Head of the Charles

Posted October 21, 2014 by Gemma Doyle

I love fall here in New England.  We’ve covered that topic pretty well, I think, but I don’t think I can really stress it enough, now that the foliage is changing in earnest and color is everywhere.  I think I love it so much, and I appreciate it so much, because it’s nothing that I’m used to and it seems like a minor miracle to me every single year.  So it was with actual, real shock that I heard someone on the radio talking about watching the boats on the Charles and how it was the only part of autumn in New England that she liked.

Well.  First of all I had no idea what she was even talking about, so I had to do some research.  You know every movie that has ever been set in Boston, how there is at least one scene with crews doing their crew boat thing on the Charles?  Apparently it’s a huge deal – and I never even expected that, because in all the time I’ve lived in the Boston area, I’ve never seen anything other than sailboats and windsurfers on the Charles.  I guess I must have been living kind of a sheltered life.  The Head of the Charles is the biggest regatta in the world, and is the penultimate rowing event for college rowing teams and the people who line the shore on both sides of the river to watch.  There were a lot of those people on Saturday, since the weather was cool and partly sunny and not bad spectating weather for autumn at all.  It is pretty fun to watch, too, even if you’re like me and don’t actually care much who wins (and some people in the crowd cared very, very much, as Boston people tend to do for every sort of sporting event, which I find both baffling and endearing).

Mostly I spent the time worrying that the rowers (who were all, as far as I could see, wearing shorts) were cold, and trying to peer over people (I am 5’3”; peering over people is generally not possible.)  It was festive and fun, and I came away feeling that the woman I heard on the radio is not alone in thinking Head of the Charles is the best part of autumn in New England.  For me, it was interesting for a couple of hours, and then I wandered off to go find some coffee.  Dunkin, not Starbucks.  Apparently I’m becoming a little bit of a Boston person after all.