On June 7, 1893, in the midst of a banking panic, teenager Benton MacKaye set out on his ninth "expedition" (as he termed it) of that spring. It was a summing up of his scheme to "explore the country within walking distance of my home in Shirley Center (radius four miles)." From the top of Hunting Hill in Lunenburg he could look back out over the countryside he had been exploring and take stock of what he had seen.

On Sunday, August 21, 2005, in the midst of somewhat more sanguine conditions in the banking industry, the fifth annual Benton MacKaye Memorial Expedition set out to take some measure of Benton's feat by walking from Shirley Center to the public open space in the vicinity of Hunting Hill. Benton's book, Expedition Nine (The Wilderness Society, 1969), doesn't describe his exact route, and this year's Expedition took as direct a route as possible to the environs of the Hill.

Up until the Dow Conservation Area off Route 225, it was mostly a stroll along various roads with occasional attractions like Robert Adam's Shaker buildings and other local architecture, a pile of free household goods and glimpses down the tree-lined Meetinghouse Road. At Route 225, guide John Rounds joined the Expedition to take it off-road to the areas around Hunting Hill. There the attractions were more natural in character: red efts, a garter snake and large rocks among other things.

Once the large field (now a public conservation area) at the foot of Hunting Hill was reached, human creations were again encountered, the most surprising being the granite Shirley-Townsend-Lunenburg boundary post. There was a touch of irony there for veterans of the previous two Expeditions which had set off to find a similar boundary marker at the northern tip of Shirley and failed. This time no boundary markers were sought and this one showed up planted in the vicinity of the conservation area.

The weather was warm and muggy though biting insects weren't a problem. By the time they bush whacked their way to John's car off Townsend Road, several Expedition members had run out of water and were glad for the ride home. The same route will be pursued next year, hopefully with less bush whacking.