Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Boston Globe Article on Mt. Greylock's Ski Run
http://www.boston.com/travel/explorene/massachusetts/regions/berkshires/articles/2009/02/22/a_trail_for_the_hardy/
Friday, February 20, 2009
Again, No Photo of Mt. Greylock ~ Friday, February 20, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Vote for Mt. Greylock to be on the State Quarter!
In a successor to the 50 States Quarters Program, the U.S. Mint, in a nationwide program, has asked Governor Patrick to select one preferred and three alternate Massachusetts national sites to be featured on the reverse of a quarter. Beginning in 2010, the Mint will release five new quarter designs annually based on the order in which the selected sites gained federal designation.
Governor Patrick is calling on the people of Massachusetts to help with this decision.
One of these sites is Mt. Greylock. You can vote by clicking on the link below...http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=gov3utilities&sid=Agov3&U=quarters_program
Artists Inspired by Mt. Greylock
Henry David Thoreau
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Edith Wharton
William Cullen Bryant
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Herman Melville
Melville dedicated his 1852 novel. Pierre; Or, the Ambiguities, to Mount Greylock:
In the summer of 1838, Hawthorne had visited North Adams, MA and climbed Mount Greylock several times. His experiences here, especially a walk he took at midnight where he saw a burning lime kiln, inspired his story, originally titled "The Unpardonable Sin". Hawthorne had not written tales since 1844 when he wrote "Ethan Brand" in the winter of 1848–1849.To Greylock’s Most Excellent Majesty
In old times authors were proud of the privilege of dedicating their words to Majesty. A right noble custom, which we of Berkshire must revive. For whether we will or no, Majesty is all around here in Berkshire, sitting as in a grand Congress of Vienna of majestical hill-tops, and eternally challenging our homage.
But since the majestic mountain, Greylock - my own immediate sovereign lord and king- hath now, for innumerable ages, been the one grand dedicatee of the earliest rays of all the Berkshire mornings, I know not how his Imperial Purple Majesty (royal born: Porphyrogenitus) will receive the dedication of my own poor solitary ray.
Nevertheless, forasmuch as I, dwelling with my loyal neighbors, the Maples and the Beeches, in the amphitheater over which his central majesty presides, have received his most bounteous and unstinted fertilizations, it is but meet, that I here devoutly kneel, and render up my gratitude, whether, thereto, The Most Excellent Purple Majesty of Greylock begnignantly incline his hoary crown of no.
Pittsfield, MassMelville is said to have taken part of his inspiration for Moby-Dick from the view of the mountain from his house Arrowhead in Pittsfield, since its snow-covered profile reminded him of a great white Sperm Whale's back breaking the ocean's surface.
Thoreau summited and spent a night in July 1844. His account of this event in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers described his approach up what is today the Bellows Pipe Trail. Scholars contend that this Greylock experience transformed him, affirming his ability to do these excursions on his own, following his brother John's death; and served as a prelude to his experiment of rugged individualism at Walden Pond the following year in 1845.
Painters
George Inness