Dogtown

Wherever I walk.
I think of all the places my feet have taken me.

Like The Remarkables in New Zealand.

The Seven Sisters in England.

Or Rouvas Gorge on Crete.

And all the places I have yet to go.

Like this place. This fall.

Mount Monadnock.
In New Hampshire.

As you may recall, my friend Bob and I began our training in March.

Our latest session was at Dogtown.

A most unusual name.

For a most unusual place.

It’s centered in Gloucester on the Essex coast of Massachusetts.
What we Bostonians call the North Shore.

I would like to thank Grandson Jay from New Mexico, who is visiting Bob and Laura for the summer, for his excellent rock-framing skills!

So what’s the deal with all these funky slogans?

And who on earth put them there?

They are the legacy of Roger Babson, a philanthropist who took the boulders and made them into an idea theme park in the nineteenth century.

He hired a bunch of out-of-work Finnish stonecutters to put the slogans into the rock.

The nearby reservoir is named after him.

It’s actually the water that drew the original settlers there in the 17th century.
When the place was called The Commons.

After the War of Independence (no offence to my British readers!) the settlement fell into decline.

It was abandoned for good in 1830.

But the fighting ended up giving the place its odd name.

The wives of the men who took part in the Revolutionary War (pardon!) kept dogs to safeguard them while their husbands were away.

And there you have it.

Hiking in New England is always educational.

Monadnock will be no exception.