Most last week sucked. It sucked on so many different levels. You’d need an abacus to count the many ways in which last week sucked. But on Friday afternoon Suspect #1 in the Boston Marathon bombing was dead. Suspect #2 was said to be injured and corralled in a ten block area of Watertown. So I felt free to abandon the television and the Internet for the first time in a couple of days and take a much-needed walk.

It wasn’t an ideal afternoon for it. The weather sucked too. The temperature had struggled to climb up into the low 40s, but I got the impression it wasn’t very committed to staying there. The wind was fluctuating between 6 and 7 on the Beaufort scale (not that anybody still uses the Beaufort scale, so let’s just say it was blowing about 25-30 mph) and shoving around massive wads of discouraged-looking clouds. Every so often, though, there was a break in the cloud cover and the most incredible sunlight would gush through for a moment.

So I stuck my little Fujifilm X10 in a jacket pocket and set off for the river.

The river was flooding a wee bit because of all the rain. Not enough to cause any serious damage, but the river had risen enough to cover the lowest level of the riverwalk. As I approached one of the pedestrian bridges, I heard an unusual noise. I assumed it was just the wind through the girders, combined with the rushing of the water. But it wasn’t.

It was flags. Lots of flags. Lots and lots of small flags.

Cord had been strung crisscrossed through the girders, to which small squares of something resembling cloth had been affixed. Even though the little flags were weathered and a tad faded (not surprising after a few days of rain), they gave the pedestrian bridge a rather festive look. They couldn’t quite overcome the gloomy weather, but they made a brave attempt.

I didn’t look at the flags very closely, I’m afraid. Not at that point. I noticed one of the flags had the logo of the Principal Financial Group, so I dismissed it as some of corporate promotional stunt. And it was, after a fashion. But as promotional stunts go, this one happens to be pretty cool.

A local bookbinding company donated recycled clothette (a durable paper that resembles cloth and is used in — that’s right, binding books). Using still more donated materials, children turned those squares of clothette into ‘wishing flags.’ Each flag is a celebration of Earth Day — which, it turns out, is today, April 22. The materials were also made available near the riverfront one day recently, so anybody could create and contribute a wishing flag to the project.

Something like five thousand of the small flags were created. Volunteers, most of whom were students, worked with the Parks Department to string them up along the river. Not just across that particular pedestrian bridge, but for a mile or so along the riverwalk itself.

Remember, this was a cold, windy, cloudy miserable day. Somewhere just west of Boston a 19 year old kid who was responsible for at least four deaths and well over a hundred horrific injuries was cowering, wounded, in a tarp-covered boat in somebody’s backyard, hunted by dozens of police agencies. Thousands of lives had been disrupted, and some will never recover from it. And yet that Friday afternoon, for the first time in a week, I felt a sense of joy.

I’m going to say something sappy here. Sappy and sentimental and goopy. Here it is: By and large, people are pretty fucking great. Sure, there are always going to be folks who hate, folks whose anger and resentment and fear will cause them to do horrible things. But as we saw in Boston, good people outnumber the bad people. And here, along a small stretch of river in the Midwest, a group of kids collaborated with a local bookbinder and a multinational corporation to celebrate Earth Day. So yeah, haters are assholes and corporations are almost certainly inherently wicked, but people in general are pretty fucking great.

They’ll remove all those flags in a few days. And that’s okay. They’ll have served their purpose, and they’ll be recycled again. After a week like the one we’ve all just suffered through, it’s good to see something hopeful and cheerful. Like a kid’s painting of two happy girls, a few flowers, and some sort of mutant ferret.

And you know what else is cool? That building in the background? It used to be the main branch of the public library. Now it houses the World Food Prize, an honor given annually to somebody who has “advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world.” The prize was the idea of Dr. Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 — the very same year as the first Earth Day celebration.

People. I’m telling you, they’re pretty fucking great. In general

Every couple of weeks I’ll head downtown, run a few errands, grab a venti white mocha (and a glazed donut) from the Starbucks directly next to the main branch of the public library, then spend a couple of hours noodling around in the stacks. I know a lot of folks consider Starbucks to be the Devil — and they may be right — but its right there, just steps from the library. Besides, I’ve never been known to shun the Devil.

In any event, the library is a good place to begin a Thursday Walk. The Utata group has been walking on Thursdays since April 20, 2006. I don’t always participate in the project, but I try not to let more than a couple of weeks go by without joining in. Last Thursday was the 361st consecutive Utata Thursday Walk. Isn’t that amazing? It was my 188th; I’ve done just over half of the Thursday Walks.

The date is in danger of not being saved

I began by heading back to the Save the Date scene, which was hidden away behind construction equipment on my last visit. It’s still behind a bright orange warning fence, but at least I can see the spot where the message is located. I talked to some of the construction guys — they said the building has been bought by an architectural firm, which will use the ground floor as offices and turn the upper floor into loft-style apartments.

In a way that pleases me. I love to see these old industrial buildings restored and put into use. But it pretty much ruins any hope of learning what I was saving the date for. And in related bad news — I was able to see that my chalked question had been washed off (I presume by rain or snow or ice or some other meteorological eraser).

Smoker’s haven

Around the corner there’s a converted garage entrance that’s been turned into a place where smokers can gather and escape the worst of the weather. It’s a weird little place. They open the garage door in the morning and close it at the end of the working day. They’ve made an effort to make it comfortable, and it’s kept surprisingly neat.

I walk by this spot periodically, and occasionally I’ll stop and say hi to the smokers. They’re a camera-shy group. So far none of them has been willing to be photographed. It’s a guy thing. But I’ll keep trying. Maybe some day one of them will relent.

Stacks of yellow crates

There’s an alley that runs behind a few bars, a coffee shop, and a somewhat seedy hotel. It’s a nice alley (as alleys go) and there’s usually something there worth photographing. But I rarely shoot anything there because it’s always clogged with cars or delivery vehicles. People seem willing to park anywhere, without any regard at all for photography.

I always glance down the alley as I pass, hoping that one day it’ll be free of parked vehicles. Last week it wasn’t exactly clear, but there was a space between vehicles where I could see some stacks of seriously yellow crates. Even as I walked toward the crates, I could see a transit van entering the other end of the alleyway. So I hustled and managed to shoot one frame just as the van pulled up. I shot a second frame before he honked his horn, and one final frame after the honk, then waved him into the spot.

Riverside bike path

I was heading east toward the river. If the weather is nice, I usually head toward the river. In fact, if the weather is less-than-nice, I often head for the river. Oh hell, I’ll head toward the river even if it’s pissing down rain. I’ll head to the river if a hail of scorpions is falling from the sky. I like the river.

Nobody would call the weather nice — it was cloudy and pretty cold — but it wasn’t raining or snowing, and the sky was scorpion-free. So…river.

Under the Court Street bridge

There’s a bike path along the river and a fairly new pedestrian walkway, though much of the time the two are merged. There’s also an old river-level walkway down below the balustrade. On windy days the river often laps up over that walkway. Sometimes you’ll find fish — usually small ones — that have leaped out of the water and onto walkway. You’ll also find the occasional old grommet where boats and barges used to tie up back in the day when they were allowed in this stretch of the river.

Dead fish and grommet

One of the things I like about the riverwalk is that it’s out-of-the-way. There’s absolutely no reason to go there unless you want to be there. I mean, it’s not on the way to anyplace else, and there’s no purpose in walking the river level other than to be walking the river level. You rarely meet people there — but when you do, the people tend to be interesting. Or scary. And sometimes both.

On that day, there was nobody on the river level except me and a few dead fish.

At river level

Most days I’ll only walk a short stretch of the river. Just far enough to generate some river-calm. You know, that feeling that comes with spending time along a slow-moving body of water. I find it soothing to know the water sliding by me began in Lake Shetek in Minnesota, and 525 miles later it’ll join the Mississippi River on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. I like knowing the river is following a course carved out by glacial melt some 13,000 years ago.

It makes me feel small and impermanent. I’m aware some folks are uncomfortable with that feeling, but I find it weirdly comforting. It reminds me that whatever crap is going on in my life — and right now my life is pretty crap-free — isn’t all that important or momentous. That’s a nice thing to remember.

Pedestrian bridge over the Center Street dam

I continued all the way to the end of the riverwalk, just below the Center Street dam. From there I could see the crazy-ass pagoda constructed by the Chinese Cultural Center, and the crazy-ass John Anderson White paddle-wheel riverboat, and even the crazy-ass dome of the Botanical Center. Each of those things is maybe a wee bit weird, but seeing them all in one place always makes me feel like I’m hallucinating. I like that.

Center Street dam

That dam, by the way, is fifteen feet tall. The water rushing over it makes a hell of a noise. It gives you a real sense of the astonishing power of the river. Even though it’s a fairly slow moving river, it’s a lot of water and it just doesn’t stop. Eleven people have died in the boil below that dam — mostly stupid boaters who got too close despite all the warning signs and the rescue cables.

I’d have kept walking, over the pedestrian bridge, down the riverwalk on the east side of the river, and back again over the lower pedestrian bridge. But by then it was nearly five o’clock and I had to meet a friend, and even though it was only a three and a half mile walk, I was feeling the cold in my knees.

But it was a good walk. They all are. Man, I love Utata for giving me an incentive every week to get out, put a camera in my hand, and walk someplace. And there’s something really special about knowing that other folks all over the globe are out doing the exact same thing for exact same reason. This is going to sound really corny, but I don’t care. These Thursday Walks are like being part of a river. And I’ll leave it at that.

Freeze and melt — that’s been the pattern for the last week or so. Snow, melt, freeze, melt. It’s not so bad on the main streets and sidewalks, which are cleared and have enough car and foot traffic to keep things tidy. But it plays merry hell in the alleys.

A couple days ago I decided to wander back to Save the Date Alley to see if I’d gotten a response to my question. It was pretty treacherous footing. In the sunnier parts of the alleyway the ice and snow had partially melted, leaving a layer of water over the ice. There were occasional patches of snow, which gave a bit of traction, and even a few places with clear concrete — but for the most part, walking in the alley took a lot of care.

It was slick enough that I considered giving up the idea and returning another day. Why risk breaking a bone just to satisfy my idle curiosity? But I could see some sort of construction was taking place down the alley — and it looked suspiciously near the spot where the Save the Date invitation (if it was an invitation) had been left.

I apparently have absolutely no defenses against curiosity, even idle curiosity. I wanted to know what was going on. So I slowly soldiered on.

Until I got distracted by a fire escape.

Well, not so much the fire escape itself, which isn’t all that interesting, but by the hundreds of icicles that formed beneath it. I think most folks are fascinated by icicles and how they form. And I suspect most folks feel a powerful impulse to touch them. Or knock them down. Or, of course, photograph them.

The fire escape was in a shaded part of the alley. I’d been walking on the bright, sunny side. So I had to cross the alley, which doesn’t sound like much of a feat, but lawdy I’m telling you it was incredibly fucking difficult. It took me maybe three or four minutes to slowly slide across maybe ten feet of icy alley. And then, of course, the light sucked.

But I shot a few photos anyway, and even though they don’t give any real sense of how magnificent the icicles were, I’ve decided to include them here. I mean, if I can risk my aging bones to satisfy my curiosity, you can damned well spare a moment to glance at a couple of uninteresting photographs.

The child in me (and yeah, that’s an awfully big part of me) wanted to knock the icicles loose, just to hear the sound. Or at least I wanted to take off my gloves and maybe pull one loose. But the adult in me insisted the responsible thing to do was leave them untouched so the next idiot to slip-slide down the alley could enjoy them too.

So that’s what I did. I made the adult decision, then another three minutes sliding back to the less hazardous side of the alley (there is, I suppose, some irony to be found in the fact that I’m proud to have made an adult decision while in the midst of an entirely juvenile enterprise). And I was back on my way.

Here’s a true thing about alleys: they can be sort of generic. The alley entrance to a radiator repair shop isn’t very different from the alley entrance to an electronics store or a pet shop. So from a distance, it’s not always easy to tell one section of alleyway from another. But as I got closer, it became apparent that the construction was taking place very near the location where Save the Date and my question were to be found.

In fact, it was the very building.

I got as close as I could. I was able see workmen working, but I couldn’t tell what they were working on. I couldn’t see if they were working on the building or on the alley itself or on something altogether different. I tried shouting to get somebody’s attention, but there was a generator banging away loudly and a small diesel-powered Bobcat idling. Nobody heard me. Of else they just ignored me. Either way, I learned nothing.

I made my way back out to the street and approached the construction site from the other end of the alley. No joy there either.

So there we are. Save the Date suspense and drama. I’ll wait another week or so and return to the alley to see if Save the Date and my question are still there. If so, then I’ll keep going back to see if I get an answer. If not…well, I’ll probably keep going back anyway.

Seriously, I have no defenses against curiosity.