost to snow banks.  So I drove on, quite a bit as I remember, ’till I found a parking space within eyeshot of such a kiosk, and made my way back to it armed with a complement of recently passed street names.

You know, there are several streets on a map of Boston, and a simple “You Are Here” would go a LONG  way toward making these kiosks more user-friendly.

So, swallowing my maleness (figuratively speaking,) I asked passers-by, “Hello, where am I?”

The first couple I accosted were from Pennsylvania, and were just about to ask me the same thing.

The next was a kid from New Hampshire who didn’t know and didn’t care, but liked my camera.  A lot.

The third was a more helpful and ebullient gentleman, who explained it all to me in great detail, in what language I haven’t a clue.

This is Boston.

I looked around, feeling lost and defeated in my quest to photograph Whatever Bridge, and noticed that I was surrounded by a type of beauty which doesn’t exist in my rural world, divorced from nature yet somehow engendered by it, the branches of my boreal world rendered in rectilinear perfection, illuminated by surreal light:

…that’s a store of some kind, by the way…

I started walking, with camera and tripod over my shoulder, and came to a street scene which pleased me.

Now, perhaps there’s a way to capture this stuff more efficiently, but I’m a “nature photographer,” remember?  So I set up my kit on the sidewalk and, like a true denizen of The City, ignored passers-by as  I moved in for The Capture.  I assessed that it would be a thirty-second exposure, and spent some time evaluating the traffic patterns so as to minimize the interference from Passing Objects.

“Excuse me, what are you doing?”  …I heard, and turned to see a large man approaching, uniformed, flak-jacketed, laden with ammunition and pointing an automatic assault weapon in my general direction.

I believe I must have blinked some as I ran through the gamut of possible replys.

Gesturing toward my camera and tripod, I considered my options:  “Why, as any fool can see, I’m bakin’ a goddam cake!”

I refrained, on accounta I’m allergic to lead.  Instead, I fell back on What’s Natural, my Inborn Hick:

“Gee, officer, I ain’t never seen nothin’ so purdy, I was just takin’ a pitcher!”

Ouzi Man looked me up and down, a bit skeptically.

Oh, did I mention that I was in my underwear?

Yes, my fuzzy tights, with hiking boots, not exactly Haute Couture for city floks, but I was just driving through, you see, and hadn’t planned on getting out of the car.  And above that, a poofy down jacket I’d bought for my ill-fated assault on Denali, but that’s another post entirely.

Well, as it turns out, I was directly across the street from the Israeli embassy, and given the current situation in Gaza, they’d had some credible threats of bombings, and there I was, all spindly-legged and poofy-chested and looking like I was packin’ fifty pounds of plastic explosives on my little geek torso, and The Man was rightly concerned.

I asked him, wide eyed, if his gun was The Real Deal, and with obvious pride he confirmed my suspicions.

Then we both chuckled, him with amusement, me with relief that I might yet live.

After a bit more small talk, he retreated to his side of the street, and I took my picture:

That silvery building in the urban crease is what caught my attention, and what I set up for.

After that, I packed up and brailed my way westward to route 2, glad to be still alive, and glad to be heading back to the safe haven of the hills I call home.