205. Wenham: Wenham Lake and Cemetery

You just can't go to Wenham and not take a look at the lake. It's sacrilege.

Unfortunately, it's cutoff from access, so it has to be seen from afar. I started in the cemetery and moved my way across.

But the cemetery was a study unto itself, a collection of Perkinses, Conants, Peabodys, Dodges, all the names that make the North Shore famous. Wenham has done well in memorializing its fallen soldiers, firemen and policemen, and even has a stone dedicated to the town founders and "Sons of the Revolution Now Buried in Unmarked Graves."

Future historians will have no way of capturing this following tale in its entirety, but it's as much a moment as any political election or natural disaster. There, at the back of the cemetery, was the grave of a U.S. Marine at rest. He was obviously a dad, and I say that without really knowing, but the grave decorations tell me all I need to know.

In 2004, Boston Red Sox fans who watched their team win the World Series for the first time in 86 years moved en masse to local cemeteries, bringing word of the championship to their lost fathers, uncles and grandfathers, and even mothers, aunts and grandmothers. Baseball is in the New England blood. Here, though, in 2011, a whole different fan base had reason to celebrate. The Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup! Bruins fans, perhaps due to the nature of the sport, are even more diehard than Red Sox fans. There, in a banner and even a puck, was a son telling a dad (again, assumptions) that their common dream had come true.

The emotion was palpable. What else would you travel to a grave to tell a lost family member? A birth, a death? The Bruins winning the Cup ranks right up there with life's most important moments.

Lake? What lake?