From Lenox to Stardust

To watch friends leave in comfortable cars and know that somewhere between here and NY there is a field with my name on it momentarily causes a pause in the middle of the night in that great bed in that great room .

But Sunday morning, Sunday yes brought glorious sunshine once again and the promise of more great days on a bicycle in New England. Passing into Connecticut has the subtlest of differences with Massachusetts just as Massachusetts did with Vermont. The roads get better pretty quickly when you enter Mass. The farms in Western Mass. along the Conn. River appear bigger and more corporate, less family. The prevalence of colleges and prep schools in Mass along this scenic route is an obvious difference and the parents that come for spring visits are something of an industry in themselves in these quaint Mass and Conn. towns. The homes of the states' residents become increasingly more manicured as I peddle southward, as if everyone has a landscaper and has already mulched to the max. Original sculpture in and around one's property is not uncommon.

May 5 - view from my campsite toward Kent School.

By the a time I got to Kent I recalled more than once the poem read at dinner the night before. The Berkshires poets were noted but it was the Canadian Poet that was chosen because of the starting point of this ride. Because of the Boomers sitting there in the Men's Library in this enormous house having dinner and being skillfully read a poem written by a beloved Canadian of our Generation; by someone we all loved and never thought of first as a poet. Susan, started slowly.

"By the time we got to Woodstock we were half of New York, We were stardust we were golden......" Yes, the poet was Joni Mitchell from Canada, and for that moment we were the Gilded Boomers....I would sleep in a field in Kent, Connecticut.