The year is 2020. My husband and I have recently moved to Boston in the height of a pandemic, and the mall has just opened.
You see when we arrived that summer, the whole city was still in lockdown. We didn’t have air conditioning or money, and the normal free places we’d seek out to keep cool (libraries, pools, etc.) were closed. So it was a big freakin deal when our local mall opened again. I hadn’t had a reason to set foot in a mall in over a decade, but I was still excited. What was even nicer was that while on a run, Nathan had found a city green space that was the perfect cut-through from our apartment to the mall: Hammond Park.
In Seattle, I’d grown used to green spaces connecting essential parts of my life. I regularly walked through a wooded park to get to my job at Bed Bath and Beyond the first year I lived there, not to mention that the climate made the whole city green with moss and year-round lush grass. Boston is much more urban than Seattle in the traditional sense: lots of people, buildings, and cars; not a lot of sky or nature. There are Boston green spaces (the Rose Kennedy Greenway is one of my favorites), but Hammond Park was the first significant one we found that didn’t take 2 trains to get to.
That said, the park was surprisingly inaccessible by foot from our side of town. We had to trespass through a super ritzy Newton neighborhood – the kind with gates outside all the houses and no sidewalks because everyone drives everywhere.
But once you’re inside, Hammond park is a nature oasis in a bustling city. While it does dip into society occasionally (my favorite part is when you have to cross the railroad tracks – very “Stand by Me” vibes), for the most part you’re walking on dirt paths over little streams and under trees and beneath a cliff face of bulbous gray rock. Sometimes, there are people rock climbing there. Eventually, you arrive at Hammond Pond, a big blue expanse with big blue herons. And on the other side: civilization. Across the street and up, up, up to the top of the hill sits The Mall. Of course, malls are also not built for pedestrian traffic, but this mall had enough pedestrians visiting that a makeshift foot path led straight up the side of the hill and into the mall parking lot.
Growing up in suburbia, I’ve always lived around malls, or as my friend likes to call them, “Capitalism Cathedrals.” They’re few and far between these days. This mall still survives by catering mostly to older Gen Xers and Boomers, all Nordstrom’s and J. Crew, not a Forever 21 or Build a Bear in sight.
There is however, one millennial store available: LUSH. Your one stop shop for bougie low waste bath and beauty products. I unabashedly love LUSH. Their customer service is Chick-fil-A minus the homophobia, plus a lot of their stuff is package free and pretty sustainably made. During lockdown, a sales associate stood at a table barring the entrance to the store, but she still made us feel special. She clued us in to all the soon-to-be-discontinued stock and saved us a ton of money on what we’d come to buy. Between the friendly customer service and the deals, my Midwestern heart couldn’t have been happier. (By the way, I swear this is not a sponsored article, I just really love LUSH. But LUSH if you’re reading this please consider paying me to say these things, too!)
As we walked back to our apartment through the park, beauty products in hand, I felt more relaxed than I had in a long time. Our brains crave non-man-made textures and lighting, and the oxygen-heavy atmosphere of being surrounded by plants and soil. It’s why green spaces are so important in big cities like Boston, especially for people like me who hate cars and noise pollution. So next time you’re stressed out and if it’s safe to do so, find some trees clustered together to walk through for awhile.