Swiss Pines.

I should have known from the get-go that visiting any Japanese Garden named Swiss Pines was questionable. One doesn't necessarily expect to cross paths with a rather spookish (and gnarly toe-nailed) German woman (aka Frau Blucher, the trustee), and one odd-lot groundskeeper of 44 years (no, not old, but of years tending the grounds), who took our $5 donation in exchange for a mug and letter opener.

My friend Anthony suggested the gardens to me a few months ago. Maybe it had been awhile since he’d been there himself. Maybe years. Maybe he dreamt it. This I still have to clarify.**

Nonetheless, it was a beautiful day, so after a tasty breakfast out, a friend of mine and I headed out to Swiss Pines. After missing the entrance on the somewhat heavily wooded back road – the gardens lined with fencing, damaged in many spots - we backtracked and found a deserted small parking lot across the road from the entrance, which was a haggard small pagoda with faded signs, the door standing open with not a soul in sight.

I didn’t bring my camera along unfortunately. It would have made it a bit easier to have visuals to show the decay and shamble and potential backdrop for any convincing outdoor horror flick.

Any serenity or connect with nature was lost – if ever even found - after we walked through the bamboo forest at the entrance. And even then, it wasn't so much the overgrowth and disaray... it was the strangeness and unsettledness of it all, a sort of twilight zone in botanical gardens.

In the same breath, it surely makes for an unique memory. And to think, our dear Frau could easily have eaten several children that may have got lost in those gardens over time... for that matter, joined in by the groundskeeper, knife and fork in hand. It's no wonder they didn't greet us at the exit dressed up as clowns - it would have fit so well with that day's venture...

*alternate titles: Hansel and Gretel's Real Demise, Blair Witch Swiss Pines Project.

**thoughts from Anthony: "It's a shame that it has fallen to shit as you say it has. I have not been there since the summer of '97 or '98 - and then it was a glorious place. Once inside it was like being lost in another plane of serenity and escape, all except for the view of the towering mansion on the above hill from the back path. When I had gone that last time in '98 that is how it was, and it was even better years before on my first visit in 1991. There were at least 8 people scattered through the gardens tending to the horticulture. Funny thing was that one of them was a girl I had dated in high school, and I happened to run into her there while I was with my current - and very jealous - girlfriend of the time. I guess I will have to remember it for what it may have been at one time, and for what it was, instead of what it actually turned out to be. Much like both of the girls previously mentioned."

Swiss Pines website: http://www.charlestown.org/ct-org/ct-sp/swisspine01.asp