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On the great outdoors
8.08.05
[This piece appears in the August 2005 issue of BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine in Seth Rogovoy's FromTheEditor column:]
Editor's Letter - August
On Father's Day, which happened to fall on the Sunday before we put this issue to bed, I had what turned out to be a quintessential Berkshire Living day. After a brief morning spent with the Sunday papers (three, including the New York Times and the Boston Globe, all delivered to our doorstep at our home near downtown Great Barrington, Massachusetts - talk about your good life in the country!), our two children, my wife, and I piled into our car and took a drive. We wound our way east on Route 23 toward Monterey, Massachusetts, before driving the lovely stretch of rural road to Tyringham, Massachusetts, a storybook village that time has happily forgotten; then headed north to October Mountain State Forest outside of Lee, Massachusetts, for our main outing of the day - to do the woodland hike recommended by Andrea Goodman back in the April/May "Our Favorite Things" issue.
Now, anyone who knows me well knows that I'm not exactly Mr. Outdoorsman. I'm much more likely to be found in the office at Berkshire Living, or on my living-room couch catching up on old newspapers or magazines, or at one of our terrific restaurants, bars, theaters, concert halls, or nightclubs, than anywhere insects, toads, snakes, or dirt can be found. I'm of the firm belief that if God had wanted us to spend a lot of time outdoors, then He would not have given us the ingenuity to build screened-in porches, climate-controlled automobiles, or domed stadiums.
Nevertheless, I do believe that this past Father's Day was the best ever, and it was all because of that hike in the woods. It wasn't too challenging, but just challenging enough (for a relatively sedentary magazine editor who rarely walks more than the half mile from my house to the office) to give me the satisfaction and sense of accomplishment of overcoming the challenge the terrain itself presented as well as the challenge of my own physical limitations. It got my heart racing, my blood flowing, raised my body temperature, and exercised muscles I thought had long atrophied or withered into nothingness.
But more than all that, the time spent in the woods with no one other than my family (we didn't see a single other human) in a natural setting totally devoid of any evidence of human civilization, just a short half-hour from our house, was utterly rejuvenating. When I returned home and assumed my customary perch, on my back, feet up on the couch, it felt better than ever before because I had spent the hour exercising in the woods, unwinding with my wife and kids on the drive to and from the park, and had also in the process left everything behind, even for just a short while - but most of all, it reminded me of just how lucky we are to live in a place not just of man-made and cultural riches, but of instantly accessible, unspoiled natural beauty. When I realized that the week ahead would be spent putting the finishing touches on this issue that celebrates the recreational bounty of our region, chock full of great ideas for how to get off our duffs and "Get Out and Play" (see page 52), I felt more than ever what a terrific service we were performing - especially for couch potatoes such as myself.
The fact that I ended the day attending a matinee performance of Joan Ackermann's terrific new play, Ice Glen, at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts - a must-see, if you haven't already - and then enjoying a fabulous dinner with my family at Helsinki Cafe back in Great Barrington, was just the icing (no pun intended) on the cake of what turned out to be the best Father's Day ever - a quintessential Berkshire Living day.
Here's wishing you many such days.
Seth Rogovoy
Editor-in-Chief
seth@BerkshireLivingMag.com
[To subscribe to Berkshire Living, please go to
www.BerkshireLivingMag.com]
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