A double rainbow appeared as the downpour subsided and the sun broke through the angry gray clouds on the evening of July 4. I had my waterproof muck boots in the back of the car, fortunately, so I could wade through the big puddle that flash formed at the back of the parking lot, behind the Asian grocery, where there’s a walking path along the Malden River.
The Malden River is said to be just over 2 miles long and I’m aiming to draw the whole thing, piece by piece. Nerve damage (hopefully temporary) from cancer chemotherapy has messed up my balance. So I carefully stepped down the muddy riverbank, clinging to trees, hoping to avoid thorns, arriving just downstream of where the Malden River emerges from the big culvert buried under Malden’s downtown. A heron flew off. The downpour swept leaves and plastic bottles and some sort of wooden frame and other garbage downstream. A small golden statue standing next to a tree on the riverbank watched water gushing out of a small culvert, water coming from somewhere in the direction of the grocery. Steam poured out of the culvert too, smelling of asphalt and truck exhaust. The Orange Line, running parallel to the river, clattered by.
Right now I’m fascinated by the little sheltered secret oasis that birds have found where the river emerges from underground. So I sketched the culvert and the little creek it made through the rocks to the river, and the concrete inlet directly across the river. Mallard ducks reappeared as the rain stopped. I climbed up the riverbank toward my car. A painted turtle poked its black and yellow striped head out of the big puddle (which soon vanished) at the edge of the parking lot. The turtle wandered around, nervous of me, until it crawled out of the puddle, through the grass, over random plastic bottle litter, down the bank, and disappeared into the Malden River.
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