Dear Greater Boston perambulators,
So it begins. The heat wave of the next three days is going to be a ripper, so keep those hydrating beverages flowing, embrace the shade trees, and if you’re a Boston resident, check out the city’s cooling resource map AND the museums that are opening their doors to Bostonians for free during the heat emergency, today through Friday. But once we get back into temperate territory again, I want to invite all of you who’ve been excited and intrigued by the Boston Boundless Trail to do two crucial things.
Explore the trail at your leisure, and then, let us know what you think about it.When the original Walking City Trail launched in June of 2022, it went through a six month period of grassroots review. The earliest group hikes along the trail doubled as forums for discussing ways in which the trail could be made even better; by including more green spaces and built oddities located near the trail route, and in some cases, by dodging areas that made for less-than-pleasant hiking. For example, the WCT once descended from Stony Brook Reservation to Roslindale Village by way of Washington Street….until some of you pointed out that if we veered away from Washington Street and followed quieter, residential roads down the hill, we could escape the fumes of the traffic and swing by the Sherman Street Conservancy gardens with the fairy mailbox!
Now that we’re almost a month out from its launch, with three introductory hikes in the bag and more to come later this summer, the Boston Boundless Trail is in its own grassroots review period. If you explore any segment of the trail and would be willing to share honest feedback about what you enjoyed, changes that might make the trail better, and errors you found with the trail directons or maps, please do so by replying to this email or by reaching out to walkingcitytrail@gmail.com. Every suggestion for trail tweaks will be seriously considered, and the review period will wrap up sometime in early 2027. At which point the BBT route will be as finalized as it’s ever going to be.
Already, a few of you have offered some helpful corrections with a few small things in certain trail directions, and this is super appreciated! After spending several months in the weeds, putting all of these materials together, it’s easy to get cross-eyed and to make a few mistakes here and there. Likewise, it’s also possible to miss potential trail features hidden in plain view or just a few steps away from the trail. Your constructive feedback about the trail is going to allow the BBT to become the best version of itself.
On that front, a couple of related things:
Some of you may have noticed that if you search AllTrail for “Boston Boundless Trail,” nothing comes up. While we do have custom-made maps for all sections of the BBT hosted on AllTrails—which you can access at BostonTrails.org—we are not submitting the Boston Boundless Trail to AllTrails for official addition yet.
That’s because once you submit a trail to AllTrails, with the endgame of having AllTrails create an official profile of the trail that people can search for, it’s tough to make any changes to the trail; after it’s been submitted, accepted, and given a searchable profile. And because the BBT is now in a period of grassroots review, with possible tweaks, we will be officially submitting it to AllTrails in early 2027.
SO, for the interim, the only way to access the current, custom-made maps of the BBT on AllTrails is going to be at BostonTrails.org, via the web browser on your phone or computer. (You’ll find these map links on the page for BBT maps and directions). It’s a little inconveninent, but we went through this with the Walking City Trail, and I can attest that the AllTrails submission wait was 100% worth it.
If you’ve already been getting to work on exploring the Boston Boundless Trail, with the goal of completing the entire thing ASAP and earning a finisher’s patch (which we will be offering later this year!) any changes made to the trail route will have no impact on your completion. If you hike the whole trail before September, and a few tweaks are made to a few sections after September, that doesn’t negate your accomplishment. You hiked the Boston Boundless Trail. Whether you want to venture back out there and explore any segments that went through a few little revisions is up to you. So keep chugging and stay tuned for an announcement via the newsletter when the finisher patches for the BBT become available to claim.
Lastly, we will be announcing any changes made to the Boston Boundless Trail in one big news update when the grassroots review period ends in early 2027, via the newsletter and all other Walking City Trails channels.
As with all of the Walking City Trails, the BBT is yours to enjoy as you see fit. So get out there, get after it, and let us know what you think about the trail in its infancy.
Cheers,
Miles Howard
The Walking City Trails are 100% community powered. Simply put, these urban trails would not exist without the enthusiasm and generosity of Boston explorers like you. If you would like to support our efforts to connect more people with the great *local* outdoors, CLICK HERE.
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