Justin Adkins and Arianna Alexsandra Collins of HooRWA will lead a walk along the Hoosic River, identifying wild edible and medicinal plants and fungi.
SEE EVENT
The Hoosic (Hoosac, Hoosick, Hoosuc) River is a broad waterway, and in Williamstown and North Adams it is often hidden plain sight.
The river runs through the northwest corner of Massachusetts, New York and southwestern Vermont — 720 square miles of watershed land, according to Lauren Stevens, a founding member of the association (and a longtime Berkshire journalist and naturalist).
He says the Algonquian name may mean “beyond place,” the river over the ridge. People living along the Connecticut on one side, and what is now the Hudson on the other, would come up here to tend gardens, hunt, fish and enjoy cool summer evenings.
The association is a group of local people who want to restore and conserve the river and bring people to enjoy it — paddling, biking and wandering along the bank or soaking your feet as you watch a migrating solitary sandpiper at the water’s edge.
Maple trees turn along the Hoosic River.
Golden rod blooms along a cornfield at the edge of the Hoosic River in Williamstown. Photo by Kate Abbott
A globe of ice forms on a stem near the water line along the Hoosic River. Photo by Kate Abbott
Dutchman's Breeches bloom in late April by the path along the Hoosic River, off Cole Ave. in Williamstown. Photo by Kate Abbott
Buttercups bloom in profusion in early June, near the river in Upper Linear Park in Williamstown. Photo by Kate Abbott
The Hoosic River runs through Hopkins Forest in Williamstown. Photo by Kate Abbott