A quiet walk in Lenox years ago has changed many lives. Mass Audobon’s Pleasant Valley Sanctuary is celebrating its 90th year in Lenox.
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Fall wildflowers come in with a flourish
Throughout the Northeast, nature rushes to display one last event of the growing season. The late summer and early autumn flourish of brilliant wildflowers on a September or October afternoon are worth an outing. To see it at its best, you’ll need to stroll through meadows and fields, although in […]
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Honey on the roof: Clark Art Institute cultivates bees and meadows
The scent of honey and wood smoke is as thick as the warm, dense hum. The worker bees are active today. A few hot days have come after cool, wet weeks, and the wild primrose are blooming in the pastures. David Thayer gently lifts a small wood and mesh box to […]
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Internationally acclaimed artist Doug Aitken launches New Horizon
It will gleam like lake water and drift in a clear sky. In late July, the internationally acclaimed artist Doug Aitken will bring a new work to the Berkshires. And it will fly. New Horizon is an abstract sculpture and a moving stage — and a hot air balloon. By […]
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Berkshire labyrinths offer a quiet journey into a new future
A curve drawn in one movement becomes a pathway on a hillside. Walk slowly on a spring morning. The cherry trees are blooming. A woodpecker drums in the wood over the hill. The path turns with each step, toward the lake in the valley, toward the wooded slope above it. […]
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Daffodil festival brings thousands of spring bulbs to Naumkeag
The linden trees may still be budding, but the hillside is golden with a host of 60,000 daffodils. They will blow in the spring breeze by the water channel down the Blue Stairs. They will crowd near the round moon gate in the Chinese garden and around the poles on the […]
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Forest bathing takes a cold plunge: A winter walk at Canoe Meadows
We finally had a day of sun on new snow. I’ve been waiting all winter as every snowstorm slid into rain and froze solid. This time snow fell at night and we woke up to fresh powder and a gleam in the evergreens, and I went for a walk at […]
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Thom Smith snowshoes in the back country
Thinking back 16 years, Scott Jervas who worked with me managing the Berkshire Museum aquarium, had an unlikely winter pastime — searching for long-closed ski areas returning to forest. In 2003, a winter of deep snow in the Berkshires, three of us — Scott and I and Al Krupa, of […]
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Gentle snowshoe treks in the Central Berkshires
When temperatures hover around 25 degrees F, or even a bit higher, it seems only logical to take a hefty dose of cabin fever remedy — head to the woods and give the snowshoes a workout. The Berkshires border the Snow Belt, and not every winter is a snowshoe winter, […]
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Gentle fall walks explore 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 have driven past without ever driving in. Field Farm Barely […]
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