By the Way Berkshires

By the Way Berkshires is a 21st-century guide, a digital magazine in Western Mass. It’s a map made of storytelling and conversations. This is a rare place, open country with a rich creative life, and that energy is becoming known around the world — even in a pandemic we can still feel the pulse of it. I have loved this place and written about it for 20 years, as Berkshires Week editor in the Berkshire Eagle and as a freelance writer, and now I am creating the kind of exploration I have not seen anywhere else.

I want to find the places local people know — like the pub where a traveling theater company is performing live tonight, and the sugar shack that serves corn muffins with maple butter. That’s what I look for when I come to a new place. And that’s what I want to give you. Come with me and I’ll show you where I go on a weekend morning in the sun.

Why explore the Berkshires? Open country and open minds make a rare combination. Out here we have open ridges and a slice of the Appalachian trail, canoe trips on the Housatonic River — and we have the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, theaters that send plays to Broadway and museums that gather internationally known artists.