Canine Hiking Through A New England Christmas

Generations of Christmas card designers have used the idealized image of a New England village for their cover illustrations. For many that image was cemented by Norman Rockwell's Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas (Home for Christmas). The illustrator, incidentally, began the painting in 1956 and finally finished it in 1967 when it was published in McCall's magazine. The lure of an old-fashioned New England Christmas draws legions of travelers every year.
If you go to Stockbridge, don't forget your dog.
The town is scarcely two blocks wide and at the end of Park Road, the last street in Stockbridge, is a unique three-pronged trail system your dog will love. The trails are maintained by The Laurel Hill Association, America's first village improvement society that was started by Mary G. Hopkins in Stockbridge in 1853. Your explorations begin by crossing a stone suspension bridge over the Housatonic River that was completed in 1936 to replace the original 1895 span. There are no maps ot trail guides or literature on thses trails so take a moment to study the wooden mapboard before you cross the bridge.
An easy warm-up for your dog is the Mary Flynn Trail, a wide, flat, packed-gravel path that trips along the Housatonic River for about a mile. This trail was laid out mostly on the bed of the old Berkshire Street Railway trolley line - America's first trolley car was built in Stockbridge in 1880. The trail was constructed in 2003 as part of the Laurel Hill Association's 150th Anniversary celebration.
The spirited canine hiking begins across the railroad tracks as the trail chugs uphill into the woods, heading for a split. To the left will be a short, switchbacking climb of 600 feet steep enough to get your dog panting. The destination, a bit less than one mile away, is Laura's Rest, where a 35-step tower in a clearing provides views of three states. Laura was the daughter-in-law of David Field, the donor of the land back in 1891. After losing her husband and children the young woman often came up here for solace. The trail does continue over the mountain for three miles to Beartown State Forest if you so choose. By the way, if you look at Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas (Home for Christmas) the mountain in the far left corner is the one you will be going up.
The marquee trail in Stockbridge bears right from that junction back down the mountain, into the Ice Glen. Nathaniel Hawthorne called the Ice Glen, a cleft in the rocks between Bear and Little mountains, "the most curious fissure in all Berkshire." It is a ravine without a stream - all the water around Ice Glen flows on a south-north axis while the gorge is aligned east to west. In fact, the dry Glen, stuffed with stacked boulders and draped with hemlocks, was once a glacial lake. Tucked away from the sun's rays, the season's last snow clings here, hence its name.

The elevation gain is minimal but the boulders that litter the floor of the ravine may inhibit some dogs from going through the narrow fissure - only one-quarter-mile long. If your dog can't complete the entire trail she can still enjoy some of New England's largest pine and hemlock trees. And if you come to back to Stockbridge in late October you can join the Halloween procession through Ice Glen. The Laurel Hill Association has been conducting the macabre hike for more than a century. With its primordial feel there is no more appropriate location for a spooky, candlelit parade.

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