Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary

Why Do We Come Back To The Berkshires?
1. I was a devilish little Red Eft catching kid
2. Recently my wife and I walked the trails of the Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary
3. The beavers are some of this sanctuary’s real stars

One summer long ago I was a devilish little kid at my first sleep away camp in Great Barrington (Camp Ta-Ho-Nee) with my best friend Scott. We were still just a bit too young to be gung ho about sports and our favorite activity was playing in the woods, overturning old tree logs and grabbing as many creepy crawly creatures as we could before they scurried back down deeper into the wet ground.

The ones we liked to catch the most were bright orange-red with black circled red spots known as Red Efts. They are in the middle juvenile stage in their process of metamorphosis. They are in the terrestrial stage between larva and adult and, much like us in camp, they are away from their original home (in their case the water, in ours the suburbs) and will eventually go back and live as and among the red spotted green adults in the water. We would go to the nature shack and put them in little terrariums then the counselors would probably sneak most of them back into the woods and release them for us to go hunting them all over again. My parents always reminded me that the first postcard I ever sent them my first time away from home was only about the Red Efts I caught. They had a real good laugh not knowing what the heck I was talking about but somehow knowing I was having a blast.

One time a bunch of us turned over this huge rotting log and while everyone else was grabbing their quarry I was the first to spot and grab a large Spotted Salamander. I felt like Captain Ahab. It was our great white whale. I had found the great black salamander which was a very large and slimy creature indeed. A majestic black with brilliant yellow spots and against my own better judgment and repulsion I grabbed it. I grabbed for the glory that comes to a seven year old on the hunt in the woods and we thought it was the rarest find in the history of all our hunting that summer.

I was also known as the master frog catcher that summer and still remember standing all by myself in the woods by the brook’s edge absolutely still in the early evening’s quiet after dinner up to my knees in the cool mud. The mud felt good on my legs but it also felt sometimes like it would swallow me up like quicksand and I’d imagine that I was a great hunter in Africa like in the Tarzan movies. Then I would see them although they blended into their environment almost seamlessly but just enough apart. The amphibian against the vegetation at first looks like nothing but then they would appear to me riveting in the shallow water, an unsuspecting green frog and I’d wait absolutely still not making the slightest move. Then all at once I’d reach out a grab the frog my arm was just like their tongue reaching out to grab an insect and I’d spring out of the mud and pounce like a panther on its prey and in an instant I’d catch them if not on the first grab then maybe on the second. Their whole circle of life was being disrupted but I was there a part of nature.

I would put the frogs I caught in my own personal terrarium right on the bunks stairs. I had caught on to the scam of the counselors releasing our catch and wanted to show the world of my prowess in the jungles of the Berkshires. At the peak I had probably 30 of them jumping up and down incarcerated in their terrarium prison not realizing how dreadfully wrong was I to take these blessed creatures away from their habitat but I was just emulating my suburban vision of the glorified hunter and they were my game. The counselors finally gave me a good talking to and had me release them one night and told me how terribly wrong it was to do this to a living creature. It was a metaphor for our summer here: we were in the paradise of the Berkshires but then large creatures (adults) would grab us and put us on a bus back to our ticky tacky homes in the suburbs.

Now almost a half century later I find myself hiking around at Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary turning over felled tree logs and rocks looking half heartedly for the Red Efts I won’t try to catch, whose life cycles are so adoringly described on a big laminated plaque facing Pike Pond. This is a simply a wonderful place to relax and enjoy nature without a care. For me it’s very nostalgic because it’s just a few miles from where I spent that one summer in Great Barrington when I was a 7 year old away from home for my first time. Little did I know back then that this place, the first place I ever left home for, would be my chosen home when I got towards the end of the road? Not really old but getting old.
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Recently my wife and I walked the well-maintained and at times newly boardwalked trails of the Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary with some benches and nature info on plaques here and there nothing to interfere with your nature enjoyment as you enjoy walking around the pond. Nothing too strenuous either and certainly no worries about bears and bobcats that we sometimes get when we find ourselves in the unmarked wilderness here. This is just simply one of the most wonderful places to get back to nature. Big birch trees, woodpeckers rat ta tat tatting, rockin' robins singing, the extra terrestrial looking plant, skunk cabbage, smelling well a bit skunky but not bad. All sorts of pleasant sounds and sights abound. There are well marked trails of varying difficulty for hikes up and down Mount Lenox. There are seven miles of trails all in all and an easy to follow map is provided with your $4 entry fee.

Now I just look around and see everything, no longer the great child hunter of creepy slimy things, just an older and wiser observer of the peacefulness that nature creates for us and in us. It strikes me that here I am in the very same place and nature hasn't changed all that much and really in truth neither have I. I'm still a little devilish but the real point is that I'm back here in the Berkshires and loving it.

So why do we come back? We come back because things don't change much here and it's peaceful and wholesome. We also come back here for the many cultural activities we remember seeing as children. Those very same activities appeal to children and adults. When I was a rowdy teenager I saw Joan Baez here at Tanglewood on one heck of a gorgeous summer day while I was at a summer program at Northfield Mount Hermon during High School. She was already an icon and with a crackerjack band with none other than Jim Gordon on drums from Derek and the Dominoes I was hooked. Outdoor concerts are now a part of every summer for us. This summer we'll see JT and Carole King at Tanglewood so really things just don't change that much except maybe we appreciate them more? The simple things in life just don't change. So I say no to Thomas Wolfe! because you CAN go back home again, if that home is in the Berkshires that is. You can go home again HERE.
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Finally let’s talk about the beavers, some of this sanctuary’s real stars of the show. You see their well constructed homes as you drive up Route 7 without knowing what you’re looking at whenever you see a carefully constructed mound of twigs in the middle of a pond, that’s a beaver lodge. They are night dwellers and are there working every night throughout the night until dawn doing their job. We can really learn a lot from their behavior because they are family oriented and very industrious. One interesting fact is that after their offspring become two they leave the colony and sometimes forcibly so. Parents can bring their adult children who are having trouble leaving the nest and give a knowing "ah ha!" when this interesting little tidbit is divulged. These rather intelligent creatures are vegetarians and eat many different parts of the trees as well as use them for building the lodges where they live and protect themselves from the harsh winters. The sanctuary has evening beaver watches so you can see them in action and learn all about it. We will be going back soon too for this not-to-miss nightly event.