Junior Park Rangers of the Harbor Islands

Sunday's outing was unusual for a "beach trip"...  Normally, when we think of water a person actually swims in, ye olde Maine coast comes to mind, with its pristine sand and huge rocks and salt water taffy a short walk away.  It's a little different swimming with a big city skyline across the water, rather than the mythical, dreamy "England" we look toward across the great blue horizon (although actually the northern coast of Spain is what we're really facing at a "real" beach)...  And from my earliest youth, "swim" and "Boston Harbor"  were very different categories; for whatever reason, I don't think I'd ever bark out one term in exchange for the other if I were presented with it in some bout of 1950's-style word association psychiatry.  And yet, our day at the beach on Sunday was actually a day on Spectacle Island, one of the islands within the Boston Harbor Islands National Park.

This endeavor was very awkward at the outset, because presently, Daniel has a (very temporary) condition where he can't go swimming for this week and probably the next.  This isn't a very easy restriction, since we have already had the hottest early summer on record, and the boys love swimming.   Daniel asked me Sunday morning whether anyone would be swimming on this outing, and he volunteered that if anyone was, then he wasn't going. Spectacle Island offered some alternatives - swimming for some, hiking for others, perhaps - so we made the trip, but as soon as we got off the boat, Ian started lobbying to go swimming in Boston's legendary clean water.  We had no idea what to do with Daniel, once we saw how, umm, boring this former landfill of an island actually was (it has much taller hills, and more land mass than before, because they dirt from the notorious "Big Dig" to augment the island).

I went to the Park Rangers' desk at the Visitor Center and asked, uh, is there anything to do here besides swim and hike?

The rangers were all more-or-less college-aged, and the young man's sympathetic candor was quite welcome, along the lines of "...Not really" answer, but the young woman was far more visionary:  "We actually have a different activity every day!"  Salespeople are born, not made.

But by the time I had that conversation, Cousin Xenia was already out in the hot sun, overseeing Daniel's eager undertaking. She/they had discovered that there's an activity posted in the Visitor Center involving the gathering-up of beach glass and other debris - or rather Gifts of the Shoreline - to be taken into the Visitor Center and put on display.  I don't know how they got wind of it, but Daniel was quite determined to do his part to add to the collection that they had at the desk in the Visitor Center.  Xenia saw the activity as the picking-up of garbage - perhaps some kind of act of good citizenship; Daniel seemed to think of these gently sea-kissed treasures of glass and wood as collectibles in their own right - something to be gathered up that others might enjoy viewing them as they flock to the Visitor Center.

In any case, there was no stopping Daniel;  that boy was in Energizer Bunny mode hiking back and forth the 200 paces from the beach to the Visitor Center, across the concrete patio in the scorching sun, each time with several of the Harbor's masterpieces in his arms.  At one point, when I tried to put sunscreen on him, he explained that he couldn't stop, because he was carrying these things.  I applied the sunscreen on a return-trip instead.

And this is how Daniel passed almost two hours, with Cousin Xenia watching him, surely envious, as her skin slowly came to match her flaming red hair.  They should make trophies for this kind of patrol...

Meanwhile, Ian swam in the Harbor, and I joined him.  Ian at one point asked the guy in the life-guard chair whether it was okay for him to go beyond the roped area to collect snails. The guy said he wasn't a life guard, but he thought it would probably be okay, as long as Ian didn't go into the water.  Ian was quite thrilled, swimming in that beautiful water.

And it turned out that these Park Rangers really know what they're doing.  At one point, one of the very outgoing female Park Rangers came out with a clipboard and a sample badge, and asked me whether it would be alright if they made Ian and Daniel Junior Park Rangers, in recognition for their hard work and contributions in picking up these items from the beach.  It turned out that they have special badges for Junior Park Rangers, along with a swearing in ceremony of sorts, an activity book, and small green dufflebags bearing the National Parks logo. 


The boys left the island very, very happy, and Daniel didn't show the slightest disappointment about not being able to swim.  Amy and Madeleine were waiting for us "on shore" at Long Wharf in Boston, and when we got off the boat, the boys quickly showed Amy their hard-earned rewards, and Daniel explained something like "They gave me and Ian this for the work that I did..."  This was one of those times when Ian got to bask in the glow of Daniel's glory, which seems like something of a new twist.

We're pretty sure that they "re-stock" the beach with these treasures each day, so that new visitors from Daniel and Ian's generation might enjoy a day of activity, engagement and a learn-by-doing lesson in conservationalism, and leave with badges, prizes and an important new title.


I explained to Daniel that the National Parks Service is a "thing for the whole country," kind of like the army. I'm hoping that perhaps a bit of sleight-of-hand might allow for a paradigm shift, for a boy who loves his country and thrives on the rigorous, dedicated, uniform-clad culture of institutions.  


And - on top of everything else we got out of our outing - that would really be worth the price of a boat ride across Boston Harbor!

(July 10, 2012)