I would love for you to start reading page four of your book, where it starts The Plan.

The plan was never to walk miles and miles on train tracks during a freezing day in early March.

And it certainly wasn't to hide from a cop, trying not to get picked up on loitering charges

for strolling along a railroad that up until very recently, I believe, to be abandoned. There was

supposed to be a trail. I'm Kelly McEvers, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's

strange, incredible, and wondrous places Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible,

and wondrous places. And today we are talking to Isaac Fitzgerald. He is the author of American

Rambler, walking the trail of Johnny Appleseed. Isaac, welcome. Thank you so much for having me,

Kelly. I'm happy to be here. Yeah, we're so happy to have you. So excited to talk about this book.

But first I want to start, your first book was called Dirtbag Massachusetts. It was a memoir of essays.

And because our show is about place, I wanted to kind of just start there and talk about place a little bit

with you. First about Boston, where you grew up for a time. What do you remember most about Boston?

Well, so when I was living in Boston, my family, my parents were members of the Catholic

worker, which is this Catholic organization, really socialist at its core, really taking the

tenants of, you know, care for your neighbor, feed the hungry, home the homeless.

And we're living in a place called John Larry House.

And also we were spent a lot of time at a soup kitchen called Bailey House.

And growing up there, what I remember most about Boston is being surrounded by people

constantly.

It was such a unique childhood.

But when you're a child, you don't know that.

All I knew is that I was just surrounded by really loving, really caring, sometimes

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