Photoblog—Mendon Ponds Park

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My partner and I went to Mendon Ponds Park on Sunday. One of the cool things there is the “Devil's Bathtub,” [1] a kettle that (like the rest of the area's geography) appears to be left by a retreating glacier. It's a meromictic body of water — unlike the more common holomictic lakes, the layers of water in a meromictic lake do not mix, creating an oxygen-poor region at the bottom with unusual biology. [2]

A large still pond at the bottom of a basin in the middle of the woods. The trees are bare and brown.
The “Devil's Bathtub” viewed from a small deck on the side
The reverb on the pond was interesting — a few clear, loud taps followed by a quick decay. It's kind of like the “nonlinear” or “gated” reverbs of the 80s, although my phone appears to have applied a noise gate to recordings, exaggerating the effect here.
A close-up of a bog with moss, small trees, and logs.
A closer view of the water in the “Devil's Bathtub”
A landscape with a forest ringing a large pond. The grass is mowed in the foreground.
Kame hills across Deep Pond
We heard a chorus of short, quick, high rising calls at Deep Pond. We thought they were birds in the moment, but now I'm remembering that spring peepers sound like this.

  1. The name immediately made me think of Beck's “Devil's Haircut,” and I had ”got a devil's bathtub in my mind” playing in my head the whole walk. ↩︎

  2. ”Very few organisms can live in such an oxygen-poor environment. One exception is purple sulfur bacteria. These bacteria, commonly found at the top of the monimolimnion in such lakes, use sulfur compounds such as sulfides in photosynthesis. These compounds are produced by decomposition of organic sediments in oxygen-poor environments. The monimolimnion is often rich in phosphorus and nitrogen. These factors combine to create an ideal environment for bacterial growth.” (Wikipedia) ↩︎

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