Flashes of Panic

When I came back here, I remembered it as a beautiful place, but I was mostly thinking about the southerly view from The College, bounded by the Holyoke Range and Mt. Tom, and perhaps the view southwest from route 116, just south of the college, looking across fields and the Fort River valley towards Belchertown and the Pelham Hills. Driving and riding north to Sunderland from Northampton gave me a daily vista of Mount Sugarloaf and the west flank of Mount Toby (which reservation makes up something like two-thirds of the land area of Sunderland.)

Coming up from Amherst, the Mt. Toby hills are the dominant feature of the landscape. With Mt. Sugarloaf, they squeeze the river near the Sunderland bridge (a very pretty place) and on many mornings they are shrouded with river fog even as Hadley and Amherst have cleared up. I imagine the fog flowing down the river valley and piling up on Mt. Toby like an avalanche on an outcropping. As I head up into Sunderland, it looks like a big skein of cotton pulled out and draped over the tops of the mountains. Nearly any northbound route out of Amherst will, at some point, show these mountains, but Amherst tends to look south to the Holyoke Range.

Since I’ve been riding to work, I’ve found another nice vista. If I take the low-traffic (but longer) route, I turn on to East Plumtree Road near where Leverett and Sunderland meet at the Amherst line. Marked with an “X 314” on the second map above, less than a hundred feet down East Plumtree you can look west right across the Connecticut River Valley. The river is invisible at this point, but it’s easy to spot the three (or so) white buildings that make up the center Whately (I’d call it “downtown Whately,” but I doubt this audience would spot the irony; it’s just the obligatory collection of civic buildings, town hall, library, church. There is no “downtown” to speak of in Whately.) Behind that, the green rollers of the “hilltowns” and the beginnings of the Berkshires. There are several nice houses there cleverly positioned to make the most of the spectacular view.

If I’d been there at the right time Wednesday, I might have been able to watch the gusher of a thunderstorm we had sweep across the valley. I keep meaning to bring a camera on my bike commute and document all the things I spot which somehow seem so interesting while I’m riding by.

Now playing: Stray from Dead Air by Heatmiser