Frugal Fun in the Fruitlands: The Life List
Originally published at Frugal in the Fruitlands. You can comment here or there.
I used to do a feature on this blog called “Frugal Fun in the Fruitlands”, where I would highlight free or inexpensive happenings in my area. This is kind of a throwback to that.
I recently read Early Retirement Extreme’s article “Travel is not worth it“. While I don’t necessarily agree with Jacob on this one, I was inspired by his postscript:
Before going to faraway locations, realize that your mind comes along with you. You will find what you bring. If you find much more at home, outside your doorstep, if you expand your mind instead. Here are some suggestions: 1) Do you know all the streets in your city? Have you been to every one of them. If not, geocaching is a nice way to explore the local area. 2) Okay, so you know the streets. Now can you name 5 different birds that live in your area? What about 5 different grasses? 3 edible plants? Do you know where the nearest body of fresh water is? Drinkable water? Do you know where the stream originates? 3) Do you know your neighbor? What about the other people on the street? Have you gained their perspective? 4) As you wander the streets of (1), consider the buildings. How old are they? Who owns them? How long have people lived here? Has any wars been fought over this area? Why? What happened to the losers? (You can consider yourself a winner since you are currently occupying the area.)
I’d say I score a failing grade on this measure. I’ve lived for four years in this town, a short walk from a lake with all kinds of free entertainment possibilities, and I went swimming and boating on it for the first time this month. I can name some of the streets in my town, but not all by any means. I could definitely name five birds and three edible plants, but I’d have trouble with five grasses. I don’t know my neighbors, and I don’t know much about the history of my town. This is almost willful ignorance, since I otherwise have a lot of intellectual curiosity about the world around me.
At around the same time, I discovered that a special tourism commission in Massachusetts compiled a list of 1,000 Great Places in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, while they made a list, they did not check it twice, as the Longfellow Bridge was included twice. But hey, 999 is still a lot.
As one Boston Globe commentator quips, the list seems to have “made a solemn oath to leave no burg behind.” Even my little town of Lunenburg is on there, known for the Drawbridge Puppet Theater and its Historic District. I have never been to the puppet theater, and I was unaware there was a historic district. Apparently the tiny downtown area with an 18th-century parish church is the historic district - in which case, every town in Massachusetts has a historic district.
The point is, there’s a lot in my backyard that I could explore before I fulfill my dream of studying Spanish in Argentina. I feel like this could be a sort of life list of places to see before I die - or at least before I move out of Massachusetts.
Of course, not all of this fun is frugal. The New England Aquarium, for example, will set you back about $20/person, and that’s not including parking, food, and plush penguin souvenirs. But Mass Tourism sure likes lists, and there’s also 50 Under $50, a list of 50 frugal(ish) destinations in Massachusetts, for both a couple and a family of four.
You can see there’s a lot of overlap between these two lists. Just examining the locations in Central Mass, there’s the Fruitlands Museum, Tower Hill Botanic Garden, and the EcoTarium - all of which I’ve never visited, despite my claims to local savviness and frugality.
I would argue that all of these efforts to learn about your own neighborhood are vital in a world with increasing globalism. Just as we are becoming divorced from our sources of food, we are becoming divorced from our sources of entertainment. As this happens, we lose a bit of our regional diversity. I would hope that we would view this loss the same way we view the loss of an interesting species of bird.
In short: fun begins at home.