“The idea of land held in common, as part of a manifest, workday covenant with the Bestower of a new continent, has permanently imprinted the maps of these towns, and lengthens the perspectives of those who live within them.”

-- John Updike (1931-2009), famed and prolific writer, in “Common Land,’’ in New England: The Four Seasons, edited by Arthur Griffin. Updike spent most of his adult life in towns on the Massachusetts North Shore.