I didn’t have to. Lindy, a fellow traveller, had come down to breakfast sporting a blouse in every colour of the New England forest spectrum: gold, purple, russet, tangerine and maroon; each one accessorised with an array of badges of miniature maple, oak and sassafras leaves in seemingly similar, but actually completely clashing colours.
These were the shades — or most of them — I had travelled to Massachusetts to see. I just hadn’t expected to spot them at the breakfast table in brushed polyester with mother-of-pearl buttons.
Like many residents at the Maple Inn bed and breakfast, Lindy was a leaf-peeper, as fanatical about following the changing foliage in New England as birders are about stray Madagascan weeble-warblers on the Butt of Lewis.
A retired clinician from New Jersey with a sparkling intellect in inverse proportion to her dress sense, she had researched the subject thoroughly and had fall guides, fall maps and fall weather charts. “I phoned a fall foliologist a couple of times to make sure I was on the right track,” she said. “You ever met a foliologist?”
I admitted I’d struggle to even pronounce it, especially with a mouthful of blueberry pancake. According to Lindy, Scottie Johnston is North America’s leading leaf expert, with a website and toll-free hotline. Whenever he says the maples are turning in the Berkshires, a legion of leaf-peepers do a Le Mans start and drive full-pelt for western Massachusetts.
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I first heard of the Berkshires when James Taylor sang about the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston in Sweet Baby James. Rich New Yorkers made the region fashionable a century ago when they built Berkshire cottages as an escape from the city’s summer heat. As competition for the most impressive summer house flourished, huge mansions took shape among the hills.
The area also drew a wealth of artists and writers, with Edith Wharton, Daniel Chester French and Herman Melville taking up residence.
The Berkshires still boast a rich cultural life, with Tanglewood providing a home to the Boston Symphony Orchestra every summer and there are art and sculpture galleries at every turn. “I swear I saw Betty Jo Lane at the parade the other day,” said Lindy. “Who?” I asked. A country and western singer, apparently, given to singing about terminal cancer and the trials of bringing up 12 children and a rabid dog.
The Fall Parade in North Adams is one of the area’s big showpieces. There was a frosty snap to the morning as I made my way into town and the Fraternal Order of Eagles (a rotary-type group) had prepared their traditional pre-parade breakfast consisting of all-you-can-eat pancakes, sausages, eggs and home fries. After a considerable digestion period, the floats and bands set off from Wal-Mart with cheers and not a few toots from the watching cars.
It was a suitably colourful procession and included war veterans, volunteer fire departments, the Andover One Wheelers Unicycle team and the Berkshire County Line dancers. But I was particularly struck by a pipe band with the most vibrant kilts I’d ever seen. Lindy’s blouse would have struggled to compete.
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This was the signal for leaf-peeping to begin in earnest, with weather sites printing colour-coded maps and radio stations broadcasting the best sightings. I soon discovered the trees and their vistas have become a victim of their own success. Following the foliage is so popular in New England these days, you often find the most promising areas knee-deep in coach tours and cars bumper to bumper along the most scenic highways.
It only takes a Scottie Johnston to mention vibrant reds and fiery oranges in a particular neck of the woods to find it strangled by traffic for the next two days.
Eventually two complementary strategies presented themselves. The first was to abandon the recommended routes and to follow your whim on to minor roads and lanes. Sure enough, this provided happy hours communing with nature at her most colourful, without a coach tour breathing down your neck.
The second was to treat the foliage simply as a colourful backdrop to the area’s attractions. After all, nature is fickle and just because Johnston says the leaves are turning doesn’t mean she will actually oblige. Or, come to think of it, that a freak storm won’t suddenly turn them to pulp under your wheels.
While towns such as North Adams, Lee and Pittsfield are reminders of New England’s industrial age (albeit with mills and factories increasingly being converted into artists’ studios, trendy shops and restaurants), others such as Stockbridge, Williamstown and Lenox exhibit the opulent architecture and landscaping of the early 20th century’s moneyed influx to the Berkshires.
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I was particularly taken with Stockbridge, which has managed to retain the look of small-town New England; a look that provided inspiration as well as a home to artists and writers such as the aforementioned Chester French, Norman Mailer, Robert Sherwood and most famously, Norman Rockwell, chronicler of small-town America. The artist’s studio has been painstakingly re-created in the Norman Rockwell museum, while every Christmas, enthusiasts re-create Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas, one of his best-loved paintings.
The corollary of the irresistible shift into autumn is the abundance of festivals in New England, celebrating everything from apple harvests and small-town pumpkin parades through to the full national Thanksgiving pig-out.
Two miles from Stockbridge, the Berkshire botanic garden holds an annual harvest festival at the beginning of October with hay rides, a haunted house and a hay maze for small fry. I took a ride on the cherry picker, a crane that lifted me high enough to see most of the county and, frighteningly, Lindy’s blouse in the crowd below me.
We met at a pumpkin stand, where she related her fruitful leaf-peeping morning, ticking off most of the trees in her book and colours on the chart. But already she was preparing for her next spotting session.
As the fall colours domino their way south from the Canadian border to the southern states, there’s always one part of America between now and mid-November where you’ll find nature’s firework display in its fullest fury. And, I dare say, a whole coach-tour’s worth of nutty leaf-peepers following in its wake.
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Details: Seven nights in New England with American Independence at Osprey Holidays (www.osprey-holidays.co.uk, 08705 605 605), with two nights in Boston, three nights in Williamstown in the Berkshires and two nights in Cape Cod, costs from £839 including flights from Glasgow to Boston with Icelandair, car hire and accommodation. For flights with Continental Airways from Edinburgh or Glasgow add £90 per person. Icelandair’s flight-only price from Glasgow to Boston starts at £314 (until October 31).
Once there, Inntravel (www.inntravel.co.uk) has a New England Independent trail from £1,093 and a Green Mountain trail in Vermont from £818. Or you can visit www.discovernewengland.org for do-it-yourself tours and accommodation.
Further south, 10 nights in Pennsylvania and Virginia with American Independence (08705 241 4217) cost from £999 including flights from Glasgow to Philadelphia with US Airways, car hire and accommodation.
There are scores of online resources for the dedicated leaf-peeper. The Department of Agriculture’s website (www.fs.fed.us/news/fallcolors/) offers a comprehensive list of state hotlines while www.leafpeepers.com has a guide. For individual states try http://Foliage-vermont.com, http://Mainefoliage.com, http://Massvacation.com, the fall foliage sections on Visit Rhode Island (www.visitri.com) and Visit Connecticut (www.visitconnecticut.com).
If you are taking the US Airways service into Philadelphia take a look at Fall in Pennsylvania (www.fallinpa.com), while those bound for New York could also check out http://Empire.state.ny.us/tourism/foliage/
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CLOSER TO HOME
You don’t have to cross the Atlantic to enjoy vivid colours. VisitScotland (www.visitscotland.com) has just launched its 10th Autumn Gold campaign with an assortment of accommodation offers to entice us to pack our bags. If you want to pick the right moment to visit say Peebles or Dunkeld, the Forestry Commission highlights the progress of autumn throughout Scotland with its own hotline (0845 367 3787) and colour grading scheme on its website (www.forestry.gov.uk/autumn). According to the agency, the best spots to visit this week include Clashindarroch forest, in Aberdeenshire, the Bin forest near Huntly, Carradale also on Kintyre, Knapdale forest near Lochgilphead. If you are visiting Perthshire there will be an Autumn Colours hotline on 01796 472215/472751 and on the website at www.perthshirebigtreecountry.co.uk