I met a dragon in the ruins at Ashintully. A live one — really. She’s a bearded dragon named Phoebe, and she came up with a young couple exploring the hills …
Read articleComfort food (for thought) in stormy weather
Mountain Meadow opens out in a long arc. It’s a warm day after these weeks of single digits, and the snow is soft underfoot, like wet sand on the tideline.
Read articleInternationally 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 […]
Read articleAshintully’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 […]
Read articleMountain Meadow on a fall morning
Berkshire naturalist Thom Smith takes a fall walk in the northern hills. With land in Pownal Vermont and Williamstown, Massachusetts, I cannot think of a lovelier autumn walk than the preserve we call Mountain Meadow. Choose an afternoon with few clouds, when walking will be even more pleasurable if skies are […]
Read articleThom Smith explores Bartholomew’s Cobble in wildflower season
Berkshire naturalist Thom Smith recalls a walk through Bartholomew’s Cobble, a Trustees of reservations Property in Sheffield along the Housatonic River.
Read articleBartholomew’s Cobble guides explore the woods in the bare season
A week ago, I watched Carrianne Petrik-Huff take the temperature of a skunk cabbage. The thermometer, held inside the curl of the young plant, read 36 degrees — almost 20 degrees warmer than the outside air.
Read articleField Farm looks to Frank Lloyd Wright for Modern design
In the Folly, bright panels of Modern paintings hang on the curved stone wall behind the couch and a broad window looks out across the pond and the hayfields. On the lawn bees hum in the azaleas, and a metal sculpture of a woman looks over her drawn-up knees to […]
Read articleWildflowers run wild at Bartholomew’s Cobble
Trillium cover a hillside with wide three-corner flowers and the pungent odor of … old socks. “Remind you of your locker room days?” said Carrieanne Petrik-Huff, laughing, after a wildflower walk at Bartholomew’s Cobble.
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