From May 1858 until 1877, the Alcott family lived in this house in Concord, MA. Though they’d lived in the town before, in the nearby house now known as the Wayside, this home would be the place in Concord where they lived longest. May 23, 1860, Anna Alcott married John Pratt in the Parlor. This parlor would also hold the...

The Atlantic House, first owned by the inaugural postmaster of Provincetown, was a tavern from the very beginning. Though following the death of its first owner, The AH did serve a stint as the final stop on the Orleans-Provincetown Stagecoach line. That ended with the arrival in Provincetown of the railroad. What we are concerned with here, though, is more...

This hill is a high point, both literally and figuratively, of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts are all buried there and reached by old stone steps. Many people leave mementos on these graves. If that sounds to you like something you’d like, bring along a note, a special stone, or something similar!

Haverhill, MA has an alter-ego. It’s something you might never pick up by visiting it. You see, in 1936, after a childhood in which he is said to have ‘visited vaudeville houses in 48 states’ (his father was a famous banjo player), Bob Montana’s family settled down in peaceful Haverhill from 1936-39. It was there that Bob first started sketching...

e.e. cummings died of a stroke on 9/3/1962, in North Conway, NH in Memorial Hospital. He was cremated, and his ashes buried in Lot 748, along ‘Althaea’s Path’, in Section 6 of Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. “i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true...

Born January 19, 1809 to an actor and actress, on what is now Boylston St. in Boston, Edgar Allan Poe became an orphan at a very young age, when his mother died in 1810, shortly after his father had abandoned the family. It is perhaps for this reason that Poe has been said to have hidden, obscured, or denied Boston...

Fruitlands was a Utopian farm commune founded by Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane in the 1840’s. It is located in Harvard, MA. Lane set this plan in motion when he purchased the Wyman farm and 90 acres that went along with it. Their aim was to be based on Transcendentalist principles. Louisa May Alcott chronicled this experiment in her famous...

Originally standing on 27 Union St., this house was moved in 1958 to the House of the 7 Gables complex, to save it from demolition. It was here that Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on the fourth of July, 1804. One of his ancestors had been a judge in the Salem Witch Trials. His father was a sea captain who died...

In truth, this structure is known as the ‘1668 Turner/Ingersoll Mansion’ (Turner and Ingersoll were both sea captains- one sold the mansion to the other). Good luck with calling it that, though. The Ingersolls were cousins of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne’s visits to one female cousin (who would inherit the mansion herself) inspired the setting and title of his 1851 novel....

Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA was the first garden cemetery of the type so common today. it also contains the graves of a surprising number of literary figures. These include geologist Louis Agassiz, T.B. Aldrich, John Bartlett (of the quotation books), Nathaniel Bowditch, Philips Brooks, poet Robert Creeley, father of the memoir Frank Conroy, cookbook author Fannie Farmer, Julia Ward...

It may be the club with the worst name ever, but the Parker House’s Saturday Club was a powerful gathering of literary force. Regular visitors  included Emerson, James Russell Lowell (Editor of The Atlantic Monthly), Hawthorne, Whittier, Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. This group, what today we might call a ‘think tank’, met on a monthly basis at the Parker...

ATF is a simple place. A moderately technical yellow main loop around 2 mi. long. A smaller blue inner loop.  And a dirt road through the center. But simple layout and lack of options can be an advantage. This is the quintessential “after work” type ride. Stop worrying about your epic, and just get in the woods! Coming from Nagog...

BPSP is a perfect park to bring your kids, and it’s not just because of the splash park. A paved road bisects the park through the woods, and it makes this a popular spot for families and a convenient way to introduce your family to trails. And a gravel path follows the Ipswich river to a footbridge. These two “corridors”...

Roger Babson was an author and businessman, who founded Babson College. During the Depression, he hired men to carve motivational sayings on boulders in some property he owned: Dogtown. A trail which loosely traces through these boulders is a popular destination at the park, and the road/streambed/trail that leads to them is the backbone of the park’s trails. A recently...

Please note, because wires have recently been found (May of 2016) strung across trails, I can’t recommend you ride at F. Gilbert Hills State Forest in Foxborough, Franklin State Forest, Wrentham State Forest, and Freetown State Forest. It is simply not worth the danger when there are so many other excellent places to ride relatively nearby. Try Wompatuck State Park!

Please note, because wires have recently been found (May of 2016) strung across trails, I can’t recommend you ride at F. Gilbert Hills State Forest in Foxborough, Franklin State Forest, Wrentham State Forest, and Freetown State Forest. It is simply not worth the danger when there are so many other excellent places to ride relatively nearby. Try Wompatuck State Park!

It is framed on all sides by roads, and it’s hard-to-impossible to get truly lost, but you won’t believe it when you’re riding. With its location less than a mile off Rt. 128, Gordon is laughably easy to find, and provides a much more woodsy experience than you’d expect given that description. One reason is the lakes, which give a...

Tradition has it that many of the homes surrounding this forest were used as Underground Railroad hideouts in the 1850s. So secret doors and chambers can still be seen in old local homes. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe were frequent visitors to families in the area. As to the park itself, I’ve never been to a park quite like...

A haven of green in otherwise built up, suburban world of office parks and malls. The 270 acres of land is “Landlocked ” because of its location between Routes 3, 128, and 62 in Burlington. The property currently offers about 12 miles of trails. These trails are best categorized as new school, mountain-biker built singletrack.  Not freeride trails, but singletrack with...

If you’ve ever wanted to be in a world dominated by bikes.  To ride with so many cyclists you’ll grow hoarse from asking them to pass on the left, this may very well be the place you’ll do it. It is not precisely mountain biking but there are in fact pirate trails which may or may not still exist which...