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 […]
Read articleThe Berkshires are rich in walks and hikes — gentle rambles in the hills and treks along the Appalachian Trail, and anything in between. Kayak on a mountain lake or get a taste of white water.
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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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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Ecophilia exhibit blooms in the winter at Berkshire Botanical Garden
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 […]
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Outdoor sculpture brings color to The Mount in leaf season
As the summer season wanes, outdoor sculpture in leaf season takes on a new light, and The Mount in Lenox continues to draw people in even before they reach the mansion. Take a relaxing stroll along one of the Berkshires’ loveliest of driveways toward what once was the Gilded Age home […]
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Kayak around a floating island at Sadawga Lake
If you won’t have many opportunities to kayak in Southern Vermont this summer, why not choose a rare body of water? The 200-acre Sadawga Lake is said to be named for Chief Sadawga, an American Indian known to camp on its shore, and rumor has it he could swim under its […]
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Ashintully’s Gilded Age ruins shelter a garden on a Hill
Four standing Doric columns are holding up the sky. They mark the site of Ashintully, the last remains of a Georgian-style mansion lost to fire in 1952. The columns guarded the entrance to a 35-room turn-of-the-20th-century “Berkshire Cottage.” Now the serenity of the view of brilliant white columns along the shore […]
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