Massachusetts Audubon's Nature Sanctuary in the Heart of a City

Fall light and the season turns, a few steps away from one of metro Boston's largest Hatian community—as the city's population turns as well

While photographing at Massachusetts Audubon’s Boston Nature Center in Mattapan, I felt truly integrated with the earth, a paradox because this particular sanctuary is in the heart of the city, in fact, in an expanding Haitian community, which I hope to later explore more fully.

How integrated, or where did I feel most integrated? On the trail along the brook, and most poignantly when at the overlook where I made one of my perhaps most affecting photos. The writer Ralph Waldo Emerson allegedly walked along this same brook more that one hundred years ago. Now I walk it. And before that, early white settlers, preceded by the original human beings on this land, the Woodland Indians, all in a relatively short span of time. Here I am, camera in hand, Saturday afternoon, October 21, 2017.

Where did I feel most in the midst of the city? In the garden not more than 1000 feet from the highway, cars and trucks zooming by. Haitian immigrants surround me. What had been their experience in their original homes? Did they garden or farm? Do they participate in this community garden? I am in the city, how safe am I? What if I were here at night, planting seeds on a hot evening, pulling weeds, talking with my neighbors? Would I then better know the community that surrounds me? In the community garden I struggled to show the proximity of the city; probably I failed. (Skip Schiel)