There's a type of American success story that rarely goes viral on social media, rarely gets optioned for a Netflix docuseries, and quietly outlives pretty much all of the other stuff we create: a person gives away land, and then decades later, strangers are still walking on it. That's the entire plot of Martha L. Nickerson's story, and it deserves more attention than it's getting. According to the Attleboro Land Trust's newsletter, Nickerson donated 48 acres of her family's Attleboro, Massachusetts farm to the trust on June 29, 2001, and it's now public land called the Nickerson Walking Woods Preserve, replete with a half-mile inner loop and a full-mile outer loop that anyone can meander on; no membership, no fee, no day pass sold out.
The farm before the fence came down
