One of the highlights of our week on Monhegan for Emily and Elias was the Mallard family at the icepond that always came looking for breadcrumbs whenever they were passing by. The children never tired of them, nor noticed that the first day there were three babies but only two on subsequent visits. Halcyon days indeed, and as we gear up for a week at Windrock and savor our time in Maine there are great goings on here in the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills to delight young and old.
Yesterday we took in the weekly concert by David Grover and the Big Bear Band at the Great Barrington Bandstand. When Emily was three she went around calling herself David and I believe we attended nearly every one of these performances. David's trio are pied pipers of the first order and Elias was especially enchanted. Then it was off for a picnic at Waconah Falls State Park in Dalton, MA. We spent very little time at the waterfall itself, preferring a muddy pool and silty beach downstream for our explorations. One could almost hear the dulcet strains of Flanders and Swann's Hippopotamus Song:
"Mud, mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
So follow me follow, down to the hollow
And there let us wallow in glorious mud!"
We rounded out the afternoon at a playground at the old Housatonic Primary School in Great Barrington, with all sorts of climbing structures and obstacles to successfully surmount. These three birds on a wire were spotted 
on one the monkey bars, but lured away with the promise of ice cream from the general store at the corner.
We'll be making new memories from midweek on at Windrock, with plans for whale watching and a clambake and who knows what else besides. These are the days that keep us warm through the long dark 
winter, the memories of family time that sustain us through the generations.
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