BTW Berkshires 
Winds in the reeds lift a clear tone in longing for home — a heartbeat Last year, on a snowy day, we heard a solo harp. Students sang a medieval carol and a modern one by Richard Wilbur, our former poet Laureate and former Berkshire voice in the hills, and Rick Spaulding talked gently, sadly,…
Berkshire Naturalist Thom Smith finds color in the winter woods. Never confuse this evergreen with a Christmas Tree — regardless of the name, it will be a happier tree outside than inside, as its needles fall upon drying out. It’s a common tree in cool woods with moist soil throughout New England, and north well into Canada,…
A thief in a tree casts the illusion of a giant serpent. A wave breaks on Miho beach, and sails fill in the wind in the distance. They show as flecks of light against the foothills of Mount Fuji. Landscapes and legends fill this room in images of Japanese art from 1720 to 1940. They…
Berkshire Naturalist Thom Smith takes a fall walk in the hills over Lenox. Since 1967 Berkshire Natural Resource Council (BNCR) has worked alongside many Berkshire landowners to open land to everyone and keep it natural through preservation. As the lands they protect continue to grow, it is sometimes hard to become familiar with all of…
Thom Smith, a naturalist in the Berkshires, takes a gentle walk in the Williamstown hills. Field Farm, Cricket Creek Farm, Stone Hill, Mountain Meadow Preserve and Sheep Hill — slopes and gentle trails lie just up the road from The Clark, Williams College and the Williamstown Theater Festival. And many visitors and locals alike may…
A father sits at his desk, holding his infant child and offering milk in a bottle. An older child stands near him with drawing paper spread out on a chair. They are resting together in a drawing in pencil or ink on a warmly lit background, touched here and there with bright color. In a…
Flat stepping stones hang in the air. A small boy sits in the shadow of vast objects above him. The image looks impossible, out of scale, and out of gravity. And then the perspective shifts into place, and the image is a reflection — the stones sit at the edge of the lake, and the…
Last time I saw the fairgrounds, two glass-blowers were shaping a pumpkin on a metal rod and pulling the molten glass like taffy to give it a stem. A fiber artist brought panels as large as oil paintings in silken thread, and my parents found a table of wooden books — boxes carved like grimoires…
A young man is singing in a low and carrying voice. He holds long phrases on a breath. He is chanting a Hawaiian oli, and the words are his. Nālamakū Ahsing is a Williams student, class of ’21, and he wrote these verses calling to the people who came before him to speak. He opens…
Low strings advance to a beat like incoming thunder. A lithe figure in red strikes the ground with an itshoba, a wooden rod whisking the tail of a cow or an ox. Myrtha, the queen of the Wilis, flexes firm shoulders and extends a bare foot. Myrtha appears in the 19th-century French ballet Giselle, but on…