Author discusses walking through every city, town in state

SAUGUS – John Galluzzo spent all of 2011 walking. In fact, on Jan. 1 last year, he set out to walk for 30 minutes in all of the 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts.Galluzzo finished his trek this past December, and on Tuesday night he was at the Saugus Library to speak about his experience and the new book he?s writing about it called Half an Hour a Day Across Massachusetts: Finding Nature in Every Town in the Commonwealth.?The idea was to just get out and see every one of them,” said Galluzzo, who works as the Adult Education and Citizen Science Coordinator for the Massachusetts Audubon?s South Shore Sanctuaries.Galluzzo, who lives in Weymouth, said he got the idea in 2009 after he wrote a book about going for a 30-minute walk every day for a year, noting he was just “looking for something else to do.”Galluzzo started in Dighton on Jan. 1, and less than a year later, finished in Hardwick.Galluzzo trekked through two feet of snow, torrential rain storms and had to deal with a bout of pneumonia. But along the way Galluzzo said he was able to check off around 30 towns per month, and was able to conquer all 32 towns in the Berkshires in just three days.On Aug. 16, Galluzzo found himself at Breakheart Reservation in Saugus.?I had been walking on a lot of deep forest kind of trails, and for once, a good concrete trail felt really good,” said Galluzzo. “I remember thinking that after I got to my 30 minutes, I wanted to keep going, but it was the first one of the day, so I had to keep to my schedule.”Galluzzo said he wants to get back to Breakheart to do some more exploring in the future.Matt Tempesta can be reached at [email protected].