The Back Nine Winter Redux: Lake Cochituate State Park, Natick, Wayland and Framingham, MA

Lake Cochituate State Park
Natick, Framingham and Wayland, MA

We hadn't planned to move to Natick from Brooklyn. It was too rural, too far from our jobs and too full of adventure. Despite the long commute, it has been a blessing in disguise. Life on the lake is just minutes from the intersection of Rts. 9, 30, 27, 117 and the Pike; we are at the epicenter of the MetroWest dadventure universe. In the summers you'll catch us paddling, swimming and catching turtles on the "pond." It is a far stretch from my tiny plot of a yard growing up in Newton.



It was the winter that I wasn't expecting. There are no "ponds" to skate on in Newton. Here in our backyard our neighbor snowblows out a rink for hold family hockey games. Our babysitter is a Natick Comet hockey all-star, dragging her parents across New England and up into Canada every winter weekend. We've added ice skating instructor to her list of "mommy's helper" jobs after school. She already does a great job with his favorite Mercer Mayer books, we hadn't even checked out "Skating Day" yet.



But it's the snow that transforms this park. Lake Cochituate is a thin strip of land surrounding all of the lakes. When the it falls, we throw on our skis, head across the lake and up into Lakeview Cemetery in Wayland for a few turns of the teles down the hill. A winter wonderland indeed.