U-Mass: In and Around Amherst, MA

College towns make up an interesting segment of America's landscape. To speak about them generally, they typically meld big-city culture with small-town charm. Throughout the year, they have their token parades, street festivals, and cultural happenings, a chance to see the best each has to offer. While they are all essentially cut from the same cloth, to say all college towns are the same is something of a cheap dismissal. Each one has its own unique features, setting one apart from the next.

Throughout our trip thus far, we have already stopped by, visited, and stayed in college towns. In a traditionally blue state, the college town is a dark navy speck, with its ever-changing population of young people who ensure that nothing gets stale. In red states, they are vital oases of culture in places that would otherwise be devoid of ethnic restaurants, head shops, and art-house cinemas.

Amherst is the quintessential New England college town, home to Amherst College, Hampshire College, and the flagship campus for the University of Massachusetts. We landed in Amherst on an alumni weekend for Amherst College. Being in the middle of summer, when college towns are sleepy, populated by locals celebrating their elbow room and students trudging through summer courses, Amherst was surprisingly bustling. It was a delight to see visiting alum amid all the young faces, all frequenting the same restaurants, coffeehouses, and book shops.

In Amherst, we toured The Homestead and The Evergreens, residences of America’s first great female author and poet, Emily Dickinson. The Evergreens, built for Emily’s brother Austin, and his wife Susan, was the epicenter of the social world in Amherst during the latter half of the 19th century. The Homestead, directly next door, was Emily’s hideaway, her nook, from where she created her life’s work. Alex even used her poem "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" in his freshman literature class.

The Evergreens remains in its original state, with the original wallpaper, the original furniture, and the original artwork all intact. Austin Dickinson was quite the art collector, and the house holds dozens of works, including many that are not on display due to a lack of space. The Evergreens even has that musty old house smell, which made us both smile to think we were breathing the same air as Emily Dickinson. 

The Homestead, while appearing untouched from outside, is a vintage eggshell with the yolk scooped out. The house, completely renovated, looks more like a carefully curated dollhouse than one of a woman whose troubled existence yielded some of America's best and most enduring poetic works. With its recessed lighting and surprising lack of both furniture and artwork, the house started off disappointingly.

Being an alumni weekend, tours of both homes, which normally cost $12 a person, were free. In retrospect, had the museum cost anything more than nothing, we probably would have opted out, especially after seeing the renovations done to The Homestead. We enjoy touring historical locations, but not when it seems like most of that history has been bulldozed and revisited by Better Homes and Gardens.

The saving grace came when we were in Emily's bedroom and the docent showed us her desk. With the excitement of a religious fanatic at a holy site, Alex said, "This is the desk?!" Indeed it was. It was at that desk that Dickinson wrote her life's work of poetry, her meditations on loneliness, death, the afterlife, and the building angst of an increasingly violent society. For us two, as writers, to be in the presence of such an important artifact as Emily Dickinson's desk, it was one of those moments that is hard to put into words.

We stopped for Vietnamese food at a restaurant on the main commercial street. Our waiter was a friendly travel fanatic and when we told him we were on our way up to Maine, he grabbed his iPad and showed us pictures of him dangling from a boulder, a thousand feet in the air, and suggested we check it out. We told him our thrill level was a little more “grueling hike” than “Fear Factor,” and he recommended a trail that would cause less shitting of the pants. He also recommended that while in the area, we visit what we believe is the single greatest used bookstore on Earth.

Grey Matter Books in nearby Hadley is more of a cavern than a traditional bookstore, being a massive basement with ceiling-high stacks of books on every subject imaginable. We arrived twenty minutes before closing, rapidly scouring shelves for a few keepsakes and settling on six very different reads, ranging from Hunter S. Thompson's Generation of Swine to the writings of Kirpal Singh. 

The guy working the register decided to keep the store open so we could browse for a few more minutes. We got to talking about our travels, and as it turns out, he had also done a cross-country trip, but via motorcycle. As we talked, we shared stories about some of our favorite places (turns out he loved New Orleans, too) while also getting suggestions from him about sites to see out West. It was a meeting of kindred spirits, something we have experienced before meeting fellow drummers, journalists, Kinks fans, and Left-wingers, where strangers immediately become best friends. With an encouragement to keep on trucking serving as our benediction, we paid for our books and were back on the road.