Now is the winter of our discontent. We’ve watched all the videos of past events at the Belmont Historical Society and the Charles River Watershed Association. It’s getting cold, but it may be time to get outside. Nature is a balm when screens separate you from the world. If you’ve walked all of the Western Greenway and Lone Tree Hill, consider trying the ACROSS Lexington Challenge. Walk all 12 ACROSS Lexington trails—more than 35 miles!—record the dates, and submit your record to get a certificate and get added to the “baggers” list. Many spellcheck algorithms replace “COVID-19,” the virus, with [READ MORE]
Persistence Built Western Greenway
By Roger Wrubel It began for me in 1995. I was working with a new grassroots organization, the McLean Open Space Alliance (MOSA), that formed to try to protect more than 200 acres of undeveloped land owned by McLean Hospital. The hospital campus occupied about 50 acres, and McLean owned about 180 additional acres of forests and meadow beyond that. During a period when hospital finances were challenging, Partners HealthCare, of which McLean was a part, wanted to sell its “surplus” property to developers. This created great controversy in Belmont. About a third of the town favored development, including the [READ MORE]
Friends of Lexington Bikeways Serves Town
By Peggy Enders The Friends of Lexington Bikeways (FoLB) is a nonprofit 501c(3) volunteer organization that promotes and supports biking and the shared use of bicycle routes in and around Lexington. FoLB was established in 1991 as the “Friends of the Minuteman Bikeway” at a time when the building of the Bikeway was underway but still had many residents concerned about possible negative impacts, including the loss of backyard privacy and declining home values. Those fears were never realized, and today the Bikeway is considered one of the most popular recreational (not to mention economic) resources in the area. Today, [READ MORE]