Walking Book Tour — Gooseberry and “The Landscape About Us”

For the uninitiated, the South Coast Almanac’s Walking Book Tour (WBT) program involves two women—book lovers who also love the South Coast—leading groups of people on walks that involve local authors or books that compliment the landscape. We recently walked Gooseberry Island with a bunch of local authors but first… How did I end up doing this?

I am one of the two women who lead this group, and yes, this is totally nerdy.

But when you’re in Brenda’s Paquachuck Inn on Westport Point being read the scene involving the character “Brenda” that is set in that Inn, by the author of In the Wake of the Willows, Fred Thurber, in his book which is a Westport-specific sequel to a story that so many of us grew up reading (and watching the cartoon version), The Wind In The Willows—I mean, wow. It’s almost too amazing to process!

Or when on that same Willows Tour you meet a woman who was in the actual Hurricane of 1938 and then shows up to the WBT of the best book on that hurricane, A Wind To Shake The World: The Story of the 1938 Hurricane, by Everett S. Allen, to tell her story of how she got hurt in that hurricane while standing on the hurricane barrier in New Bedford—again, wow!

Or when former mayor of New Bedford John Bullard Walked his memoir, Hometown, up and down Acushnet Avenue, or when we re-imagined the Weweantic River in Wareham as the Amazon River for local writer Holly Fitzgerald’s Ruthless River and Walked that, or had the president of the Nasketucket Bird Club bring his binoculars and weave in a bit of bird watching on our Walk of No Land To Light On by Yara Zgheib on West Island Town Beach in Fairhaven…..

I could go on. 

The other WBT lead is publisher of The South Coast Almanac, Marlissa Briggett. The locations of the WBTs are determined by a book that compliments the chosen area. When possible, the author of the book accompanies the group, reading selections at the beginning and end of the walk, and then two more along the way. When the author can’t be involved, we read. Born from the idea of celebrating both the South Coast and its writers, the WBTs have been going on since November, 2018. There are about four walks a year, and they almost always involve a treat. One time the “treat” was a locally-brewed beer, and yes, it was a book about beer, The Case of the IPA, by local author Paull Goodchild. Another treat involved bugs. This was for Uncertain: The Wisdom & Wonder of Being Unsure by Maggie Jackson.

Not all the treats had bugs in them. Just a few of them…

On October 9th, the WBT walked their first anthology, The Landscape About Us, a collection of stories and poems about Westport, MA. This also included photographs. Local writer Midori Evans contributed and oversaw the creation of the book and was able to participate in the Walk, along with three other writers, of which I was one.

Gooseberry Island quickly emerged as the perfect location for the walk, as Midori covered in the opening moments of the walk.

“It happened during lockdown,” she explained. “I was driving to Gooseberry every day for a morning walk.” For an entire month she took photos during the one hour walk involving some part of the island. A woman who watched Midori walk down the Causeway, day after day, eventually let Midori park in her driveway. Long-story-short—Midori knows Gooseberry Island well.

This is helpful, as the book has fifteen stories and poems, and Gooseberry Island is 73 acres. Quickly, we winnowed the stories down to the four writers who could make it. Midori’s story, “The Funny Shape of Land,” involves maps and the wondrous lexicon associated with them; this pretty much meant she could read this anywhere.

My story, “Westport Terroir and the Importance of Gravel,” was a little more site specific. After some discussion, a large rock outcrop, and really, to be more accurate—a small gathering of boulders with the largest one referred to as “Big Rock,”  edging what was to be our first turn in the walk—ended up being the location of my reading.

Krista Allen’s story, “One Hour by a Cold Stone Wall,” involved a stone wall. While this also meant she could read almost anywhere on the walk, her intimate knowledge of Gooseberry comes from one of her other pastimes, surfing, along with flying in airplanes. She also had much to say about the lookout tower, a WWII relic once constructed to spot German submarines.

Our fourth reader and first to read was Lorna Miles. Her story, “Bearing Witness to BOH’T,” emerged as the easiest story to place, as it involved a shipwrecked boat on a beach. The consensus was that this would be a great way to start the walk, leaving us haunted by the easy-to-visualize carcass of a once-grand vessel wasting away on a beautiful beach, while we walked along a beautiful beach. This was also a politically-charged story that was so very thoughtful, it left us awash in an activated space of recollection of the years that have gone by and how much has changed. 

And we need things like this—creative ways to celebrate books, authors, and the places we love, especially during these times where folks are reading fewer and fewer books. Please consider signing up on the Walking Book Tours site for news on the next Tour. Or join Krista Allen’s new Walking Book Tour series. Or start your own. 

The crowd at the Walking Book Tour, Gooseberry Island, Oct. 9, 2025