Trifter

Berkshire Rambles*

   As we whisked up the New York Thruway out of the industrial smog, my wife and I looked forward to our new home in the Berkshires. When we pulled into the driveway at sunst, all the surrounding ridges glowed from russet to deep purple. The air of late June remained quite brisk and as clear as on the plains of Nebraska. Soon the stars twinkled outside our windows, and already we felt settled. Since my teaching would not begin for several months, we had ample time for exploration.

   After a few days our first New England ramble was up the 1,700 feet Pine Cobble, a rocky exposure perched directly above Williamstown, Massachusetts. As we trekked through the dense birch-maple forest alive with squeaking red squirrels, we could not help but notice thousands of little white gypsy moths swarming over bracken ferns and thistles. The higher we climbed, the more evident was the almost total devastation of the foliage of trees as well as shrubs. From a distance, in fact, this section of the Pine Cobble ridge looked as though a forest fire had swept through it. As we discovered later, there was some debate as to whether DDT should be used (1963) to kill the moths at the risk of doing harm to bird and fish life, or whether nature should be left to take her own course. Thankfully, this type of debate remains strong in 2009.

   When we had finished crawling up a steep slope with exposed roots as handholds, a broad view of the green rolling valley proved to be our reward. A few more rocky fields and groves of scanty, windblown timber, and we reached the summit of the Pine Cobble, coated with blueberries. Only then did we realize the full significance of the verb “to perch.” Williams College towers spread below us in the foreground, with an occasional steeple of an English- or French-speaking church, and in the distance loomed the Taconic Range of New York, the Green Mountains of Vermont, and the Berkshires of Massachusetts. The one mountain that dominated all others directly south of us was Mount Greylock, rising to 3,491 feet, the highest point in the state. We knew then that Greylock would be our next adventure. As occasional whisps of clouds snaked their way down this distant mountain, Hawthorne’s description of it in his story “Ethan Brand” came to mind. “Old Graylock was glorified with a golden cloud upon his head. Scattered likewise over the breasts of the surrounding mountains, there were heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes, some towards the summits, and still others, of the same family of mist or cloud, hovering in the gold radiance of the upper atmosphere.”

   To the east lay the rolling Hoosac Range, looking like a camel caravan. It was not hard to imagine Mohawk warriors in eagle headdress dancing in preparation for a battle on the side of the British against the American colonists. In various steep, northern exposed slopes of this range, dark patches of spruce and pine mingled in with white birch and red maple. With clouds increasing, we decided to make our retreat before an afternoon thundershower should overtake us. Just before we reached the base of the hill, we noticed a dead black birch from which we broke off some branches for future walking sticks.

   It was not too long until we read in the local newspapers of the possibility of building a super-highway, with artificial gardens here and there, over the top of historic Mount Greylock. We decided immediately to visit the summit while it remained at least semi-wild with more modest roads, a gift store, a war memorial, and a television relay station. This time we climbed by car via an old dirt road that winds its way up first through open fields and then through a dense spruce-fir forest populated by chipmunks and thrushes somewhat reminiscent of the Canadian Laurentians (Les Larentides Canadiens). After several “switch backs” and some some pretty steep grades, we arrived at the top of the Berkshires where vistas into five states spread before us. The temperature there was some twenty degrees cooler than in the valleys below. Late July seemed like early September. If Mount Greylock were another thousand feet higher, it would have a treeline; the spruces stood as mere windblown shrubs fighting some three hundred nights per year of frost close to 4,000 feet. We could not imagine how artificial gardens could possibly enhance all this natural beauty.

   Another afternoon thunderstorm developed, and we could actually see clouds being generated north of the summit looking like coastal Alaska. They blew up so quickly that in a matter of minutes we stood there in a dense fog that changed to torrents of rain with claps of lightning crackling through the chilly air. Perhaps Henry David Thoreau had experienced this phenomenon when he wrote of Mount Greylock in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers: “It would be no small advantage if every college were thus located [as is Williams College] at the base of a mountain, as good at least as one well-endowed professorship. Some will remember, no doubt, not only that they went to the college, but that they went to the mountain. Every visit to its summit would, as it were, generalize the particular information gained below and subject it to more catholic tests.”

   The road back down was at first muddy, but as the sun gradually came out in full strength, it dried out completely. When we reached the lower elevations, we could not resist pulling the car over to the side to get out and roam through the soaked fields at the base of the mountain. The gray ridges under blue skies rolled before us as we bounced through spongy, mossy ground. To our surprise, after a half mile or so, we noticed numerous bushes of grape-sized blueberries, while at our feet were ground blueberries as black as coal. Then and there we had one of the most delectable feasts ever, and brought back two hatfuls for pies.

   About seven weeks later, the Berkshires burst forth in a brillance of autumn colors, yellow with birch, scarlet with maple, golden-brown with oak and orange with elm.  After I had taught numerous weeks of classes at the state college,  we became allured by a 2,748 feet Dome with its bright colors just across the Vermont line.  Some of the densest forests in the East, I believe, are found here on The Dome. Every little breeze that rustled these dense leaves provided a kaleidoscope of color. The white bark of the birches glistened in the sun. As our trail gradually climbed toward the summit, through marshy areas coated with ferns and club moss, the countryside slowly spread before us. Suddenly the trail transformed itself from a gentle thirty-degree angle to an abrupt one of seventy degrees. The dark, rocky path led straight up into Canadian-like forests with glacial boulders on top of a thin, knife-edge ridge that skirted through a scrub conifer forest. We felt like mountain tribesmen on top of the wilderness–no farms or towns in sight, just miles of forested slopes. Finally we saw just why this mountain is called “The Dome.” Before us lay a bubble-shaped outcrop of white quartzite not unlike a capitol dome. When we scampered up to its top, we could see not only the Berkshires, but in the far distance the Adirondacks to the north and the Helderbergs west of Albany. Before us lay thousands of acres of rich forest, rocky streams, open meadows and countless ranges of mountains in New England and New York.

   Soon after our climb, light snows came covering the higher ridges above the still-green valleys. But soon enough even the valleys lost their leaves and rippling snow filled in. We delighted in woods walks through the snow on snowshoes where branches of trees had become weighted down with heavy snow. In these woods we experienced a silence that no other season knows. Only an occasional chickadee, who braves the New England winters, could be heard. Even the perpetual presence of gurgling brooks was silenced by thick layers of ice in myriad designs. The soft, warm birches of summer and fall looked bleak against winter skies.

   The snow is all melted now and occasional buds are appearing on branches of trees here and there. The smell of the earth permeates the very air we breathe. We both look forward to another season called spring when we will continue our rambles through the Berkshires.

*An earlier version of this essay appeared in The New-England Galaxy in the Fall 1966 issue.