The Stevens-Coolidge Place, an estate in North Andover, Massachusetts, is hosting Winterlights (November 29-December 31), and a New Year’s Resolution Scavenger Hunt (December 22-January 6). Visitors can stroll the artfully illuminated mansion and grounds while enjoying music, guided tours, and wintry activities organized by the property’s steward, the Trustees of Reservations. (Farther west, in Stockbridge, the Trustees are also running Winterlights events at Naumkeag.)This former summer home of Helen and John Gardner Coolidge, A.B. 1884 (a descendant of Thomas Jefferson, and nephew of art patron Isabella Stewart Gardner) sits amid bountiful gardens; the roses may be long gone, but there are choice evergreens, a serpentine wall, the skeletal beauty of an old orchard—and that scavenger hunt. Look inside the estate’s “Little Free Library” for a list of 15 resolutions prompting searches for natural objects and signs of wildlife. Fun for any age, or an intergenerational team, the hunt fosters external (and internal) exploration befitting a long New England winter.
Winter’s Bright Spots

Snowy grounds at sunset
Photograph courtesy of the Trustees
You might also like
Centralizing University Discipline
Harvard establishes new disciplinary procedures for campus protest violations.
Five Questions with JoAnn Manson
A veteran women’s health advocate on federal funding cuts
Doctors for Change
Countway Library exhibit explores historic anti-nuclear activism
Most popular
Explore More From Current Issue
The Trump Administration's Impact on Higher Education
Unprecedented federal actions against research funding, diversity, speech, and more
89664Paper Peepshows at Harvard's Baker Library
How “paper peepshows” brought distant realms to life
89684