Lantern Walk 2025: a perfect afternoon at the park

Special to The Advocate

The Friends of Fellsmere Heights held its eighth Lantern Walk on Saturday, August 23, at Fellsmere Park. Participants of all ages enjoyed magic tricks, facepainting, hot dogs and cold drinks. The main activity of the day, as always, was decorating recycled bottles with markers and stickers, filling them with lights and finishing with a walk around Fellsmere Pond at dusk. This year they were pleased to welcome Michelle Murray of The Traveling Acoffeecary, a new business serving Malden and the surrounding area.

The Friends of Fellsmere Heights, which was founded in 2015, is a group of residents from many different neighborhoods and communities in Malden and Medford. They have two main concerns:

• Supporting Fellsmere Park and Fellsmere Pond, which were designed by the famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and given to the public by Malden’s first Mayor, Elisha Converse
• Ensuring that the site of Malden Hospital, just up the hill from Fellsmere Park on the Malden/Medford line, is redeveloped to serve the people of Malden and Medford

The Lantern Walk is the organization’s main event for raising awareness about the Park, the Pond and the land on the hill above, and for sharing their pleasure in this beautiful gem of Malden’s open space. The event is sponsored in part by a grant from the Malden Cultural Council, which in turn is funded by the Mass Cultural Council.