It was an unusually warm day for February, so I decided to go for a walk. Today's destination was Cutler Lake in Needham.
An ancient road circles the pond. It may have originally been an access road to some sort of water pumping facility.
This brook carries the outflow from the pond to the nearby Charles River.
Cutler Park extends for several miles along a strip of land between Route 128 and the Charles. Here the road from the pond plunges into deep woods.
This may have been part of the old pumping infrastructure, but it looks like a crashed UFO.
Here is another view of the object.
This is a smaller pond separated from Cutler Lake by a ridge of land. Normally it is entirely ice-covered at this time of year.
The road continues along the far shore of the pond, just below the ridge.
This is the view from the far side of the pond looking east. The spire in the distance belongs to the Jewish Community Center across the river in Newton. I believe it is a former nunnery.
A pair of European mute swans (Cygnus olor) has taken up residence at the pond. These birds are invaders from Europe, not native to Massachusetts.
A spit of land juts into the pond from the west side; the benches are often occupied in the warmer months.
Looking north from the spit, the skyline is dominated by four communications towers from which many of Boston's television and FM radio stations, including WCRB, broadcast. They are all between 1,000 and 1,400 feet tall. The rightmost belongs to WHDH-TV Channel 7; it is one of the tallest free standing broadcast towers I have seen (other than the CN tower in Toronto and the Ostankino tower in Moscow, which are even taller).
This appears to be a derelict pumphouse.
Inside the pumphouse are a few bits of rusty hardware. To the right, just out of view, a ladder descends through a hole in the floor into murky water. Who knows what evil lurks therein?
This is what this part of the world normally looks like in winter. I took this picture after the most recent snowstorm a couple of weeks ago.