It’s an unusually warm fall day when I find myself eye to eye with a woman resting in the grass … and she’s warm glinting bronze, a sculpture in the garden at Field Farm.
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.
Looking for fall color and energy (October 13 newsletter)
These still days are rare — when the leaves are turning and before they fall — so I’ve taken an hour on a work day afternoon to walk up the old hay field on Sheep Hill.
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Walk across time in hiking boots (Sept 29 newsletter)
Abigail Haynes-Lennox is directing us — a soprano in the extended company of Roomful of Teeth, up here on a mountain leading a damp and sweaty bunch of hikers in Shaker hymns.
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We’re feeling for balance as the year turns (September 8 newsletter)
Broad Brook is running high for September. We’re up here at the top of White Oak Road, just on the line between one state and another, and we’re taking time on a weekday morning, because this is a holiday for you.
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How to meet a mountain in the rain (August 25 newsletter)
You can see 90 miles from here on a clear day. We can see about 30 feet across the meadow. Up here on the summit of Mount Greylock at the end of a storm, we’re islanded in cloud.
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Meadows turn golden below three-mile ridge (August 18 newsletter)
The day is bright with a heat we rarely feel up here in the mountains, and the brook runs shallow here in the sand with Joe Pye weed on the banks …
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Late summer blooms under the boardwalk at Jackson Pond
The pines open into cat-tails, and the view widens into dense deep green, and I'm looking across the marsh and the water to Yokun Ridge.
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Exploring Cummington and the hilltowns in summer
It’s quiet up here. Sometimes I’ll come up to the ridge to get away for awhile, out the back roads … and find unexpected and creative places.
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Wing and a Prayer wildflowers glow in high summer
I’m up at Amy Pulley’s native plant nursery on the ridge in Cummington, and it’s transformed in July into a sea of meadow flowers …
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Walking up to the Dome Trail
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.
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