West Stockbridge, MA: In the Shadow of Hustle and Bustle
Welcome to a new blog feature I'm calling Small Towns. There are lots of
out-of-the-way places in New England and, frankly, in many cases that's a good
thing. Sometimes, though, there are small jewels deserving of your attention.
Let's kick things off with West Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I mean West Stockbridge, not its famed first cousin Stockbridge, which
lies 4.5 miles away. That one was founded (by whites) in 1739 and West
Stockbridge 27 years later. Lots of New England towns have cardinal direction
namesakes that formed for various reasons, chief among them religious disputes
and the fact that older settlements ran out of desirable land in a generation
or two.
You can forget the history lesson and enjoy West Stockbridge
for its main modern virtue. It's near
Berkshires tourist magnets such as the Tanglewood Music Center, the Kripalu
School of Yoga, Berkshires mansions and all the other summer noise. Stockbridge is where the masses head to
see sites such as the Norman Rockwell Museum, Naumkeag, and Chesterwood.
Traffic can be bad there at any time of the year because of the way the roads
are laid out, but bottlenecks, clueless driving, and long waits to dine on the
porch of the Red Lion Inn are as much a part of a Stockbridge summertime as
mosquitoes and New York license plates. West Stockbridge is a place to take
things at a less hectic pace. You might even spot Bay State license plates
there.
We've heard good things about TurnPark Art Space, which is built by an old quarry but we're
saving that for the next time we're homeward bound from a long drive. After
all, there's just so much not-much-of-anything a person can do in a few hours!
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