Snowy silence greets forest explorers

Winter weather transforms the trails of DAR State Forest in Goshen, Massachusetts.

• DAR State Forest

IF YOU GO ...

DAR State Forest: Route 112, Goshen, Mass. Located about two hours from Boston, 45 minutes from Springfield, Mass., and an hour from the New York State border. Trails for snowmobiling, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing during the winter. Two lakes in the forest are cleared for ice skaters.

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GOSHEN, Massachusetts (AP) -- A snowstorm can turn this quiet, rural area on the way to the Berkshires into a dangerous and disorienting place.

The sky darkens to the color of weathered tombstones, and the narrow strip of Route 9 quickly disappears under a veil of white. Even the towering trees that surround Goshen nearly vanish in a blinding squall.

But when the storm passes and the snow settles in the dense woods of the DAR State Forest, the park becomes a paradise for snowshoers and cross-country skiers anxious to explore the suddenly altered landscape.

Branches of pine and hemlock hang heavy with snow, and the motorized hum of a few snowmobiles breaks a silence that is otherwise interrupted only by the swish and crunch of skis and boots.

"You feel like you're in hobbitville," said Lisa LaCroix, 45, of Southampton, who trudged through foot-deep snow on her skis a day after the season's first big storm hit in December.

After an hourlong quest in the DAR forest along wide-open paths and untouched trails booby- trapped with snow-covered rocks, LaCroix and her friend, Elizabeth Potter, made it to the top of a fire tower peaking at nearly 1,700 feet.

From their perch, the summit of Mount Greylock was in perfect view to the northwest, and the Holyoke mountain range spread across the southern horizon.

Down below, the forest's 2,200 acres sprawled in a boggling maze of trails and trees, a transformation from the land's earlier look when it was settled in the late 1700s and cleared for crops and pastures.

The forest's two lakes -- which are cleared for ice skaters in the winter and provide a place for swimmers to cool off in the summer -- were dammed in the 1800s to provide a constant water source to power the factories along the Mill River.

The area was heavily logged in the early 1900s. By the 1920s, much of the land was under private ownership and the lakes were surrounded by summer cottages.

The Massachusetts chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution bought about 1,000 acres of the land in 1929, said Robert Kabat, who supervises the forest for the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.

"They bought the land with the intention of handing it over to the state," Kabat said. "And the state has turned it into a huge conservation and recreation area."

And despite being tucked away in a town that doesn't get much traffic, the forest is far from a well-kept secret.

Kabat estimates that more than 68,000 people have visited the forest this year.

"I couldn't imagine anything better to do on a day like today," said Potter, who was leading LaCroix and another companion through a barely broken trail that twisted along snow-covered humps of rocks and crossed the paths of fresh deer tracks.

The bright sky that seemed wide open along the broader paths faded as the trail dipped into a grove of dark hemlocks clinging with fresh snow.

"It's like a black and white world out here," Potter said.