Going to World's End

let me tell you about my favorite park

blue skies, spring greens just popping, and blue-green waters

There is something magical about this place. Every time we go hiking at World’s End I feel a deep peacefulness and spiritual refreshment. Wild places are like that— I start to say— but that’s also not quite right. This place isn’t exactly wild. But then it’s not exactly tame either. In the 1890s there was a plan to develop the peninsula into a housing development. Carriage roads were built, trees were planted along the roads. But the houses were never built and eventually it became conservation land instead. So there it is: a place that’s not quite tame but also not untouched. Perhaps it’s that not-quite either, in-between quality that gives this park its peculiar magic?

my girls climbing up the hill on the carriage road

beautiful birches hung with cattails

World’s End is a peninsula that juts into Hingham Bay— which is in Boston Harbor which is in Massachusetts Bay. Like a series of matryoshka dolls or something fractal, I guess? — On one side the peninsula is bounded by the mouth of the Weir River on the other side is Hingham Harbor. Not that anyone reading cares about all these names; but I find there is a satisfaction in naming, in getting the names right. Names matter and, as Madeleine L’Engle taught me, the primary vocation of a poet is naming things.

Low tide— look carefully and you can see an egret, a piping plover, and some gulls.

This peninsular park is now a part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area but is still administered by the local conservancy group the Trustees of Reservations. I love how many different conservation areas there are around me. So many we’ve only visited a fraction of them.

The peninsula is comprised of four hills, drumlins left by ancient glaciers. Isn’t drumlin a wonderful word? I grew up in Central Texas, a limestone land that was never covered by glaciers, but that was once an inland sea. I am fascinated by all the granite and glacial history of my adopted state.

This chunk of rock is Roxbury conglomerate, aka “puddingstone” because it looks like a pudding with biscuits of fruit. The official rock of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

The nearer two hills ( the larger Planter’s Hill and the smaller Pine Hill) are reached by crossing a wooden bridge over a tidal marsh (which marsh is man-made, I think?) We arrived a couple hours before low tide, so the tidal marsh was rather muddy and had the usual congregation of gulls, plus a bunch of sandpipers, a snowy white wading egret, and a pair of diving bufflehead ducks.

at the top of the hill, people flying kites in the meadow

Planter’s Hill is topped by a large meadow and has amazing views. I think it’s one of the highest points in the area. Today there are several people flying kites in the delightful breezes. From Planter’s Hill you can see the Boston skyline in the distance. And you can also look out over the narrow causeway that is the town of Hull and Nantasket Beach and see the darker blue expanse of Massachusetts Bay.

Boston in the distance.

looking over the Weir River towards Hull and Nantasket Beach and beyond that the deeper blue of Massachusetts Bay.

The furthest two hills, which are “worlds’s end” proper are an almost-island, connected to the rest of the peninsula by a thin neck and this area is more wild and wooded. It’s a far enough walk away that we almost never get that far. I think we’ve only done the world’s end loop once (that’s when we saw the deer grazing and went through corridors of white wild roses). Today we crossed over the neck, but didn’t get very far. We turned around and came back because two of my girls were very tired.

looking out towards the “world’s end” from the top of the big hill, the collection of houses on the left is the peninsula of Hull in the distance.

looking towards the neck and the smaller peninsula

In the past our whole family has gone together. We usually pack a picnic lunch and eat on the top of the big hill. We’ve brought my parents and my sister when they’ve visited from Texas. And it’s a place we try to go at least once a year. But today it was just me and the girls. My husband had an appointment and the boys said they were too tired. But sometimes a smaller group can be more cozy.

My oldest daughter is bird-obsessed and we often stopped to look and listen for birds. Partial catalog of songbirds: robins, blue jays, goldfinches, swallows, dark-eyed juncos, tufted titmice, chipping sparrows, savannah sparrows, white-throated sparrows. We also stopped to look at the trees and identify them, to investigate interesting rocks, and I of course took far too many photos. I won’t post all my photos here. But I will probably post more than anyone but me is interested in.

A row of trees along a tumbledown stone wall

We had our picnic lunch with me and oldest daughter sitting on the ground and the younger girls sitting on a park bench. The girls all had sandwiches. I had boiled eggs. And I shared out some mandarin oranges as well. And then I had an oatmeal scone to finish things off. Food always tastes better outdoors, but the eggs could have used more salt and were a bit overcooked.

Every time we go I think: we should come here more often. We should come at least once a month. But somehow we never do. There are so many places to go and getting our family out to do anything is hard. So realistically we probably won’t get back until next year. Alas. But I will carry the memories in my heart and they will feed me deeply.

I suppose I’m a person who collects special places— I know not everyone does this. And yet I think everyone should have their own collection of places like World’s End. I hope you have places you go back to year after year. Places that become a part of who you are, a part of your family lore and your collective memories. Places that refresh your soul.

A pair of buffleheads were diving in this pool. This whole basin is full at high tide.