Wonders, Natural and Otherwise
New England has been inhabited for a long time. That long history brings with it any number of mysteries, ghost stories, and just high weirdness. Our region is, after all, one that’s spawned writers who love to spin weird yarns (we’re talking H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, for starters). In the book Passing Strange, Vermont writer Joseph Citro offers a fair number of well-told tales from all the New England states, and there’s a volume called Weird Massachusetts delving into the mysteries of the Bay State.
And though there are, to be sure, spooky tales of the Valley, of the legit kind and the urban (or maybe rural?) myth kind, our region is indisputably home to some extremely cool phenomena of a highly enjoyable and entertaining kind.
Some are perfectly natural, but no less cool for that. Up in Shelburne Falls, you’ll find the Glacial Potholes. And though they are exactly what their name implies, they are really fun to check out because they look so nearly intentional, like some futuristic architect of the 1970s was designing an organic-looking, high-concept swimming hole. (Though it bears noting that swimmers aren’t allowed to jump into the water there any more.) The strange-looking rocks are the result of erosion processes that came around 14,000 years ago.
Also in the natural category is an even-older phenomenon: dinosaur footprints. Once upon a time, Granby was home to Nash Dino Land, where a local family oversaw a large group of tracks on its land, and chiselled them out to sell. That attraction has closed, so you have to venture a little south of Northampton to Holyoke to find the state-run site of dinosaur tracks, overseen by the Trustees of Reservations.
There’s no one single location to point to, but many a New England hike will take you to cellar holes, all that remains of homesteads from very long ago. Usually, they’re stone-lined. There’s even a set of stone-lined tunnels in Goshen (on private land, now inaccessible) of completely unknown origin, possibly ancient. Perhaps the best of these non-natural formations is up on Easthampton’s Mount Tom, where there was once a trolley line and a summit house. On one end of the mountain, you can take an easy hike to what remains of a hotel that burned around 120 years ago, the Eyrie House. It’s the most castle-like place you’re likely to find in the region, and a truly evocative place to visit.
There are a multitude of strange roadside attractions, too, perhaps too numerous to easily cover. They include things like the gigantic milk bottle in Whately and a 20-foot Native American statue beside Route 2 up toward Shelburne Falls.
But perhaps the most entertaining high weirdness is Greenfield’s Gravity Hill, not far from that 20-foot statue. It’s where Shelburne Road goes under Route 2, and it’s a spot where you can put your car in neutral, then watch amazed as you roll uphill. And if that’s not rural entertainment, really, what is?
