“A winter wood road, matted all along with winter-green. By the side of pebbly waters—waters the cheerier for their solitude; beneath swaying fir-boughs, petted by no season, but still green in all, on I journeyed—my horse and I…”

–Herman Melville

Thinking of Edith Wharton, her writing. Dogs and windows. Lila Berle, her beloved horse and riding. Paths in life chosen by each.

A soul-deep chord was struck hearing of Lila Berle explorations on horseback in the Berkshires, and so a storehouse of memories, years of riding awakened. Sandy miles in rural pine-and-palmetto Florida (turpentine slashes, homesteads now part of Eglin AFB range), uplands of Floyd County Virginia (lightening-struck ancient oak on steep hilltop). Blackwater River, no saddle. So many cherished memories flooded in. Realizing many today will never know the silence and companionable company of a horse and dog and the bliss of riding and finding, riding and returning, picking a way through. Reading the land, figuring all out. Good tired. Cooling out and checking all over when back. Legs, hooves. Later, sweet feed and excellent hay, fresh water. The language of horses, love. Pay attention and you will see things not only amazing, but also life changing. Hearing a sharp exhaled breath, deer. Bogs under power lines. A ravine where raccoons nest in sheltered live oak trees. Racking horses with natural gaits so comfortable. Nothing needed for the comfortable cruising with melodic hoof beats to boot. Combining western gear and English saddle, who cares, it's the ride that matters. An improvised sling looped over the saddle horn to carry an exhausted feist (seen running in the top photo this page) on the way home. It took a lot of riding to get her that tired.

Note that the only “meeting” of Berle is through hearing her interviewed in this video by Berkshire Museum (2015 produced by Richard Sands).

“Lila Berle has been a lifelong leader in farming, preservation, and land conservation in the Berkshires. Her Sky Farm includes pasture land in Great Barrington, Stockbridge, Egremont, and Alford and provides grass-fed, hormone-free food to many area restaurants. In the 1970s Mrs. Berle was instrumental in preserving The Mount, Edith Wharton's historic estate, and organized the first Board of Trustees of Edith Wharton Restoration, Inc. She served as the organization's first Board Chair, a position to which she was reelected in 2012. She was a member and president of the Board of Trustees for the Norman Rockwell Museum for many years and, in 1993, helped the museum make its transition from downtown Stockbridge to its current 36-acre site overlooking the Housatonic River Valley. Mrs. Berle has been active in more than thirteen nonprofit organizations, ranging from the Berkshire South Regional Community Center, the Trustees of Reservations, Chesterwood, Simon's Rock, Sculpture Now, and the Laurel Hill Association to the Foxhollow School, Lenox Library, Children's Health Program, and Berkshire Hills School Committee. She has been an active member of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Stockbridge since 1960.”

Structures and landscapes shaped by humans over time illuminate that change is a constant to life. Indigenous histories now posted at Arrowhead, noted and appreciated. In the Berkshires, authors, artists, culture, farms. Started out at Arrowhead and then off to The Mount. Walking, thinking.

Looking for evidence of a hay barn while there. Hay is a necessity that takes up much space, involves work and timing. Knowledge of weather.

Wondering about what happened to the “arrowheads” for which this place was named by Melville.

Know what it is like to climb the mountain of fragrant hay bales within such a barn (this one was in upstate New York), stacked for winter feed. Cleaning out stalls and that manure with bedding piles up, must be dealt with. Valuable for feeding the soil, nothing gets wasted. So much life associated with all associated with horses: birds, voles, moles, salamanders, butterflies, other pollinators. Yes, mice. And barn cats, snakes that also hunt. Bats fluttering and hunting scads of insects overhead in the dusk but not in winter. The somewhat greasy scent of a bear passing through. Live springs of water, springhouses and water troughs with overflow at the tip top. A living landscape, not a preserved one that is static.

Take the backroads, which lead to thinking and awakening of inspirations.

Horses. Dogs. People, passengers, visitors over layers of time. Two properties with shared histories, The Mount and the former Foxhollow school feel like one landscape.

This farmhouse, Laurel Lake Road.

Could not find anything about the decorative (iron?) fence that lines the Fox Hollow side of that road. Seen, noted. Why is it there?

Dogs. Horses. Barns and outbuildings. Water. Trails.

Excerpt by Ben Garver, The Berkshire Eagle, June 7, 2021. (Became a subscriber because of the ornate fence sighting on a recent roadtrip, then finding and reading story due to image search to learn more. A paywall will halt any non-subscriber; however here's wishing there was a giftable link that could allow reading of it if a subscriber wanted this option as with the New York Times policy that serves readers who are subscribers.)

LENOX — The Mount, home of Edith Wharton Restoration, hopes to embark on a historical renovation project to restore the Laurel Lake shorefront farmhouse built by Wharton and her husband, Teddy, in 1906.

The house, uninhabited for 12 years and deteriorating but with “solid bones,” is on a 3.4-acre lot, jointly owned by Lenox and Lee. It’s part of the 16-acre lakefront Edith Wharton Park, also co-owned by the two towns since 1971.

On preexisting farmland, the house was built after the Whartons acquired the estate off Plunkett Road in 1901 and spent 10 years living there part time, before selling it to private owners.

……………….

“Timeline: 1906-07 Five years after building The Mount, Edith and Teddy Wharton added the farmhouse, henhouse, piggery, ice house and wagon shed to a preexisting barn, as well as a boathouse (no longer existing).”

“The Mount, girls school photo. A 1950s photo when The Mount served as a dorm for an all-girls boarding school – Foxhollow School.

“The Mount has had six owners. In the fall of 1911, the Whartons sold their Berkshire estate to Albert R. and Mary Shattuck, who had rented it for two summers and, as owners, called it White Lodge. Shattuck heirs sold The Mount in 1938 to an elderly couple, Carr Vattel Van Anda, a retired managing editor of The New York Times, and his wife, Louise.

“The fourth owner, beginning in 1942, was the neighboring Foxhollow School for girls. The school converted the house’s second floor and attic into a dormitory, lodged horses in the stable next to the approach road, and generally took good care of the place.

“In 1976, at the instigation of Foxhollow School’s last headmistress, The Mount was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places. A Connecticut developer purchased the property in 1977 and sold it to a theater group called Shakespeare & Company early the following year.

“(George Westinghouse, inventor and industrialist, and his wife spent their summers next door to The Mount at “Erskine Park” from the late 19th century until their deaths without heir in 1914.

“Margaret Emerson McKim Vanderbilt Baker Amory Emerson (yes, that was her full name) bought Erskine Park razing it for her own house Holmwood in 1919. In 1939, Margaret sold Holmwood to two ladies who renamed the property Foxhollow, where they started and operated a girls school for 40 years. The property was sold again in 1977, which then saw the development of The Ponds at Foxhollow.)” — Kellsboro, pro account via Flickr

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From Long Hill Estate, Middletown, Connecticut; another location of trails and riders; rich in cultural history and landscape once part of the Golden Age but now open to the public.

"Pre-1675 • Algonquin Indian territory. The major trail runs north/south along the western foot of Long Hill.
… c. 1780 • The Path becomes an early carriage road, then a stagecoach route used by, among others, George Washington." Trails, Wadsworth Estate, Middletown, CT. pic.twitter.com/14OtZbyVPS

— Moo Dog Press (@MooDogPress) October 29, 2019

Editor's note: The opening quote is from The Piazza Tales.
Images linked to other stories and/or sources for those who are readers. Also see Lenox Land Trust public lands and trails in the area, which include Housatonic River access and updates on Edith Wharton Park.

O.C. Marsh page linked here. Also more about the Berkshires: “Chances are if you’ve driven on Route 7, just south of the entrance to The Mount, you’ve seen some of their Jersey herd enjoying the pastures. That same herd that Berle’s mother fostered over six decades has made High Lawn an internationally renowned farm.” —Berkshires Magazine

To be continued.