1 64 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



north, to get around the ridge of Mount Everett and 

 find a road up. Even these roads will be steep and 

 long, and half the year impassable for motors. But 

 in the old days there was no such roundabout jour- 

 neyings, no, sir. You got to Mount Washington by 

 heading straight for Mount Washington, and a mere 

 thousand-foot wall did not deter you. Nor has this 

 old road been so long abandoned, as time runs. Our 

 village doctor can remember driving down it once in 

 a buggy a mere forty years ago, and on the less 

 steep portion, above the shoulder, the crown and 

 side ditches are still detectable here and there, 

 while the trees have not always closed across it nor 

 the shrubs badly grown in. 



Five miles south, almost exactly on the Connec- 

 ticut state line, another road leads up the cliff into 

 Sage's Ravine and then to Plantain Pond and 

 Mount Washington. It is still on the maps, too, 

 and I have been frequently asked if it can be trav- 

 eled in a motor, but not, unfortunately, as yet by 

 anybody whom I particularly dislike. As no author 

 dislikes his readers, I hasten to assure you that it 

 cannot. It has been used of late years exclusively 

 by a periodic brook, which is almost as destructive 

 to a road surface as the town scraper in the hands of 

 our selectmen. Not far up this road are the cellar 

 hole, the clearings, the dilapidated orchard, of an 

 old-time farm, and the dooryard is still riotous with 

 spiraea and day-lilies, which have successfully stood 

 off the goldenrod, the blackberries, the hardhack, 

 and the seedling maples. 



On the opposite side of the Housatonic Valley, 

 from the Connecticut line northward, is a wall of 



