Mention the phrase “opening day” in most of Massachusetts, especially anywhere near sports-mad Boston, and someone will probably be overcome with gauzy images of a spring day at Fenway Park.
Not me. Definitely not me.
Williamstown, Massachusetts, where I live, is almost as far geographically from Boston as you can get and still stay in the same state. Spiritually, it feels even farther. And despite coming from a long line of baseball players, my father, a former pitcher on his college baseball team, had to admit defeat while I was still young and recognize that baseball wasn’t my ticket to success, either.
Opening day at the summit of Mount Greylock. The view east from the top is a popular place to relax and soak up the beauty.
For me, the phrase “opening day” conjures a smaller, quieter, more personal image here in my current hometown. Yesterday was opening day. The day when the road to the top of Mount Greylock, which is closed from October to May, was opened for the first time. It’s the best sign that summer, however brief it might feel here in the winter-weary Berkshires of western Massachusetts, is coming at last. And it’s opening day for a spot that has become my place to escape to for a few moments of tranquility, close enough that I can be there in minutes, different enough from my home office to totally reset my mind.
Yesterday was opening day.
The road to the top is narrow, curvy, and spiked with hairpin turns. Supremely nimble and light, my Kawasaki KLX300SM feels just right. Anything bigger feels like overkill on this road.
A short motorcycle ride to Mount Greylock on opening day
Working from home has its advantages, and I appreciate them, but the one disadvantage is I spend a lot of time in the house. Sometimes, I need a change of scenery. Except for when I lived in Puerto Rico, where I had beach nature preserves and centuries-old Spanish forts looming over the ocean within 15 miles of my house, I’ve never had such great scenery so close by for me to escape to, when I need that change.
The 93-foot-tall Massachusetts Veterans War Memorial with its distinctive globe on top sits on the peak of Mount Greylock. It’s the latest version of a few towers that were built on the mountain and it was dedicated in 1933, built to honor the state’s veterans who died in wars.
The peak of Mount Greylock, at 3,491 feet the highest spot in the state, is just 10.9 miles from my front door as the motorcycle travels, about half a mile higher in altitude, and usually seven to 10 degrees cooler. The Appalachian Trail, and several local off-shoot trails, cross the nature reserve that protects the peak, but what makes it easy to visit is that there’s a road that goes to the summit. The limitation is that the road is only open from about the middle of May to the second half of October. The peak’s proximity and that road mean that on any given summer afternoon, when I’m tired of being stuck inside in front of a computer screen, I can get outside, enjoy a short ride, take in some refreshing and dramatic views, and be back home without losing too much time. Far more refreshing than a nap.
I first went to Mount Greylock in 2005. I was writing an article for American Motorcyclist magazine and we had a new GPS unit to test, so I decided to track a ride not just in terms of miles across the landscape, but in feet above sea level, using the GPS. The resulting article, which I called “Vertical touring,” took me from Gloucester, Massachusetts, (the port most recently made famous in “The Perfect Storm”) to the peak of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, the highest point in the East and the site of some of the world’s most extreme weather. The first high point I hit on that tour was Mount Greylock.
Ever since I first visited the Berkshires of western Massachusetts as a young man in the 1980s, I was enchanted with the area, and that first visit to Greylock in 2005, after enjoying the ride on the Mohawk Trail, also made an impression. But I never imagined I’d end up living virtually at the base of the mountain. Life takes you places you don’t expect. Or at least it seems to in my case, considering I’ve lived in at least 15 different places in my adult life.
Riding my motorcycle to the top of Mount Greylock doesn’t feel like much of a big deal when I see the many bicyclists who pedal their way to the highest point in the state. And it feels even less intrepid when I watch hang gliders hurl themselves off the cliff at the top.
That ride of just under 11 miles is now my favorite escape. Many visitors enter the Greylock State Reserve from the south, where there’s a visitors center that’s open even when the summit road is closed. The road up from the south is narrow and plenty curvy, with a couple of hairpins, but it’s not as tightly coiled as the road I take, entering from the north. My Kawasaki KLX300SM supermoto feels just right for this road. Speeds are low, shoulders are non-existent, curves tight, and in the deep shade of the forest, I’ve seen times in midsummer when damp spots can linger longer than you’d think possible and tufts of moss are growing in cracks in the asphalt. That’s one of nature’s ways of warning you traction could be limited.
A flashback to a ride to the top in a previous year on my former Honda VFR800 Interceptor Deluxe. You can tell it’s late summer and edging into fall, as the leaves begin pondering a change of color. All the seasons are shorter atop Greylock. Except winter.
On opening day, I rode from my home through a residential neighborhood, took Reservoir Road, which is named for the mountainside lake that supplies the adjacent town of North Adams, to Notch Road, which winds to the summit. I was surprised to find the parking area only half full, and I joined the others sitting on the rocky lawn below the Veterans War Memorial tower, taking in the dramatic view to the east, where the mountainside drops off like a cliff with the town of Adams below.
The visitors center at the south end of the reserve is open even during the months when the road to the summit is closed.
On summer weekends, there’s usually a group of motorcyclists in the parking area at the top of at one of the pulloffs that make for great photo ops along the way. The peak is also the most likely place around here I’ll hear languages I can’t identify with certainty, as I sometimes run into foreign tourists in rental cars. I’ll also always see at least a few dustry through hikers, hardier souls than I, strolling through nature on the Appalachian Trail on their walk from Georgia to Maine. In other words, part of the charm is not just the views, but never knowing you might cross paths with.
When I left, I rode down the south route and stopped at the visitors center, borrowing an outdoor picnic table to eat the small lunch I’d brought with me. This is what Greylock is for me now. My little escape hatch, offering me a dramatic but peaceful spot to get a jolt of nature without traveling days to do it.
On the way home, I stopped at one of my other favorite local nature spots, the Mount Hope Park in Williamstown. It’s nothing more than an open area with a few picnic tables and a nearby trailhead. But beneath the tall pines, Hopper Brook tumbles over rocks and flows into the small Green River. It’s another place that’s ideal for a peaceful retreat, and in this case just five miles from home.
Over at Common Tread, we recently had an article by contributor Wendy Pojmann, talking about how the epic journeys and challenging rides dominate the attention on social media, but the smaller, daily motorcycle rides we do can also invigorate life. Even if it’s just something as simple as riding to work.
Whether it’s a quiet natural spot or a coffee shop in the city you live in or any other kind of place, I hope you have a retreat you can ride to and get a dose of motorcycling and escape. I feel lucky to have such great places close by, and that’s why every year now I look forward to opening day.
Nothing says “natural beauty” to me like a stream tumbling through a forest. Hopper Brook, seen here, flows into the Green River at Mount Hope Park in Williamstown. The little park is another site where I can escape quickly for a few minutes of peace in nature.
