Hills and trees

I saw a lot of beautiful scenery on my trip to Pennsylvania to see my goddaughter graduate. Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, all beautiful states. (Also drove through the quarter of an inch of New Hampshire that, inexplicably – given that Maine was once part of Massachusetts – separates those two states; but you don't really see anything there but the big State Liquor Store (no taxes), and the New Hampshire toll booths.)

I was driving at a perfect time, when everything was lushly green, but the heat and humidity of summer had not yet descended. I was also driving in the right direction as I left Maine on a Friday morning in mid-May – the LONG line of cars inching its way north to those toll booths at the New Hampshire/Massachusetts line reminded me that The Season is upon us again, when that part of the country that resides almost anyplace east of the Mississippi says, "Let's go to Maine!"

I remembered to take my hand-held tape recorder with me, and waxed especially poetic when I hit the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts. I call them round, cozy hills, because they lack the size of, for example, the broad-shouldered mountains of Pennsylvania, never mind the drama of the western Rockies. But I did finally reach one long, long incline that just kept going up and up. I got a little thrill out of maintaining my little Toyota's 75 mph speed, passing all the 18-wheelers that seemed to be barely moving in the far right lane. That ascent was the Berkshires' way of telling me, we may look like cozy hills, but there's a reason we're called the Berkshire Mountains.

And they are exquisitely beautiful, completely covered in trees, often with no sign of human habitation to be seen. At one point I said it looked like I was descending into a wall of trees, as that was all I could see as I came over a rise. Sights like this give you an inkling of what this part of the country looked like before the white man came, its pristine beauty. One thing I noticed about all the trees: most were deciduous. Fewer evergreens than you see here in Maine, where all the pine trees, all the hemlocks, insure that we stay green even in the winter.

During the time I lived in Boston I made several trips out to Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home in the Berkshires. Many fond memories of those weekends, staying at genteel bed and breakfasts full of quilts, antiques, small dogs or large cats, hot tea and blueberry muffins; visiting some of the many art galleries and antique stores in the little towns -- Lee, Lenox, Stockbridge –- and finally, in the evening, sitting in The Shed, listening to beautiful music. Perhaps the most memorable fifteen minutes of any visit was the drive I made – in a thunderstorm – from a dance concert at determinedly rustic Jacob's Pillow, located at the top of a little mountain, to our bed and breakfast, located at the bottom. It had just begun to rain lightly as we left Jacob's Pillow, but within three minutes it was pouring, the lightning was literally blinding me, as it lit up the sky and the deep forest all around us, and the cracks of thunder kept making me jump. My friend David and I felt as though we were in a crashing Wagnerian opera. It was one of the scariest drives I ever made in my life.

Now I kept waiting to see the exit sign for Tanglewood; it was much farther out than I remembered, almost to the New York border.

Next time, we'll cross that border.