“August 22, 2015. 11:00 AM. View of Monument Valley, Berkshire County, Massachusetts. Both the high peaks of the Kaaterskill-Katzenbergs (are visible). in the distance from Beartown State Forest—scenic overlook—scenic overlook is accessible by a vertiginous rocky path”–Journal entry inscribed on the lower left

Rising above the Housatonic River at less than half the elevation of Mount Greylock, Monument Mountain (1,642 feet above sea-level) is also entangled in the history of American letters.
A frequent visitor to the mountain was Great Barrington poet William Cullen Bryant, who wrote,

“It is a fearful thing
To stand upon the beetling verge, and see
Where storm and lightning, from that huge gray wall,
Have tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base
Dashed them in fragments, and to lay thine ear
Over the dizzy depth, and hear the sound
Of winds, that struggle with the woods below,
Come up like ocean murmurs. But the scene
Is lovely round; a beautiful river there
Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads,
The paradise he made unto himself,
Mining the soil for ages. On each side
The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond,
Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise
The mighty columns with which earth props heaven.”

W.C. Bryant. Monument Mountain (excerpt) 1815.

Bryant was not the only luminary who drew inspiration from its scenic views of the Housatonic Valley. On August 5, 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville hiked to the summit with Oliver Wendell Holmes and Stockbridge lawyer David Dudley, Jr. According to legend, a bottle of champagne was uncorked and Bryant’s poem was read aloud. By whom I cannot say.
Caught in a sudden deluge, the party found shelter in a cave. Following their meeting under these extraordinary circumstances, Hawthorne and Melville embarked on a brief but stimulating correspondence that helped shape the literary trajectories of both authors. Melville dedicated his novel Moby Dick to Hawthorne, whom he regarded as a something of a mentor.

Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, ca 1850-1852

Monument Mountain appears in the distance to the left in this view of the Housatonic (Monument) Valley, with the northern Catskills serrating the western skyline. The goal of a   journal-painting is never to produce a finished product, but to employ the practice of painting as an act reconnaissance; a mode of learning what is beheld, in ways that transform experience into knowledge and ideas. Somewhere between picturing something and truly knowing it is where art abides.

Now available to own: Sketchbook Traveler: Hudson Valley

Explore my Quaranteam Dispatches, from April 1-June 8, 2020