Take a look at the shape of these mountains — soft, round-shouldered, endlessly folded, rolling off blue into the distance. They don't have the jagged drama of the Rockies, and there's a wonderful reason: these are some of the oldest mountains on Earth. The Berkshires and the Hoosac Range you're crossing are the worn-down roots of a range that was once as tall and sharp as the Alps, thrown up when continents collided hundreds of millions of years ago.
Everything since then — rivers, ice, and time, unimaginable amounts of time — has been sanding them down. The last great ice sheet, a mile thick, ground over these summits and gouged out the valleys you keep dropping into and climbing out of. What's left is this gentle, ancient, deeply forested country. When people call the Berkshires restful, this is why: you're looking at mountains that have made their peace with time.
Photo: Andrew W. Melrose · Public domain
