I first met Raianne Richards and Mark Mandeville, the founders and leading lights of the Massachusetts Walking Tour, when I joined them and fellow musicians Amy Alvey and Mark Kilianski on the final leg of their trek along the Bay Circuit Trail (BCT) in 2014. That year and the next, they walked different sections of…Continue readingThe Massachusetts Walking Tour: Connecting Communities on Foot–and with Music
Category: Bay Circuit Trail
In “Walking through Lowell with Jack Kerouac,” I described my rambles through the city while following the Bay Circuit Trail and visiting landmarks related to the life and work of its notorious literary native son. Though I mentioned the “Lowell Celebrates Kerouac” festival held in that city each October, the month of his death in…Continue readingKerouac Centennial: “On the Road” Unrolled
I walked the Bay Circuit Trail in a series of day hikes during 2013 and 2014, starting at the ocean north of Boston and finishing at the ocean in Duxbury south of Boston. The trail is an estimated 230 miles long, but I covered almost twice that distance as I walked back to my starting…Continue readingWalking through Lowell with Jack Kerouac
In April 2021, I helped organize an on-line “virtual symposium” with a small group to discuss a theme we described as “Civic Responsibility and the Conservationist.” The event was instigated by Alan French, a Massachusetts businessman (now retired) and activist (still very active), who spearheaded the completion of the Bay Circuit Trail, a 230-mile walking…Continue readingCommunity and “the Care of the Countryside”: Benton MacKaye’s Original Conception of the Appalachian Trail