In every region there is an evening drive which lures the city dweller
from the cramped vistas of the office, the home, and the dingy streets
to the limitless expanse of hills and valleys, where mental tension
relaxes and vision broadens as the physical horizon expands and acquires
depth. In less favored localities, the drive may be long and the
relaxation short, but not so in the Connecticut Valley. Half an hour of
travel, either to the east or to the west from any large community,
provides an escape to the hills, where people, cars, houses, and all the
minutiae of urban civilization are blurred on the canvas of upland and
lowland.
Local pride and personal prejudice may proclaim one view superior to
another; but the praise so liberally bestowed upon the heights beyond
Westfield, the Mount Tom Reservation, the land called Goshen, Shelburne
Summit, and many another site, merely bespeaks the rivalry of equally
favored vantage points. Perhaps the trail to Pelham would not be singled
out for special mention by the undiscriminating enthusiast, but the
connoisseur of New England's scenic beauty returns and follows it again
and again. A good road may take some credit for its popularity, but
there is a deeper cause than this which brings him back; for, if there
is drama in scenery, he finds it here. The road leads out of
Northampton, and from the graceful arch of the Coolidge Memorial Bridge
he views the flood-scarred lowlands that border the river, and across
the flat plain into Hadley he sees visible reminders that river and
farmer periodically struggle over ownership of the land. Then a rise in
the road constricts the view but offers a promise of something
different. Ahead, rolling fields stretch to the beckoning hills beyond
Amherst, but the hills appear and disappear in tantalizing cadence as
the car tops each rise and drops into the ensuing hollow. Soon West
Pelham comes into view, and the rise to the highland begins. Beside the
road a brook tumbles into the valley; and as the car climbs the heights
to Pelham, and miles of wooded land are suddenly spread before the eye,
the wayfarer realizes that here is the dramatic climax to his trip and
to the murmured story of the brook. But the long ridges reaching out to
the north and to the south, the deep valleys between them, and the sky
which meets the farthest ridge do not enclose the panorama. It has a
fourth dimension--time--a dimension as limitless as the horizon.
With just a dash of imagination, the wayfarer may journey backward
through time; through scenes of infinite variety; through countless
years of unceasing change; through situations so different that he would
scarcely have recognized his New England. The scarred plain of the
river, the brook, the soil, the rocks, the upland and the valley,--all
tell a fascinating and a logical, if surprising, geological tale. A
detour down this fourth dimension promises as much interest as a journey
through the other three.