The Garden of the Seasons: More Than a Full Swallow from Jug End Trail, in Egremont, Massachusetts

            I like Mount Washington State Forest, a big hunk of Berkshire woodlands, its pretty mountain roads, and huge slabs of greenery. And I like heading off in that direction, knowing we're reaching higher elevations and 4,000 acres of undeveloped land.

            To get there we head south down Route 7 and then west, toward New York State. A year ago, starting from the New York side, a group of us (siblings and spouses) drove to the state preserve to find the trail to Bash Bish Falls, just across the state line into Massachusetts.

            This time, on Labor Day, a day that turned unseasonably warm, we followed directions from a Berkshire County hiking guide through Great Barrington to Egremont, then down a smaller road to the state forest, turning off at one of those old mud-brown state park signs that told us we were entering a 'management area.' Just a quarter minute later we see a sign for Jug End -- it keeps a low public profile -- described as a 'State Reservation.'

            A free, no-hassle, modest parking area greets arrivals. The place looks well taken care of.

            Our hiking guide praises Jug End's trails for offering "some of the best views in the Berkshires."

            And, the bonus for us, you don't have to climb up a steep trail to reach them. The trail we take is a very satisfying loop marked with blue blazes.

            We find open fields or meadows, left wild and yet somehow managed to keep the trees from making inroads. Maybe they cut it every year in the spring. It's in full bloom now.
            Wild meadows in September are a delight. Many wild plants like Queen Anne's Lace are still blooming, spilling all over one another and mixing with asters and other late bloomers. Some, like the Goldenrod pictured above, are just reaching their peak.

            Butterflies are all over the meadows as well.

            We pass through two fields, according to the guide, but it seems like more because of the trail loop, or the choices we make while walking along soft pathways of recently mowed wild grasses. Someone, as I said, is keeping the place neat and pretty.  

            The vast greeny hillsides arise from the field's far side. We take out our cameras and photograph all the vistas. The sky is blue over the green ridge line, and above the hills at the edge of vision a few puffy cumulus clouds hang amid all that blue and drift in the most ephemeral of the four elements.

            The clouds are like liquid time.

            We perspire in the September sun that gilds the land, the air, the flesh below, warm as the early summer sun of those long-lasting solstice days.

            Our blue-blazed trail dips beneath the cover of trees, and we follow a woodland path alongside a brook, looping back where the brook ends, meeting a few happy visitors looping from the other direction. All wearing the smiley glaze of a happy day in the elements.

            Coming back along the field-margin path we are sun-struck a second time after the cooler sanctum of the woodland, and astonished anew by the even richer depths of September gold as the sun loops in its own journey toward the western skies.
            Here's some useful information, how to get there, etc., from the state's park department:
https://www.mass.gov/locations/jug-end-state-reservation-wildlife-management-area