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Yirrell Beach
Monday, January 14, 2013
Yirrell Beach lobster pot
     Yirrell Beach on Point Shirley in Winthrop is a handy destination for an occasional change of scenery if one lives in Cambridge and one has very minimal requirements of a beach. Only nine miles from Cambridge, it shares a narrow strip of land with a roadway and, on the other side of the road, private homes.
     Today was frighteningly warm at sixty degrees, and thus it was the best January day for beachcombing in my memory. I had a couple of hours, so there I drove. The only company on the beach, aside from my companion, were dogwalkers. The seashells far outnumbered the bits of flotsam washed ashore; that surprised me a bit, but then it is January after all. I skipped stones, inspected shells, and used a good percentage of my physical strength to liberate a lobster pot mired in the sand. It was a successful little outing, and I really felt peaceful.
jetliner      There are, at least for me, planeloads of irony in finding quietude (if not quiet) at Yirrell Beach. I get out of Cambridge in order to escape the cacophony of city sounds, supreme among them the umbrella of racket coming from Logan Airport a very few miles away. Yirrell Beach is a few hundred yards from the thresholds of two of Logan's runways. As one looks out at the ocean, one sees jumbo jets coming straight at one and passing a mere two hundred feet or so directly overhead, every minute or two. Why is it that the intermittent roar of individual planes can be a respite from the constant hum of dozens of them?