Stop looking: Pioneer Valley is about perfect

By Denis Horgan, Knight Ridder News Service

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. - Sometimes it just doesn't seem fair.

There are European-country-size expanses in our land with barely enough to fill them, great empty places where you can travel for days yet have to stretch to find much of beauty and interest. A rock here, a cactus over there, sand everywhere.

Oh, I know that there is beauty in every landscape, spirit in every shadow, fascination to be found in every grain of dust. Sure. You bet. But one can find a whole lot of emptiness in between.

In Massachusetts' upper Pioneer Valley, though, there is an almost ostentatious abundance of natural beauty, luxurious hillscapes and woods and farms and civilized wildlife; there is great history captured in local towns and communities, reflected in the region's very essence. Religious, cultural and educational gold mines are everywhere; small communities present restaurants and shopping to rival metropolises everywhere.

All within a stone's throw.

North of the Holyoke Range, an east-west line of hills above Springfield, you can capture so much of the New England flavor and essence, and it's all within the reach of a gallon or two of gasoline.

In the 30 miles from, say, Holyoke to Greenfield - more specifically, maybe, in the 16 miles between nifty Old Deerfield to wonderful Northampton - there are for the taking quaint old towns, exquisite campuses, art and craft, and food from all over the world.

The Five Colleges region (four colleges and a university, to be precise) is a treasure chest, compact, dense in its wealth, and quite simply fascinating by the inch or mile.

The schools - Amherst, Smith, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke colleges and the University of Massachusetts - attract youth and energy; the wealth in gold and culture reaches out beyond the campus walls; the strength and tradition combine to preserve deep pockets of natural and historical beauty where grim commerce and strip malls might intrude otherwise.

As much as the surrounding countryside, the colleges are lovely. None is more lovely, I submit confidently, than glorious Mount Holyoke. It is an oasis of quiet and peace in a sea of peace and quiet. Its grand architecture, landscaping, and sense of culture high and deep rest quietly for those willing to seek it out. (Here, unlike in the city with the same name to the south, they know how to pronounce things properly. At the school it is Holy-oak; in the city it comes out a quickly rolled-together Hoy-oak.)

In Boston, many miles to the east but light years away in attitude, you can find five colleges on almost any intersection. Out here, the impact and uplifting come because the schools are spread out, rationed across the land, bringing the jingle-jangle of lighthearted youth to the countryside and the "urban" neighborhoods at the same wonderful time.

The Pioneer Valley is a crease up and down western Massachusetts, one that in various names tracks the Connecticut River north and south. The river is its wet spine, while I-91 and state Route 5 offer the quicker course.

Old Deerfield to the north is a historical gem, one of those reconstructions of Ye Goode Olde Days, yet fresh and muted and restrained at the same time. Northampton (and the other Hamptons, Southampton, Easthampton, etc.) is the base and the foundation and, by size and its unique vitality, the heart of the region.

In between, tiny towns - Whately, Bradstreet, Leverett, Conway, the Hadleys, Amherst, Montague - call up earlier times when the region was a wilderness intruded upon by the settlers from the distant sea. Being New England, they measure things in centuries here. Northampton (which seems to have lost an "h" along the way) is marking its anniversary without being pushy about it. It's only 350, after all.

Emily Dickinson wrote her poems in this region and is the worthy emblem of the place: Born near Amherst College, attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, is buried nearby, and never much went anywhere else. Her home at 280 Main St. in Amherst is now a museum.

Old Deerfield is a wonderful mile of 18th- and early-19th-century homes and shops, inhabited by citizens in the garb of the day: the day a third of a millennium ago. It is interesting. It is pretty. It is not hokey.

There are hiking trails, historical markers to the massacre of early settlers - and to the displacement of the much, much earlier residents who owned the place long before the European visitors arrived. (For those with more contemporary urges, the Yankee Candle outlet and park are right down the road.)

The views are simply glorious: rural, largely unspoiled and unendingly interesting. Scenic drives with monikers such as Rattlesnake Gutter Road haul you off into the lovely wilderness. Who cares if you get lost?

Villages with picture-perfect church steeples at the center succeed one another, mile after mile. Mill after mill, some long closed, marks the effort to succeed in a land where the ethic was basic: Work very hard and there's a small chance you may succeed.

In even such a postage stamp-size plot of land, there seems always to be a fair or festival in the works, celebrating the sense of fun, creativity, promise and accomplishment that the people around here enjoy.

Northampton stands apart and above all else. This being New England, where direction and directions are nearly meaningless, it is east of Easthampton and Westhampton alike, a crossroads of the regions' major highways and scenic routes. Much more significantly, it is the crossroads of the region's economy, culture and urban life, and contains more chocolate shops than even churches. And it has a lot of churches, great churches.

Its main streets offer one fascinating find after another. Everything is available here. Crafts and antiques are found beside ethnic foodstuffs, clothing of every sort, and bookshops galore. Great restaurants, such as Spoleto and Wiggins Tavern and Bistro 63 at the Monkey Bar, among many, are widely known for their excellence and range. It is a veritable United Nations' cafeteria of foods from every culture and continent.

Art galleries are everywhere: Skera, Don Muller, the Silverscape Designs complex in what was once a mighty bank, complete with cashiers' cages and a gigantic vault under a skylight and Art Deco in abundance. There are museums at every turn.

All that and more, but it is the street life that reflects the special quality defining this city of nearly 30,000 residents and hundreds of thousands of visitors. The college kids are here in enormous numbers, mixing on the sidewalks and lawns with bikers and street people and high schoolers and others who well may be from another planet entirely.

Eclectic, eccentric, tolerant and creatively edgy, Northampton might boast of the wonderfully restored Calvin Theater; the music and drama scene; the easy elegance of the Northampton Hotel; the huge, vibrant lesbian and gay population; the art and age. Instead, Northampton seems little inclined to boast at all, preferring to just get on with being exciting, interesting and bustling.

It is all that and, somehow, none of it is in conflict with the serenity, casual pace and rural feel of the larger surroundings of this neat little city.

People have been coming to the Pioneer Valley for just about as long as there have been people weary of the frazzle and pace of Boston and New York and Hartford and other more feverish places. It remains as fresh today as if it were only 200 or so years old.

Reprint provided by Philly.Com (article posted on Sunday, August 8, 2004). © 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.philly.com