Town commons are, well, common throughout New England, but this doesn’t mean they have remained static throughout their history. Many town commons have been altered, “improved” and in Bellingham’s case, built on and almost forgotten. But today, Bellingham has a vibrant town common that is well-situated, beloved, and much visited. Community events take place there often, and visitors, both adults and children, spend time there daily throughout the year.
We had a perfect outdoor fall day to try forest bathing at Elmbank in Wellesley, MA. The bright blue sky offered a perfect backdrop for the glowing fall foliage. The breeze provided a varying shower of leaves as the wind increased then died back down.
Publicizing my latest book, Finding Easy Walks Wherever You Are, has been taking up a lot of my energy, so it was wonderful to get out on the trail with local grands over the weekend to help them enjoy the temporary Storywalk® posted along the trail at the SNETT in Bellingham near the Center Street entrance to the trail. New storywalks® will be posted each month
Renata, from the Franklin & Bellingham Rail trail committee, is responsible for getting new storywalks® up each month, and helped lead a group of folks along the trail
This handicapped accessible portion of the rail trail is busy these days, and got busier shortly after we’d finished reading the story when a group of folks hit the trail with the Franklin & Bellingham rail trail committee. Fortunately the trail is quite flat, wide, with extra space on each side of the stone dust trail where we could step off safely as groups of folks passed by. Most walkers wore masks, which we really appreciated.
New tree identification signs along the trail
The grands are both able to read these days, so it was fun to see them taking in the story page by page then rushing on to the next page of the story. They also took in the new signs posted by the rail trail committee, in cooperation with DCR, to identify various tree species along the trail. We got a little practice with our Latin as we walked.
Gorgeous foliage seen from the opening to the trail at Trolley Crossing Farm
Trolley Crossing Farm, which abuts the trail, has a produce stand next to the trail and local pumpkins were available.
They got pumpkinsAfter posing–one more shot with the pumpkins
The snag–you have to carry them back to the car with you.
Handy pumpkin carrier!
My grands used some ingenuity to figure out a handy way to carry their small pumpkins, or as one said, her “pumpkinette.”
Tyler ready to get some footage for our new cable TV show
I had been on this same trail just the other day to tape another episode of our new Cable TV show, “Finding Easy Walks Wherever You Are.” We wanted to highlight the storywalk® and learned about more railroad history from the rail trail committee member who walked with us that day.
Grabbing some shots of the Trolley Crossing Farm vegetable stand
It’s fun to travel, but it’s also wonderful to slip in short walks right around the corner from where we live. We are so lucky to have this great trail, still under development, available to visit whenever we want. Happy trails!
Enjoying time outdoors with Mark Mandeville and Raianne Richards of the Massachusetts Walking Tour, one wonderful partnership among others I have been blessed with on this journey!
In my quest to help get out the word about the newest trail book, Finding Easy Walks Wherever You Are, I have reached out to various sources to arrange interviews. I will be on Stephanie Chandler’s Non-fiction Author’s Association podcast Wednesday, Oct. 14th at 1PM EST. Along with the podcast interview, Stephanie invited me to contribute a blog post about my journey. Here’s the post “Strategic Partnerships”--enjoy!
“The thing about strategic partnerships is…at least for me, they didn’t start out feeling very strategic. It helps if you find something to write about that you really love. In fact, it’s recommended, since you will be spending a lot of time with your topic, so you better have some pretty positive feelings about it, or else you are going to become unhappy very quickly. I really love to spend time outdoors. Even so, writing books about Easy Walks was not my plan, especially when I found myself unable to walk because of serious illness.” To read more: https://nonfictionauthorsassociation.com/strategic-partnerships-by-marjorie-turner-hollman/
During this year of 2020, we have headed out more and more on road biking adventures. This trip took us to Monterey, MA in the Berkshires, to Beartown State Forest, to see if what looked like a road through the forest was rideable on our adaptive tandem. Turns out, it was!
Summer for me means getting outside on our adaptive tandem bicycle. Outings during Covid-19 have increasingly become road biking since our beloved rail trails are so well-loved they are more crowded than we feel comfortable visiting. We headed out recently to Dudley, our second try. The first attempt my cooling vest clogged and the trip was aborted because of the heat. This time, the day was cooler, and we also have another cooling vest in hand.
Ahhh, the cool of morning calls me back to Silver Lake (with no cooling vest or scarf)
One of the tips in my new book, Finding Easy Walks Wherever You Are for avoiding crowds on trails is to head out early. When we got up this morning the temperature was in the 50s. Yeah! After a quick breakfast, we headed down to the lake for a quick walk before starting work, and it felt wonderful.
Since the beginning of the pandemic this spring, I have seen little of my sweet grands, even though they live in town. We are staying more remote than they have been able to, which has made visits difficult. But outdoor walks alongside Silver Lake work, with all of us wearing masks and walking apart from each other.
Each spring we eagerly look forward to getting out our adaptive tandem bike, which allows me to enjoy time on the trails far beyond how far my feet can carry me. Last spring we were in process of building our new bike, and were delayed in getting out. And this spring, well, there’s a pandemic about, if you had not heard. So beyond concerns about the days getting too warm for me, we have the added concern about whether we might expose, or be exposed to, anyone else who could make us deathly ill.
We decided, rather than visit one of the several local rail trails nearby, which we felt sure would be more crowded than we felt comfortable with, to head out to Carver, to the Myles Standish State Forest. Continue reading →
Gathering at the trail kiosk at High Street before we headed out
The town of Bellingham was founded in 1719, and all year we have been hosting events throughout town to fit all sorts of folks’ interests as we celebrate the 300th year since the town’s founding. Early settlers who were instrumental in the founding of the town were the Baptists, and it turns out the first Baptist meeting house was on High Street.
We are also in the process of writing the book celebrating the town’s founding, which will be out next spring. In researching the book we learned a lot about the town and it’s earlier days. We will be sharing lots of that information in the soon-to-be published book, but during our walk at High Street we drew on that knowledge to help folks get a better picture of Bellingham in days gone by. Continue reading →
