Key planner draws on love of nature

Building paths a 'one-man show'

By Christina Pazzanese, Globe Correspondent  |  September 26, 2004

For the past 15 years, building the Charles River paths has been Daniel Driscoll's life.

A senior state planner with the Department of Conservation and Recreation, Driscoll has been involved with everything from reclaiming riverfront land from businesses and homeowners to selecting plants to place along the path.

''Dan has had very little help in this," said Robert Zimmerman, executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association. ''He's getting some help now" from current department Commissioner Katherine Abbott, but ''this is a one-man show."

''He's done great work," said Eric Reenstierna, president of the Newton Conservators, a small nonprofit that identifies parcels of land that it encourages city leaders to buy and maintain as open space. ''It would be nice to get the whole riverbank in public hands."

Driscoll, who grew up in Newton, was inspired to take on the river project by his love of the outdoors and nature. He has especially fond memories of the family vacation home in Wellfleet near the Cape Cod National Seashore, along with good times ''hanging out" around Hemlock Gorge and Echo Bridge in Newton.

An avid skier, cyclist, and hiker, Driscoll, 44, has canoed the Pantanal in Brazil, hiked in one of the world's oldest rain forests in Malaysia, and flown to the outer reaches of Alaska to watch grizzly bears feed on salmon.

He has also visited many national parks, which represent the victories won by John Muir, one of Driscoll's personal heroes. Muir is credited with helping persuade President Theodore Roosevelt to create the park system.

Now living in Watertown, Driscoll earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Vermont in outdoor recreation, environmental studies, and natural resource planning.

Driscoll said he often retreated to the river to enjoy ''simple pleasures" such as watching birds and animals in their natural habitat. Whenever he felt frustrated by his work at the Metropolitan District Commission, the river offered him solace.

So when the chance to focus on a new project opened up in the late 1980s, Driscoll remembered that feeling and chose what he called a neglected area in the MDC system, the Charles River.

The wildlife ''called upon my conscience to come help heal their home, and in healing their home, heal ourselves," he said.

There were times along the way, he said, when the sheer scope of the project and the resistance from abutters and city leaders became almost too much.

''It took a lot of perseverance," Driscoll said. ''The worst was in the early '90s -- it looked like we were making good progress, [but] the majority of abutters rejected the project.

''It got to the point where I finally got the federal grant to build the first park, and Newton city leaders inaccurately [described] it to [Representative] Barney Frank's office as a motorcycle course," said Driscoll. ''I got a call. They tried to stop my federal grant."

These days, Driscoll said, ''the only calls I get are 'When is it going to be finished?' "