Bringing People to Nature, One Bus at a Time
Societal divisions in America get a lot of press: left vs. right, coastal vs. flyover, religious vs. secular. Another division has day-to-day impacts on people’s lives but receives little attention: highwayed vs. stranded.
The former have an open horizon, limited only by the level of gas in the tank and their reservoir of leisure time. The stranded lack reliable means of high-speed, even moderate-speed, transportation. They rely on feet, a bicycle, friends with cars, or public transportation. Many live in cities, where a cool swim in a clear lake or the scent of a spruce-fir forest can be as unattainable as a ticket to a Taylor Swift concert.
Three summers ago, the Manchester Transit Authority (MTA), which operates city and school buses in Manchester, New Hampshire, launched a program to provide more city residents access to nature sites. It’s called Transit to Trails. Once a month from mid-spring to early fall, the MTA provides free bus rides from downtown Manchester to nearby state parks and/or conservation areas.
“It’s fun. Everything is free. When you don’t have much, it’s great,” said Stacey Leisey, who along with her grandson and the other riders quoted in this article took the bus to Bear Brook State Park on a sunny day this past August. The park is a half-hour drive from Manchester.
Most summer days, Leisey takes her 6-year-old grandson to Hunt Memorial Pool in downtown Manchester, which is no longer a pool but a splash pad after expensive repairs forced City Hall to repurpose it. Leisey saw an ad about the trip to Bear Brook and jumped at the chance. She doesn’t own a car, so she can’t just pick up and head to the park, she said. It’s her first time out of the city in probably 10 years. “It’s peaceful; I wish I could live out here,” said Leisey, who generally gets around Manchester on foot, including a 40-minute trek to her job at a Wendy’s restaurant.
The MTA started the program at the encouragement of Manchester alderman Will Stewart, who read about a similar program in Seattle, said Mike Whitten, the executive director of the 30-bus, $4.5 million transportation authority. At the same time, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in New Hampshire was urging the MTA to provide bus service to its 640-acre Cedar Swamp Preserve on the outskirts of Manchester. The two ideas merged, and TNC contributed $1,500 toward the cost of the monthly jaunts. The organization spends even more to promote Transit to Trails, said Megan Latour, marketing and communication manager for TNC in New Hampshire. Latour described this work as an investment in both people’s well-being and the future of land conservation.
“Over time, we’ve come to understand that if we want people to care about nature, they need to see themselves in nature and value it personally,” she said.
Manchester resident Susan LaBrie said she’s been on just about every Transit to Trails trip. That includes a rainy trip to Pawtuckaway State Park earlier in 2023, and a jaunt to Fox Forest in Hillsborough in 2022 when only two rode the bus. The retiree divorced 21 years ago and gave up automobile ownership for budget reasons. “I wanted to save money; I didn’t want any bills,” she said. LaBrie lives on a Social Security check and a Housing Choice voucher. She explained that she finds city walking boring, and visits nature sites any chance she gets.
“It’s soothing, you feel ahhhh, relaxed. You leave the stress behind,” said another Transit to Trials rider, Brenda Trudeau.
Researchers have quantified the health benefits of time spent outside. For example, in 2022, the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances published a study suggesting that long-term exposure to greenery may add 2½ years to a person’s life. The principal investigator, Northwestern University preventive medicine professor Lifant Hou, told The Washington Post that the study attributed biological and molecular changes in the blood to long-term exposure to green space.
Similarly, as also reported in the Post, a scientific report from the publishers of Nature magazine indicated that as few as two hours outside each week can enhance a person’s overall sense of well-being. Or as Traiton Lorenzo Lord, a homeless 24-year-old who was riding the bus to Bear Brook, explained, “It’s where we come from. All the genetics from around the Earth and our bodies are from nature. When you’re in nature, you feel different.”
Located between the state’s largest city, Manchester, and the capital, Concord, Bear Brook State Park exceeds 10,000 acres and offers swimming, camping, hiking, mountain biking, fishing, archery, boating, and horseback riding.
The state calls Bear Brook its largest developed park, yet it remains heavily forested, and with hills that top 800 feet in elevation, it can provide a heart-accelerating afternoon of hiking.
Such treks weren’t on the agenda of the 21 people who exited the bus on this day in August. The bus parked in a lot adjacent to a 4-acre lawn that sweeps down to a beach made from an impoundment of the brook.
Benches and picnic tables are available to rest and quietly enjoy the scenery. Ferns and other forest brush grow at the base of manicured 90-foot-tall white pines. Already on this morning, at approximately 10:00 a.m., the temperature was creeping into the high 80s, creating a pleasant dilemma for anyone who wanted to cool off – in water or shade. “I plan to walk around, listen to music,” said Dakota Hartman, 22, who recently moved into an apartment in Manchester.
But no grueling hike was on his mind. That’s understandable. He has no car or license and must walk about two hours a day to his full-time job at United Parcel Service in an adjacent town, he said. LaBrie, the car-free retiree, wore flip-flops. She planned to go for a walk, but said it would only be 15 minutes or so.
On the lush lawn, Trudeau spread her homemade quilt of denim pieces, bordered with the waists cut from discarded jeans. She shared the quilt with a friend who had agreed to come at the last minute. Before this trip, Trudeau hadn’t been to Bear Brook for 20 years, she said. “I want to go camping so bad, but the prices are crazy – $50, not counting firewood or ice.”
In some states, managers of state parks have recognized that park visitors tend to be mostly white, and enjoy higher income and education levels than the state population as a whole. For many people, state parks have become harder to access, either because of entrance fees, transportation challenges, or work schedules. There’s also a fundamental issue of who feels welcome in these settings.
Minnesota offers an intriguing example of successful efforts to boost minorities’ park attendance. According to the National Association of State Park Directors, that state targeted marketing efforts toward minorities, instituted an outdoors skills-building program, offered a library program for free park passes, and invested in adaptive equipment. Over the course of five years, the share of minority visitors rose from 5 to 11 percent. Colorado, New Mexico, Maryland, Oregon, and Washington have also passed laws to reduce barriers to state parks, and South Dakota has taken the novel approach of authorizing doctors to write prescriptions for exercise that can be used as free state park entrance passes.
At Bear Brook, entrance fees are $4 for adult admission, $2 for kids, and nothing for seniors. Transit to Trails passengers receive free admission. Although this support is welcome, most riders emphasized that transportation was the key barrier. A grandfather doesn’t want to bother his daughter for a ride to the park. Those with cars couldn’t afford the gas, and ride sharing, at $60 round trip on Lyft, is out of the question.
Thanks to a grant from TNC, Transit to Trails will remain free to passengers in the 2024 season, and seems poised to continue to grow in popularity. According to Whitten, the bus company executive, the most popular trip during the pilot year of 2022 was a trip to Bear Brook that drew 10 passengers. By comparison, the August 2023 trip to Bear Brook logged 27 passengers. Latour, the TNC official, said that organizers learned a lot from the 2022 pilot year. The bus trips can’t take too long. Partnerships with organizations such as the parks office and New Hampshire Audubon are beneficial. Activities, such as swimming and birding, draw people.
For example, a September 2022 Transit to Trails trip to the Aububon’s Massabesic Center included arts and crafts and a scavenger hunt. “That’s what we have to do: find more effective ways to broaden the draw,” Whitten said.
But at Bear Brook, people were content to just enjoy the park.
“It’s nice to be able to do this on my own,” said Frank Zbink, a retired machinist who would have to ask his daughter to drive him to the park were it not for Transit to Trails. He had a new video camera and was testing it out on vegetation, scenery, and his friend.
“There’s more to the world than living in the city,” he said. Zbink volunteers at a drug and alcohol recovery organization, and he’s ridden every Transit to Trails trip except one. “The city parks are nice, but it’s nice to get to these state parks. You can appreciate more of the environment,” he said. “It’s a good change of pace.”
A Different Kind of Quiet
Last August, a handful of homeless young adults got to trade a day on the city streets for a day outdoors in nature. Ten young adults associated with the Waypoint Youth Resources Center shelter in Manchester took advantage of Transit to Trails and spent a day at Bear Brook State Park.
They brought a cooler with chips, salsa, nuts, and water. They played ultimate Frisbee on the beach and cooled off in a pond-size impoundment of Bear Brook. And they traded the sounds of a 24-hour city for the peace of a forest.
“It’s quiet,” said Nathaniel Pepe, 24, “as opposed to the loud silence of the city, [where] you’re waiting for something; [city quiet] feels like a cease-fire.”
A private, nonprofit organization, Waypoint opened its youth-focused homeless shelter in 2022. The 14-bed shelter has been full ever since, said Sarah Jones, program manager for 18- to 25-year-old runaway and homeless youth. Homelessness can be especially dangerous, even deadly, for youth. They’re at risk for mental illness, drug abuse, sexual exploitation, criminal behavior, and victimization, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Suicide is the leading cause of death for this population.
“When you’re homeless, everything is about survival,” Jones said. Opportunities for “developmentally appropriate activities” – better known as fun, discovery, and play – fall down the priority list, she said.
The August trip was the second one the kids at Waypoint had taken that summer. Pepe and his friend Jon Richard, who describes himself as a starving artist, went on a bug hunt and bottled a centipede. (It died, Pepe confessed.) They sought high ground and rigged a cell phone, ear buds, and a portable speaker to search for low-powered radio signals. “It looked like a World War II radio communication system,” Pepe said.
Meanwhile, Talon Ansteth sat at a picnic table sketching and later joined the rest of the Waypoint crowd in the water. “It’s been a little hard, so this is relaxing,” said Ansteth, who had been at the shelter for a week. If not at Bear Brook, Ansteth would be at the library using a computer to watch videos.
City parks are more readily available, of course, and several of the Waypoint residents said they visit these spaces. For example, the North End of Manchester, surrounded by middle-income neighborhoods, hosts Livingston Park, which has a pond and trails running through its waterside woods. But Jones questioned whether a city park is far enough away for a person who experiences trauma in the same city. “When you really go outside the city, there is more there to be connected to,” Jones said. “You can see the horizon in front of you.”