Berkshires

When I am searching for gifts, I want to be out in bookstores and greenhouses and barns full of chocolate molds … Local shops are adapting in the pandemic, and I’ll let you know what I’m seeing.

Some of our history in the Berkshires is alive because we still use it every day, to make cheese or cider or a cup to drink it in. And some of our history we are reviving in new ways, as in a silo at Hancock Shaker Village, new music invokes Shaker hymns with contemporary artists and technology.

These hills have always been a crossroads. As long as people have lived along the wide rivers to our east and west, they have come up here to the high valleys. Their people have seen revolutions — and led them.

The Berkshires today gathers its communities around colleges, old mill towns along the river valleys and farming villages in the hills. In the last hundred years, the farms and the mills have evolved, as the arts and performance, food and the outdoors have grown into an ecosystem.

In the Berkshires, many people and communities make one, like streams running across the slopes to to the Housatonic. People live and build and transform and celebrate who they are. And the community comes together to honor them.

These hills and river valleys are the homelands of the Mohican nation. Many of their community now live in Wisconsin now, and they have always returned and kept in touch.

Even in a time of coronavirus, the Berkshires are a deeply creative place. Actors and dancers are creating new work. Artists are teaching workshops. Farmers markets are moving online. BTW has been gathering them in one virtual space.

In response to Covid-19, Berkshire camps have adapted, moved online or closed, with strong effects on campers and families, communities and local businesses.

The 10×10 Upstreet Arts Festival is in town, a weeklong celebration with art and music, new plays, outdoor play and more.