Every fall, a mysterious stranger sends scores of long-stem roses to the Emily Dickinson Homestead, in Amherst, Massachusetts—one blossom for each year that has passed since the poet’s birth. This year, assuming tradition holds, 175 of the flowers will appear in time for the birthday celebration, on Saturday, December 10, and be given away to those who are there. Last year, I dropped in for the 174th birthday, a convivial open house attended mostly by local residents. I met some old friends, among them an academic couple who years earlier had arranged to have their marriage ceremony conducted in the poet’s bedroom. I had some gingerbread cookies made from Dickinson’s recipes, and collected a yellow rose to take home to my daughter. The world regards Emily Dickinson as a genius. People who live in Amherst don’t disagree, but they also tend to see her in rather personal terms.
History—especially cultural history—is an emphatic presence in the Pioneer Valley, best known these days as the home of the “Five Colleges”—Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. For the traveler, and for those of us who live here, too, it’s the perennial collision of tradition and youth that manages to provide the place with much of its agreeable texture.
Fall is the valley’s best time. In the morning, the high ground may be bathed in sunlight, but mist over the Connecticut River covers the valley floor; it burns off by midday, revealing a sudden sky of cornflower blue and an afternoon of that soft light and solemn stillness known at no other time of the year. Where better to be during this season than on a college campus? The calendar year may be winding down, but for students time is just beginning: term papers, finals, graduation, life itself—all that is an eon away. Walking among the backpacks, you may recall the eternity that an autumn day could once contain.
The two biggest college towns, Amherst and Northampton, serve as the twin hubs of the valley, and the life of the campuses inhabits and energizes them. It hasn’t always been thus. Once town and gown kept to themselves, and the place was beautiful but austere. Then, a generation ago, something happened: Essentially, the kids forgot to go home. Yurts sprang up in the hills and, even as the tie-dyed revolution ran its course, the Happy Valley, as it came to be known, turned into a popular place for young graduates not only to hang out but to hang on. Some alumni (like me) went away for a few years only to be drawn back by a place that was a lot livelier than the one we had left. Today’s gray-haired ponytailed set includes many a former communard, a little tamer now, of course. That guy who toppled the electric tower to protest nuclear energy? Now he sits on the planning board. Students still choose to settle and seek a fortune as countercultural merchants, organic farmers, artists, and artisans. A group of people pursuing careers their parents hadn’t imagined for them: This tends to produce a certain egalitarian spirit. Your massage therapist has his doctorate in philosophy, and maybe that’s why he understands you so well.
I remember a valley that had essentially two restaurants to choose from when parents came to town. Both places are still here: Wiggins Tavern, in the Hotel Northampton, and the Lord Jeffery Inn, in Amherst. (Two restaurants, but essentially one menu; what else would the young man have but shrimp cocktail and “prime rib au jus”?) Recent years have seen a flowering of cuisine, much of it ethnic. You can find about a dozen Asian restaurants of one variety or another, from Thai to Tibetan, in Northampton alone. Nor has Western cooking been ignored. We don’t yet have that worth-a-journey restaurant, but adventurous chefs, notably at Sienna, in South Deerfield, and Circa, in Northampton, are making great use of local farm products, and each has won a devoted following.
Both Amherst and Northampton mercifully escaped the “urban renewal” that ravaged Springfield, to the south. The town centers maintain stolid 19th-century brick façades that have nicely accommodated New Age business. No megamalls, but for a certain sort of shopper it’s paradise enough. Especially for the bibliophile. Along with boutiques and cafés, new- and used-book shops stud the streets of both towns. And a few miles up the road, in the village of Montague, there’s the mammoth Book Mill, with its charming slogan: “Books you don’t need, in a place you can’t find.” The truth is, we have discovered the joys of commerce here, but we like it topped with irony. The proprietors of Fly by Night Furniture would agree.
Culturally, the valley has always stood a bit apart from the world, provincial and proud of it. Settled a generation after Plymouth, but lying 100 miles inland, the region developed a literary sensibility that endures to this day. No other similar stretch of American turf has accounted for so much of our great verse, from the 17th-century metaphysical poet Edward Taylor to a giant of our own time, Richard Wilbur—with Emily Dickinson presiding over all.
Puritanism died hard here, if indeed it’s fully dead. Current incarnation: poli-tical correctness. Northampton, after all, was the home of preacher Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening he led in the 18th century. We live at the outer edge of Boston’s sphere of influence—drive an hour west, to towns like Lenox and Great Barrington, and you’ve entered cultural New York. I once had brunch in Great Barrington, and, good Lord, they were drinking Bloody Marys and listening to jazz! In Northampton, you’re more likely to go to the Haymarket Cafe for coffee and some petition signing.
The “pioneers” of the Pioneer Valley were those settlers of 350 years ago who came here chiefly for the soil, some of the richest farmland this side of Iowa. Like most of America, the Valley has not been immune from commercial -depredations—notably, some strip development along Route 9 between Amherst and Northampton. But that’s only a parking lot deep, and behind it lies a lot of land still in productive agricultural use. Especially in early fall, farm stands brim with produce. A drive from Amherst takes you over some back roads through the flat fields of Sunderland and toward another of the valley’s cultural landmarks: Historic Deerfield, a splendid collection of restored buildings adjacent to the Deerfield Academy campus.
Historic Deerfield—the enterprise—was founded in 1952, some years after Henry and Helen Flynt, wealthy antiques collectors from Greenwich, Connecticut, enrolled their son at the academy. Struck by the abundance of early houses—most in bad repair, some unoccupied—the Flynts had a vision of a Main Street returned to its 18th-century glory. With the encouragement of the Deerfield Academy headmaster, they set out to buy and restore the houses. What started as an act of rather quixotic nostalgia has grown into one of the most sophisticated preservation efforts in the country. Main Street now provides a showcase of 18th- and 19th-century architecture, and three seasons of the year its houses are open to visitors.
Deerfield is the logical jumping-off point for an excursion into the sparsely populated hill towns that lie along the valley’s western flank. The countryside is long on restful landscape and rural architecture, short on amenities. People who live here routinely drive 40 minutes to get anything more complicated than a can of chicken noodle soup but are happy enough for the absence of traffic. You can pass through seven or eight villages without encountering a stoplight. It’s a place meant for wandering aimlessly, but one destination does suggest itself: the village of Shelburne Falls, which is undergoing a sweet rebirth. Here you can generally find a decent lunch, a glass of wine, even a good espresso. In a welcome invasion, crafts-people and restaurateurs have found their way into this snug town on the Deerfield River that preserves New England village life with an appealing lack of self-consciousness. Like the rest of the hill towns, Shelburne Falls reinforces what is perhaps the single most satisfying quality of the Pioneer Valley—the tenacity of its past.
The Details
Staying There
Comfort and regional charm are givens at the Lord Jeffery Inn (30 Boltwood Avenue, Amherst; 800-742-0358; lordjefferyinn.com; from $79), Hotel Northampton (36 King Street, Northampton; 800-547-3529; hotelnorthampton.com; from $165), and the Deerfield Inn (81 Old Main Street, Deerfield; 800-926-3865; deerfieldinn.com; from $146).
Eating There
A true destination
restaurant has yet to arrive up in the Pioneer Valley, but local chefs are
becoming more innovative in the ways they prepare the region’s wealth of fresh
ingredients. Sienna
(6 Elm Street, South
Deerfield; 413-665-0215), Circa (57
Center Street, Northampton; 413-586-2622), and Café
Martin (24 Bridge Street, Shelburne Falls;
413-625-2795) attract a loyal group of regular customers.
Being There
For those who like to poke around in museums and historic homes, the Pioneer Valley is bountiful, and in the last couple of years, many local treasures have become more accessible. The Emily Dickinson Museum (280 Main Street, Amherst; 413-542-8161; emilydickinsonmuseum.org) consists of the poet’s home and an adjacent house once owned by her brother. Formally opened as a museum in 2003, it has taken its place as one of America’s great literary shrines. The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art (125 West Bay Road, Amherst; 413-658-1100; picturebookart.org), next to the campus of Hampshire College, celebrates children’s literature. The Hampshire College campus is also the home of the National Yiddish Book Center (1021 West Street, Amherst; 413-256-4900; yiddishbookcenter.org), a repository of 1.5 million volumes with exhibitions that are open to the public. The Smith College Museum of Art (Elm Street, Northampton; 413-585-2760; smith.edu/artmuseum) has a small, exquisite collection of 19th- and 20th-century pieces by Sargent, Cézanne, Monet, Renoir, and others, including a regional figure of great interest, the brilliant 19th-century inventor and folk artist Edwin Romanzo Elmer. The museum at the Flynt Center of Early New England Life (37D Old Main Street, Deerfield; 413-775-7214), in Historic Deerfield, displays an extensive collection of antique Connecticut River Valley furniture. The Flynt Center is part of Historic Deerfield, a nationally recognized museum that offers tours of 13 period houses. (Old Main Street, Deerfield; 413-774-5581; historic-deerfield.org)