Written and photographed by Juliane Hiam

I’ve hiked Monument Mountain for as long as I can remember, but I became intensely preoccupied with it some years ago while researching and writing a play about Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s friendship. They met on the storied mountain, two of several notable literary figures who famously hiked it in August 1850. So I might have had more interest than the average person in placing my footprints on the mountain where the American Gothic writers first conversed, ducked under a boulder in the rain, and drank champagne from a silver mug.

Literary legacy aside, Monument Mountain was always one among a rolodex of favorite occasional hikes I did in the Berkshires—that is, until about a year and a half ago. That’s when I became an MM regular, and started hiking it nearly every day.

Monument Mountain is described by many in the Berkshires as “the perfect hike.” If you don’t dawdle, in just under an hour, you’ll get some cardio, a bit of scrambling, an 800-foot or so altitude gain, 10,000 steps, and a nearly-360-degree view at the top. My route: I always go to the right off the parking lot on Route 7—Hickey Trail to Peeskawso Peak Trail to Mohican Monument Trail—counter-clockwise to the summit and back. (For the uninitiated, that’s the steeper way up.)

Doing the hike every day may seem excessive or even indulgent but, in the beginning, my intention wasn’t so different from someone going to a gym or taking a run: I wanted some exercise and to clear my head. It quickly evolved into something deeper, and more meaningful. It became a psychic reset, a way to stir ideas, and open my mind to complexity, like a “philosopher’s walk” in the spirit of Aristotle, albeit much less lofty.

At some point, I started noticing familiar faces and became aware there were other people for whom Monument Mountain was a daily practice. Dr. Joseph Cooney (of Berkshire Center for Whole Health in Stockbridge) happened to be an acquaintance, and I had been smiling and waving at him whenever we passed each other on the mountain until I decided one day to ask him why he does the hike every day. He put it this way: “The whole identity of the hike—you need to see it every day for a year, to see it through the seasons and all the variations of it. And then, once you know it throughout all those possible variations, you become the thing that is observable. You get a deeper reflection in yourself.”

Initially, I was mostly consumed with the physical ordeal of plodding up the steep grade, my heavy breathing and the occasional waves of nausea clouding my head. Between the parking lot and the top of the mountain, I experienced a sort of tunnel vision that consisted of an amorphous blur of leaves, dirt, and rocks, while only thinking about achieving my goal—the summit.

The summit through the seasons.

Over time, though, I felt my senses waking up. After a bit, I realized I was no longer gasping for air on the way up, and the exercise element of the hike receded. The mountain started to come into focus. I became aware of subtle things, the way the light fell on the texture of bark and the plentiful quartzite. I noticed those little orange salamanders known as red efts, and peregrine falcons, fungi, mosses, and fiddleheads. Day after day, the mountain was becoming part of my visual lexicon, something as familiar as any other place I inhabit in my daily life.

After a while, the hike itself was second nature. I was taking the exact same steps and reaching for the same rocks, tree trunks, and branches as I scrambled upward, like a dance routine I’d done a thousand times before. Jonathan Suters, another fellow hiker (and a musician and educator,) told me he has spent so much time on the mountain throughout his life that he sometimes dreams about it. I can relate to this; I dream about it, too.

At some point during my daily hikes, someone recommended a book, “Faded Tracks on Monument Mountain,” written almost 20 years ago by local historian Bernard Drew. I checked out a copy at my local library and thoroughly enjoyed it. Drew climbed the mountain nearly every day back then and chronicled each hike, charting his courses and historical findings. He took a different tack than me and surveyed nearly the whole mountain, rather than doing the same trail over and over. I reached out to him and introduced myself and he agreed to do a hike with me. We went out on one of the coldest days of the year, trudged through snow both on and off the trail to a hemlock tree, one of two “mother trees” that he believes are the eldest on the mountain (the other is a white pine).

He pulled a tape measure out of his pack, and asked me to help him measure the circumference and calculate the DBH (diameter at breast height) because he hadn’t visited this hemlock in about five years. (The DBH turned out to be 39 and a half inches. That translates to perhaps 200–400+ years old.) Standing beside it, all my accumulated hours on the mountain seemed insignificant. Mother Nature has always been good at putting us in our place.

Our daily lives are full of straight lines and smoothed corners, paved walkways and screens. I take pleasure in just how frequently I find my thoughts drifting away from that civilized reality to the crest of Monument Mountain, a place where one can feel something more sacred amidst the pitch pine, where one’s gaze can easily go all the way to Mount Greylock in Williamstown.

Doing the hike is a constant pull, but part of its allure also has to do with the slight feeling of unease that keeps you alert and on guard. It is, in fact, dangerous up there on the cliffs, and there is all manner of wildlife that sometimes you can sense watching you from afar. I always like getting back to my car at the end. But, for certain, the mountain gets inside you and, day after day—as you journey up and back, either clockwise or counterclockwise—you’ll also journey inward, and be delivered right back where you started, already looking forward to starting again tomorrow.

Mother Nature has always been good at putting us in our place.