Fresh bread on rainy mornings – #berkshireweekend

Ice Glen feels like its own world. You walk through a gap in the rock, and the land changes — steps and caves, boulders covered with moss and fern. I am only a short scramble from the Housatonic River, and on a November day the path is wet and green with half-submerged pools and evergreens.

It looks like Endor, says the family who passes me on the path, or the planet where Yoda lives — Dagoba. But I’m thinking of Celtic legends where women protect wellsprings and change shape into barn owls, and trees talk, and the Sidhe, fair folk, spirits live in the hills.

There are still hemlocks growing here taller than my eye can track, though I can see more than one fallen tree on the steep slope, and they’re broad enough in the beam to make me think they were here before my grandmothers were born.

Maybe this path makes me aware of more than one rhythm of time. I stand nose to nose with a feathery fall of moss, and I’m not thinking this is a fantasy world, but that it holds my attention close in this one. And it has its own magic. It’s an indelible place.

I’m carrying it with me when I walk into Hilary Knight’s new exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum (with art from Eloise and more) and see the book cover he imagines for a gathering of fabulous monsters — a being with a human form and tapered horns and green shadows on their skin holds a hand to their heart, carrying a winged frog in their hair, and I wonder whether they would feel at home here.

Late fall weekend rambles

Hemlock needles for fine strokes against the in November sky in the Ice Glen in Stockbridge.
Photo by Kate Abbott

Hemlock needles for fine strokes against the in November sky in the Ice Glen in Stockbridge.

A walk through the Ice Glen brings a touch of magic to a November day, and local bakeries bring home comforts, from Sweet Sam Bakes in Williamstown and Bohemian Nouveaux in North Adams to the Lost Lamb in Stockbridge and Berkshire Mountain Bakery and the Sweetish Baker in Great Barrington …

Events coming up …

Find more art and performance, outdoors and food in the BTW events calendar.

Los Angeles artist Sydney Acosta will talk about her work, centered in what defies depiction and the history of representation in painting and photography.
Mar 28 2023 @ 7:00 pm
Los Angeles artist Sydney Acosta will talk about her work, centered in what defies depiction and the history of representation in painting and photography.
Anne Thalheimer is an educator, artist, and activist, whose work in visual culture, autobio comix, and independent publishing. Press photo courtesy of Bard College at Simon's Rock.
Mar 28 2023 @ 7:00 pm
Western Massachusetts artist, teacher and activist Anne Thalheimer ‘91 leads Bard College at Simon's Rock in conversation with an evening Pride Lecture.
Berkshire teen actors rehearse with Barrington Stage Company's Playwright Mentoring Program (in 2017). Press photo courtesy of Barrington Stage Company.
Mar 28 2023 @ 7:00 pm
Barrington Stage Company celebrates 23 years with the Playwright Mentoring Project in the 2023 Spring Tour, with three free public performances.

By the Way Berkshires is a digital magazine exploring creative life and community — art and performance, food and the outdoors — and I’m writing it for you, with local voices, because I’ve gotten to know this rich part of the world as a writer and journalist, and I want to share it with you.

If you’d like to see the website grow, you can join me for a few dollars a month, enough for a cup of coffee and a cider doughnut. Members get access to extra stories and multimedia, itineraries a bookmark tool. Let me know what you're looking for, and we’ll explore together.

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