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Dave Read

Steepletop Reserve

Article updated May 12, 2018 by

The Steepletop Reserve, near New Marlboro, MA is the largest property of the Berkshire Natural Resource Council, comprising more than 1,200 acres. It contains miles of wood road, and expanses of wetland, mature forest, and young forest, including a small patch of old growth forest (it’s not virgin forest but it is unusually old).

At the center is Harmon Brook flowing from south to north through more than 100 acres of scattered wetland. Crisscrossing the Reserve are 5 miles of marked/maintained trail and an additional 3 miles of un-marked wood road. At the far southeast is a matrix of young forest and mature forest, managed for wildlife that depend on young forest habitat.

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  • Property overview: PDF-view/download
  • Aerial photo: PDF- view/download
  • Trail map: PDF- view/download

    • Directions:
    From Great Barrington, take Route 23 east to Monterey. Just after the Monterey line, bear right onto Route 57/183 into New Marlborough. Just before the Old Inn on the Green in New Marlborough, turn left onto New Marlborough-Monterey Road; follow for 1.6 miles. Turn right at the steep, inclining driveway marked “684”. Bear right into our gravel parking lot at the top of the little hill. The trails begin right at the trailhead parking; there is a kiosk just beyond the gate.

    Steepletop was donated by the Devine family, long-time owners of this and adjacent lands. To Berkshire Natural Resources Council they donated the Steepletop Reserve that you see on the attached maps; to the New Marlborough Land Trust and The Trustees of Reservations they gave a conservation restriction over Berkshire Natural Resources Council property and other land that the family retained. With Steepletop and adjacent land, a block of nearly 5,000 contiguous acres of land is permanently conserved.

    Super Bowl haiku

    Previous to landing a poem in the What Rough Beast series, my last score was an Honorable Mention! on Only A Game’s annual super bowl haiku contest. The show comes from WBUR – played touch football on the lawn outside the School of Communications when I was at BU.


    For these to make any sense, you have to remember the big Deflategate kerfuffle – it has its own wikipedia page – surely another sign of the apocalypse! My entries, the first got the Honorable Mention reading on the air:

    Hey Super Bowl Balls,
    Welcome Hans & Franz, Who Have
    Come To Pump You Up!

    It’s Only A Game,
    Relax Already, Let’s Don’t
    Overinflate It!

    Ed. note: just occurred to me that the 2nd one would make a viable epigram if we had the balls to rebel against the strictures of a form borrowed from an alien dna pool and worked in what just now seems the best way out of this entire fiasco: blow things out of proportion – but it has 2 syllables too many, so overinflate is safe, even though no godfearin american talks like that.

    Oswego, NY river and lake views

    Photos of the Oswego River taken Oct. 1, 2017 by Dave Conlin Read.

    Photos taken out “around the loop” along the Lake Ontario shore near Rudy’s, Oswego NY.

    Beethoven’s Ninth closes 2017 Tanglewood season

    August 28, 2017 Tanglewood concert review by

    The honeymoon between Music Director Andris Nelsons, born 1978, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, born 1881, is over; their marriage was on full display for the 2017 season finale at Tanglewood, where they produced as beautiful performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 as you could imagine. With four soloists, and the estimable Tanglewood Festival Chorus, with new conductor James Burton, the Koussevitsky Music Shed, and the enormous audience, combined to become the locus of the music world, for one splendid late summer afternoon in the Berkshires, where autumn alone is sufficient to follow a summer of such splendid sounds.

    During the moment between movements, Maestro Nelsons stood still, his hands on the podium, as if connected to a charging station. After all, he is the only one of the 200+ musicians on stage with a role on every note in the hour-long composition. In that vein, the TFC deserve extra plaudits for their impossible stillness the forty plus minutes they are in place, but not singing. This marvelous musical tableau is completed by them.

    Under Nelsons’ direction, today’s performance, perhaps the fifteenth time we’ve heard the BSO play Beethoven’s Ninth at Tanglewood, filled out the character we’d perceived when contemplating the great composer. It lifted some feeling that Beethoven hadn’t attained the full measure of satisfaction owed a hard working man. Now, I can imagine the joy he felt upon first hearing its performance.

    Housatonic at Stockbridge, Charles Ives

    The Housatonic at Stockbridge from Three Places in New England by Charles Ives was a sublime five minute meditative sketch made especially poignant because it depicts a locale on the sinuous river a few miles away as the composer felt on his honeymoon there. The conductor looked like an angler patiently working a fly under an overhang, while a light drizzle resolved in a thunderstorm.

    Aug. 27, 2017 Sunday, 2:30pm

    Koussevitzky Music Shed – Tanglewood, Lenox, MA

    _
    Boston Symphony Orchestra
    Andris Nelsons, conductor
    Katie Van Kooten, soprano
    Tamara Mumford, mezzo-soprano
    Russell Thomas, tenor
    John Relyea, bass-baritone
    Tanglewood Festival Chorus
    James Burton, conductor

    IVES “The Housatonic at Stockbridge” from Three Places in New England
    BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9 (65 min)

    Tanglewood tickets, : box office info.

    Hotels near Tanglewood

    Berkshires hotelsFind hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

    Getting around the Tanglewood campus

    The Tanglewood campus, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center comprises several hundred acres in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge. It is the location of the Koussevitsky Music Shed and Ozawa Hall, where hundreds of thousands attend concerts and a variety of events, including picnics. We always advise new visitors to arrive early and take their daily walking exercise wandering the beautiful Tanglewood grounds. This dynamic map of the Tanglewood grounds includes photos and information for such points of interest as Aaron Copland Library, Highwood Manor House, The Glass House, and The Lion’s Gate.

    Tanglewood Takes Flight with Mass Audubon at Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary

    August 2016 Tanglewood program review by

    Tanglewood Takes Flight; Celebration of Birds and Music with Mass Audubon at Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary is a collaboration between two organizations that span the town of Lenox, a novel merging of their missions. The program is a most obvious idea to anyone who has attended concerts at Tanglewood, where birds are likely to sit in with the house band. We attended “Program lll” Saturday at 7 a.m. with Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Piano Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center performing these piecs from Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux: Le Chopard des Alpes, Le Loriot, La Buse varible, and Le Merle bleu.

    Yellow warblers and red-eyed vireos

    Immediately afterwards the audience was assigned to groups for hikes in the sanctuary, led by bird experts. Our guide, Walt Peterson, called out a yellow warbler, to everyone’s amazement and, among many other deeds of ornithological wizadry, he identified the song or the red-eyed vireo, to my delight because it seems to be the song I hear everytime I hike hereabouts.

    Tanglewood tickets, : box office info.

    Hotels near Tanglewood

    Berkshires hotelsFind hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

    Getting around the Tanglewood campus

    The Tanglewood campus, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center comprises several hundred acres in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge. It is the location of the Koussevitsky Music Shed and Ozawa Hall, where hundreds of thousands attend concerts and a variety of events, including picnics. We always advise new visitors to arrive early and take their daily walking exercise wandering the beautiful Tanglewood grounds. This dynamic map of the Tanglewood grounds includes photos and information for such points of interest as Aaron Copland Library, Highwood Manor House, The Glass House, and The Lion’s Gate.

    Tanglewood on Parade 2017

    August 2, 2016 Tanglewood concert review by

    Tanglewood on Parade is one of those events that qualifies as the coolest thing in the world, an event you’d make a point of attending, if you knew enough to. It is an all-day celebration of all things classically musical, in a variety of venues spread amid the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s million-acre campus in the Berkshires. You could catch two full symphonic concerts plus several recitals, while picnicking in the company of true picnic hobbyists, all on the same nickel.

    Tchaikovsky’s simple and triumphant 1812 Overture caps the Gala Concert – the lithe Keith Lockhart conducting a massive ensemble combining the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops, including live mortar rounds while the Overture climaxes, followed by a twenty minute fireworks display over nearby Stockbridge Bowl.

    Even the musically challenged, people who don’t know an allegro from a concertante, can witness it once, then again annually for a decade or more and still retain his utter naivete. The place hath charms that soothe even the rustic’s breast.

    Tanglewood on Parade Concert Program

    Tuesday, August 1, at 8pm
    THE GREGORY E. BULGER FOUNDATION CONCERT
    BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
    TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA
    BOSTON POPS ORCHESTRA
    CHARLES DUTOIT, MORITZ GNANN, KEITH LOCKHART,
    KEN-DAVID MASUR, BRAMWELL TOVEY, and
    JOHN WILLIAMS, conductors
    GARRICK OHLSSON, piano
    DAWN UPSHAW, soprano

    COPLAND Fanfare for the Common Man
    FELLOWS OF THE TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER,
    KEN-DAVID MASUR conducting

    COPLAND Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
    Andante sostenuto—
    Molto moderato—Allegro assai
    GARRICK OHLSSON, piano
    TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA,
    BRAMWELL TOVEY conducting

    KODÁLY Suite from Háry János
    Prelude. The Fairy Tale Begins Viennese Musical Clock Song
    The Battle and Defeat of Napoleon
    Intermezzo
    Entrance of the Emperor and his Court
    TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA,
    CHARLES DUTOIT conducting

    INTERMISSION

    MENDELSSOHN Overture, The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave), Opus 26
    BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA,
    MORITZ GNANN conducting

    GERSHWIN / KERN (arr. Nelson Riddle)
    “Love is Here to Stay”
    “I Won’t Dance”
    DAWN UPSHAW, soprano
    BOSTON POPS ORCHESTRA
    KEITH LOCKHART conducting

    John WILLIAMS Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
    A New Beginning from Minority Report
    Throne Room & Finale from Star Wars
    BOSTON POPS ORCHESTRA
    JOHN WILLIAMS conducting

    TCHAIKOVSKY 1812 Overture, Opus 49
    TMC ORCHESTRA and
    BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
    KEITH LOCKHART conducting

    Tanglewood tickets, : box office info.

    Hotels near Tanglewood

    Berkshires hotelsFind hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

    Getting around the Tanglewood campus

    The Tanglewood campus, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center comprises several hundred acres in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge. It is the location of the Koussevitsky Music Shed and Ozawa Hall, where hundreds of thousands attend concerts and a variety of events, including picnics. We always advise new visitors to arrive early and take their daily walking exercise wandering the beautiful Tanglewood grounds. This dynamic map of the Tanglewood grounds includes photos and information for such points of interest as Aaron Copland Library, Highwood Manor House, The Glass House, and The Lion’s Gate.