It’s a hot, bright day up here on the back roads — late spring spilling into summer. I’ve climbed up Henderson Road until the land flattens out, and everywhere I walk I can hear the sound of a brook close by.
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.
Chasing wildflowers on the Dome and Agawon Trail (April 14 newsletter)
It’s the first time I’ve ever taken my shoes off in the woods to get a better grip. It’s the first time in New England I’ve ever wound up on a trail so steep I can imagine sliding straight off the mountain. …
Read article
Can we stretch out for a moment in the sun? (March 10 newsletter)
The sun is coming out today for an hour or two. Where should we go for a walk? It’s one of those unexpected early spring days that jumps ahead for a flicker, like that afternoon in mud time in the Robert Frost poem …
Read article
Looking for fall brightness on the back roads (Oct. 1 newsletter)
Color has come all at once this weekend. … The leaves let the light through, and here for a stretch the woods are rich and sunlit and almost too bright to look at. I can’t ever take it for granted.
Read article
Ground/Work gathers international artists at the Clark
Songbirds were flying through the sculpture. … I was walking slowly along Analia Saban’s Teaching a Cow How to Draw, one of the six new works in the Clark Art Institute’s first outdoor sculpture show, Ground/Work.
Read article
Northern orchids bloom in Hawley Bog
Orchids grow here. I knelt on the boardwalk, balanced over the floating peat mat, to look up under the hanging blossom of a rose pogonia.
Read article
Pitcher plants and wild bloom iris in Hawley Bog
Half a mile from the trailhead, the boardwalk heads into ferns almost as tall as I am, and I’ve only seen a place like this once or twice before. It’s been eight years since I came to Hawley Bog.
Read article
Coming round the mountain at Pleasant Valley
It was a Saturday in the middle of May, and the day was warm in the sun, and I decided to take a walk at Mass Audubon’s Pleasant Valley Sanctuary in Lenox. It didn’t go as planned — gloriously.
Read article
Thom Smith looks for giants — old growth trees
Old growth woods have never been harvested. As much as 70 percent of the Berkshires’ woods were cut down between the arrival of the first European colonists and the Civil War — but in pockets, often in hard-to-reach places, giant trees still grow.
Read article
10×10 Upstreet Arts Festival warms up downtown
The 10×10 Upstreet Arts Festival is in town, and Pittsfield is at play. Every year in late February, downtown Pittsfield holds a weeklong celebration with art and music, new plays, independent film and more.
Read article