Mill Brook originates at the Reservoir (known as the Res) on the Arlington-Lexington line. I happened to notice it, through the fence, while I was getting a propane tank filled at the Bar-B-Q Barn on Dudley St. in Arlington. Near there, it flows under Brattle St.
and behind the Mill Brook Apartments, where parked cars, it seems, have the best view of the brook.
Most of the brook doesn’t give such an impression of still being nature; much of it runs between vertical stone walls
or emerges from under pavement.
Where the outflow of the Res becomes Mill Brook, there is a backwater in which a marsh has grown up, in a low-lying area between the earthen dam of the Res and the parking lot of Drake Village (public housing for the elderly and disabled).
To me this felt the least humanly constructed of any part of Mill Brook I saw.
[for more, see Pro. Pei & the H2O #9]
It’s really pretty, esp. the last two pictures here.
Is the brook naturally occurring (not man-made, as a water run-off for nearby roads)?
I ask because, for many years, behind the house I grew up in, there was a stream that flowed behind all the houses and ending up in a wooded, swampy area at the end of the development (and we were at the end). It was a safe and yet lively stream, with lots of stones and frogs. The water, which was run-off from a nearby secondary road, Rt. 56, seemed clear enough to play in. In the late 70s or so, in a local “improvement” project, the town obliterated the stream by installing corrugated drain pipes and filling and grassing them over. Result? More grass and landscapable land for homeowners, but loss of stream, which I’d take over grass any day.
So, it seems to me we need these urban water spots, not just to manage run-off, but also as local points of access to “nature,” which sometimes seems to be happening elsewhere, far away, more and more.
So far as I can tell, the brook is naturally occurring. I think damming the Res simply interrupted what would have been one continuous stream, though now it has a different name (Munroe Brook) above the Res. Or possibly Munroe Brook was a tributary of Mill Brook, and if so, it still is.
It’s hard for me to imagine why one would want to cover over Mill Brook except for the obvious: economic growth, which has already caused a good bit of it be paved over. I wonder if the abutters now feel it is something to be preserved.
Interestingly, at one point there is a wooden footbridge over Mill Brook, very well constructed, that looks like it was a public works project though it has no label I could find. It’s fairly close to a park, but not right at the park. There is no sign anywhere directing a person to it; it’s behind some commercial buildings and parking lots at the end of an obscure street. It has no apparent function beyond allowing a person on foot to cross over the brook and enjoy the other side — which I did. Being on the other side is pleasant. I didn’t see any gate or other outlet by which one might pass through to the street on the other side of the brook. The bridge is apparently purely there to make possible a certain kind of leisurely moment — for those who happen to find it. There’s something about the obscurity of this that I like.
[...] the place where it flows past a tow truck lot), which you can see at this link, and before that on Sept. 7, 2007. I followed Mill Brook up to the Arlington Reservoir and photographed the marsh (the culmination of [...]