On a sunny Saturday when the afternoon stretched clear ahead of me, I headed up to Lakeview Orchards when apple season was just coming in …
Read articleHalloween revives in the Berkshires
What does trick-or-treating look like in the mountains — and Halloween in a pandemic? The night smells and tastes of fall, pumpkins, apples and chocolate. Take a look at this week’s events …
Read articleCelebrating Halloween on cold fall nights — #berkshireweekend
In a break in the storm, I’m sitting in the dooryard, on the driveway, clearing the rinds from black walnuts. It’s not the way I thought I’d be coming into Halloween week … but it’s satisfying.
Read articleHalloween gleams at the Naumkeag Pumpkin Show
Jack-o-lanterns glimmer at the Naumkeag pumpkin show, carved with fantastic shapes — dragons and sea creatures, owls and octopuses …
Read articleDistilling a new Halloween spirit (October 28 newsletter)
Halloween has changed this year. But we haven’t lost it yet. Candle-lit carved pumpkins lining a path through the woods at night are wild and beautiful on their own.
Read articleIn Dalton’s haunted cornfield, a family fights to keep teens safe
A horn sounds — an emergency — a car crash. The onlookers find themselves in a hospital ward … but the hospital lies through night woods and farmyard, and the blood is fake. At least it is this time.
Read articleHalloween grows into a monthlong festival in the Berkshires
In the early dark, people come out into the streets. They swing through drifts of leaves on the sidewalk. The night smells and tastes of fall — pumpkin and hot wax, apples and chocolate.
Read articleJoyce Kilmer’s Northern Berkshire rambles bring ghosts close to home
Joyce Kilmer has just introduced me to two of my own ghosts. Earlier this month, I stumbled on a story Kilmer wrote in the New York Times in 1916 — when free verse was a dangerous new invention.
Read articleBerkshire ghosts walk in the hills
In the Berkshires, ghosts mourn lost family, and ghosts walk the dark places where they died. Some say a ghost rescued a child from the ice on Windsor Lake and brought her to shore warm and dry.
Read articleWhy we carve jack-o-lanterns
We walk across grass as flat as straw after the frost. The air is damp enough for jean jackets, and it smells of leaves, wood smoke, water and damp hay … and we are peering with care at the pumpkins.
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