BTW Berkshires 
It started with a bead store, a fiber festival on a fall weekend, and an amiable, improvisational pair … of gnomes. Across 10 year, a hobby and a gift has evolved into a home-grown business, a nesting dragon, a forest of talking trees and a way of life. On a midwinter night coated with ice,…
On a late summer morning he walks across the quad carrying a stack of French novels. He is dark-haired, spectacled and 40, a quiet man returning to his office. He came here from a farming town in the south of France to teach. And a year ago he was mired in unending mud and battering…
Berkshire Naturalist Thom Smith looks for winter birds and ways to attract them to your dooryard. As a snowstorm approaches, birds flock to neighborhood feeders. If you want to operate a frugal diner for flying visitors, variety remains the key word. Many feeders with different foods will attract the most species and often in the greatest…
Berkshire Naturalist Thom Smith strolls down the bike path on a winter afternoon. Pronounced Ash-oo-WILL-ti-cook, the Ashuwillticook bike path between Lanesborough and Adams in the Hoosac River Valley takes its name from the American Indian language. Ashuwillticook literally means “at the in-between pleasant river” or, more commonly today, “the pleasant river in between the hills.”…
A serpent leans its head through an opening in the stone. In its open mouth, a man’s head is floating with closed eyes, as though he is asleep. A maize god looks down from above, wearing a headdress of corn husks. At the center of a gallery at the Williams college Museum of Art, sculptures…