Allen Young,
NQTA “Insultant”
Allen Young is known as the “insultant” for the North Quabbin Trails Association. He was a founding member of NQTA and hiked often with the former Tuesday Trekkers. NQTA President Bobby curley called him “Uncle Allen.”
Allen, who will turn 84 on his next birthday in June, has lived in Royalston, Massachusetts
Allen Young,
NQTA “Insultant”
Allen Young is known as the “insultant” for the North Quabbin Trails Association. He was a founding member of NQTA and hiked often with the former Tuesday Trekkers. NQTA President Bobby curley called him “Uncle Allen.”
Allen, who will turn 84 on his next birthday in June, has lived in Royalston, Massachusetts, since 1973, coming with several friends to the North Quabbin Region of Central Massachusetts as part of the back-to-the-land movement. He helped build his own octagonal timber-framed house, has hiked and canoed throughout the region, and has cultivated a productive organic vegetable garden.
He first experienced forests, waterfalls, and gardening during his childhood on a poultry farm in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in New York State, where he was born in 1941.After graduating from Fallsburgh Central High School, he attended Columbia College in New York City, receiving the bachelor of arts degree in 1962. He earned a master of arts degree in Hispanic-American and Luso-Brazilian studies from Stanford University in California and a master of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Upon receiving a Fulbright Scholarship in 1964, he spent three years in Brazil and other Latin American countries, contributing numerous articles to the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and other periodicals.
Returning to the United States in 1967, he worked briefly as a reporter for the Washington Post, resigning in the fall of that year to become a full-time anti-war activist and staff member of Liberation News Service. In 1970, following the Stonewall Rebellion in New York City, Young participated in the gay liberation movement, collaborating
Allen Young is known as the “insultant” for the North Quabbin Trails Association. He was a founding member of NQTA and hiked often with the former Tuesday Trekkers. NQTA President Bobby curley called him “Uncle Allen.”
Allen, who will turn 84 on his next birthday in June, has lived in Royalston, Massachusetts, since 1973, coming with several friends to the North Quabbin Region of Central Massachusetts as part of the back-to-the-land movement. He helped build his own octagonal timber-framed house, has hiked and canoed throughout the region, and has cultivated a productive organic vegetable garden.
He first experienced forests, waterfalls, and gardening during his childhood on a poultry farm in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in New York State, where he was born in 1941.After graduating from Fallsburgh Central High School, he attended Columbia College in New York City, receiving the bachelor of arts degree in 1962. He earned a master of arts degree in Hispanic-American and Luso-Brazilian studies from Stanford University in California and a master of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Upon receiving a Fulbright Scholarship in 1964, he spent three years in Brazil and other Latin American countries, contributing numerous articles to the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and other periodicals.
Returning to the United States in 1967, he worked briefly as a reporter for the Washington Post, resigning in the fall of that year to become a full-time anti-war activist and staff member of Liberation News Service. In 1970, following the Stonewall Rebellion in New York City, Young participated in the gay liberation movement, collaborating
Allen Young is known as the “insultant” for the North Quabbin Trails Association. He was a founding member of NQTA and hiked often with the former Tuesday Trekkers. NQTA President Bobby curley called him “Uncle Allen.”
Allen, who will turn 84 on his next birthday in June, has lived in Royalston, Massachusetts, since 1973, coming with several friends to the North Quabbin Region of Central Massachusetts as part of the back-to-the-land movement. He helped build his own octagonal timber-framed house, has hiked and canoed throughout the region, and has cultivated a productive organic vegetable garden.
He first experienced forests, waterfalls, and gardening during his childhood on a poultry farm in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in New York State, where he was born in 1941.After graduating from Fallsburgh Central High School, he attended Columbia College in New York City, receiving the bachelor of arts degree in 1962. He earned a master of arts degree in Hispanic-American and Luso-Brazilian studies from Stanford University in California and a master of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Upon receiving a Fulbright Scholarship in 1964, he spent three years in Brazil and other Latin American countries, contributing numerous articles to the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and other periodicals.
Returning to the United States in 1967, he worked briefly as a reporter for the Washington Post, resigning in the fall of that year to become a full-time anti-war activist and staff member of Liberation News Service. In 1970, following the Stonewall Rebellion in New York City, Young participated in the gay liberation movement, collaborating
Allen Young is known as the “insultant” for the North Quabbin Trails Association. He was a founding member of NQTA and hiked often with the former Tuesday Trekkers. NQTA President Bobby curley called him “Uncle Allen.”
Allen, who will turn 84 on his next birthday in June, has lived in Royalston, Massachusetts, since 1973, coming with several friends to the North Quabbin Region of Central Massachusetts as part of the back-to-the-land movement. He helped build his own octagonal timber-framed house, has hiked and canoed throughout the region, and has cultivated a productive organic vegetable garden.
He first experienced forests, waterfalls, and gardening during his childhood on a poultry farm in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in New York State, where he was born in 1941.After graduating from Fallsburgh Central High School, he attended Columbia College in New York City, receiving the bachelor of arts degree in 1962. He earned a master of arts degree in Hispanic-American and Luso-Brazilian studies from Stanford University in California and a master of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Upon receiving a Fulbright Scholarship in 1964, he spent three years in Brazil and other Latin American countries, contributing numerous articles to the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and other periodicals.
Returning to the United States in 1967, he worked briefly as a reporter for the Washington Post, resigning in the fall of that year to become a full-time anti-war activist and staff member of Liberation News Service. In 1970, following the Stonewall Rebellion in New York City, Young participated in the gay liberation movement, collaborating
with lesbian writer and scholar Karla Jay on four books, including the pioneering anthology Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation.
After returning to his rural roots, Young became a reporter for the Athol Daily News, later serving as assistant editor. He launched Millers River Publishing Co. in 1983 to produce his regional guidebook North of Quabbin, and published more than a dozen titles after that. Haley’s published hisNorth of Quabbin Revisited in 2003. From 1989 to 1999, he was the director of community relations for Athol Memorial Hospital. He was a co-founder of the North Quabbin Diversity Awareness Group. In 1998, he was the first recipient of the North Quabbin Community Coalition's Barbara Corey Award "in honor of his passion for life, his values and his love for the citizens of our region." In 2004, he received the Writing and Society Award from the University of Massachusetts English Department "honoring a distinguished career of commitment to the work of writing in the world."
He was invited by the Erving Paper Mills to write the official company history for its 2005 centennial. Other books of local interest include The Millers River Reader (editor), Make Hay While the Sun Shines: Farms, Forests and People of the North Quabbin, The Man Who Got Lost: North Quabbin Stories, and Thalassa: One Week in a Provincetown Dune Shack.
He has served in Royalston town government as a member and officer of various boards and the town’s Democratic Committee. In addition to his work with NQTA, he is a volunteer for the Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust, including many years as a member of its board of directors. He also belongs to the Trustees, the Athol Bird & Nature Club and the Millers River Watershed Council.
Young considers himself semi-retired, and continues to enjoy many community activities and travel, as well as writing.
For more about Allen Young, go to a local library or bookseller for his autobiography, “Left, Gay & Green; A Writer’s Life,” which was
published in 2018. One chapter in this 500-page book is entitled “Nature Boy” and goes into detail about his involvement with the natural world starting in his childhood on a poultry farm in the Catskills.