Camping Vacations in the Massachusetts Berkshires: Log Cabins and Fishing

Mohak Trail State Forest: 6,000 Acres, 6 Log Cabins, 56 Tentsites

The word lost was becoming more operative by the moment. The morning's ice fishing over at nearby North Pond had been fine. After I ate my fish cakes back in my cabin at Mohawk Mountain, heat radiating from the wood stove, I'd felt warm enough to peel down to a t-shirt and read. That was this morning.

The night before I'd wandered the forest's central fire roads savoring the night air and watching the shadows my headlamp cast into the woods. One can relax well in the woods in winter at night: that soothing sense of aloneness you feel at night under a canopy of stars in the winter.

Now I was stumbling around through the snow-filled woods, bushwhacking. I was searching for the route to either Adams or North Adams, whichever came first, map in one hand, orienteering compass in the other, as I took in the woods' contours, trail bends, and ice-covered stream beds. Where the heck was I?

Back in the cabin awaited two panfish in a cooler, a steak too if I wanted it, and a block of blue cheese big the size of housebrick. What I wanted was the trail called Blackburnian Loop. As for where I was ---

BINGO!

there it was: the beaver dam and trail I recognized from a trip here last year.

Yes. Once again I'd successfully made it back from one of my classic lost-in-the-woods hikes. I thumped back into the cabin, lit the stove, took off my wet socks and sweater, and lifted from my cooler the bigger fish. I cleaned it, pan fried it, ate it, and settled back in the chair with my feet up. I had more bait in the bucket and two more days' ice-fishing ahead. This is why I go to work when I'm not on vacation. I lit the candle lantern and opened my book.

Mohawk Mountain State Forest, tucked away in the northwest corner of the Berkshire Hills outside Adams, lies adjacent to the blue-ribbon fishery the Deerfield River and its myriad of catch-and-release regulations. This is a scenic woodland: mountain ridges, gorges, old-growth trees spread out amongst 6,000 acres of wilderness that attach to larger Savoy Mountain State Forest.