The Berkshires are hills on the Western edge of Massachusetts
— they run along the border with New York state and merge into the Green Mountains in Vermont.
I live in a high green country with a vivid creative life. It is a rare place. Up here a choreographer from Brooklyn can walk into a 200-year-old meetinghouse and imagine black American Shaker dance. And then he can create his own movement and perform there.
In some ways it’s an in-between place, across the state from Boston and up the Hudson River from New York, and as a cultural area and as a geographic one, it spills over the state line.
Berkshire County is a long, lean stretch. It runs from Connecticut north to Vermont, 50 miles from end to end. But it’s a beautiful amble. Not long ago I took an hour to get from Cobble Hill to an old friend’s wedding in Manhattan, and here in that time I can cross the length of the county and tool along country roads, watching for wild turkeys on my way to see a play before it opens Off-Broadway.
