Now that we’re more than halfway from the golden glory of foliage season to the splendid melancholia of stick season, it’s my editorial duty to inform you where the New England leaves are really popping right now. And it’s with a somewhat heavy heart that I point toward The Berkshires. I have nothing against the mountains of Western Massachusetts—but anyone who’s visited the Berkshires in October will understand that leaf peeping turns these mountains into a bit of a madhouse. It’s rather similar to what happens in Salem, Massachusetts each October. Hordes of travelers descend on the region, chasing local lore with wild eyes and apparently bottomless wallets, and the scenic charm of the region is temporarily trampled.
Still, as a destination, The Berkshires are much vaster and more layered than the City of Salem. And if creeping “uncanny valley” vibes are as much an autumn tradition for you as eating an apple cider donut, there are places in The Berkshires that can deliver. They’re not as obvious as a witchcraft museum or that pyramid of Jack-o’-Lanterns up in Keene, New Hampshire (where a pumpkin festival once collided with a town-wide teenage riot.) Rather, the spookier dimensions of The Berkshires are found nestled in the woods and ravines. There’s the western entrance of the Hoosac Tunnel; a doorway into the bowels of the earth, from which unexplainable echoes and unspeakable odors waft. And near Pittsfield, the mountain city of the Berkshires, traces of a lost world tell a different story—fascinating in its structures and events, yet eerie in its implications.
