Berkshires bathos

Sweet-fern

“Even the abundant enumeration of sweet-fern, asters and mountain-laurel, and the conscientious reproduction of the vernacular, left me with the feeling that the outcropping granite had in both cases been overlooked. I give the impression merely as a personal one; it accounts for Ethan Frome, and may, to some readers, in a measure justify it.’’

Novelist Edith Wharton (1862-1937), who had a summer estate in The Berkshires, in her introduction to her tragic novel Ethan Frome (1911), which is set in that region.

Vista overlooking The Berkshires from the New York State border at sunset

— Photo by BenFrantzDale~commonswiki