Best of Boston

If you’re looking for white water, who needs Maine? There’s Class-4 rapids just 40 miles from Boston, in Lowell on the Concord River, and the Lowell Parks & Conservation Trust has done a remarkable nature-conservancy job. Not exactly expected either, in the heart of deindustrialized mill country. The Lowell white-water course, fed by spring runoff, winds its way through Thoreau’s Portage—the stretch of the Concord River that Henry David Thoreau never dared to take—and culminates in the Lower Locks at the Pawtucket Canal. Unfortunately, this year’s season has already passed.