By The Fabulous 413
The Fabulous 413 head over to Amherst to get a tour of the Hitchcock Center for the Environment to learn about the ecosystem of a living building. We talk to the folx maintaining the center about all the exciting summer happenings and how we can all live sustainably.
By Tom Litwin
There is a stretch of road that runs north along the Connecticut River from the Whately/Hatfield line to the foot of Sugarloaf. It is no surprise its name is River Road. Leaving Northampton I often take “the river road,” the long way home. Over the course of a year, the seasons unfold across fields and farms, displaying the close interaction of people and the environment. The history of these fields reaches back 15,000 years, when the Wisconsin glacier covered New England under two miles of ice. As the glacier retreated north, an outwashed stone dam blocked the Valley at New Britain, Connecticut, creating the 200 mile-long Lake Hitchcock. The rushing meltwater streams carried sediments of silt, sand, and loam to the lake bottom.
By Christine Hatch
Swamps are great story villains. They are notoriously difficult to navigate due to their sinking sticky mud, spiked vines and dense vegetation; they are neither fully land nor water, negating boats and footwear as helpful vessels for traversing them; and black, smelly, organic-rich waters and sparse sunlight add to the impenetrable mystery. In short, they have the perfect protective outerwear to shield them from human predators — at least for a while. I used to think that in order to conserve nature, we had to wall it off and protect it from all outside influences, especially our meddling human selves. I thought that left to its own devices, the natural world would restore itself to balance…
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Hitchcock Center for the Environment
at Hampshire College
845 West Street | Amherst MA 01002 | 413.256.6006 | 413.253.2809 fax