Fall Weekend in Amherst, Massachusetts

Amherst, Massachusetts, is a wonderfully wordy sort of place. Peppered with professors giving lectures and students furiously writing papers, this small city of about 38,000 (you pronounce it without the “h”: Am-urst) is home to three of the schools in the “Five College Area”: UMass Amherst, Amherst College, and Hampshire College. And if you mill around Amherst’s eclectic, brick-and-maple-tree-lined downtown or cross the various campuses, you’ll likely overhear conversations stippled with words like particle physics and Kafka and gender studies—or, for that matter, TikTok.

Plenty of famous wordsmiths have lived in Amherst, too, most notably the em dash–admiring poet Emily Dickinson, but also Norton Juster, author of The Phantom Tollbooth, and Noah Webster, of Webster’s Dictionary fame, who helped found Amherst College. (A faded verdigris statue of the lexicographer, pompously arrayed in Roman senatorial garb, sits on its North Campus. Students like to adorn it with beanies and event fliers; during the pandemic, Noah wore a mask.)

This is a town, then, of academics and authors—but also activists. They regularly gather at Amherst’s busiest intersection, holding signs next to one of the electrical boxes painted by local artists. I’m partial to the turquoise-and-red box showing Emily Dickinson, with a line from one of her letters: “Pardon my sanity in a world insane.” These days, protesters sometimes march on Amherst Common when they, too, deem the world insane, and the results can go beyond words: Amherst is the second U.S. city, for instance, to start a reparations fund for Black residents. Still, verbosity is the town’s hallmark: Its 240-representative town meetings grew so notorious for their endless opining that, in 2018, the governing structure was streamlined to a 13-member board.

So now you get the joke stamped on coffee mugs sold in town: “Amherst, MA: Where only the ‘h’ is silent.”

My office looks right onto Amherst Common, and when I tire of banging out my own words, I like to stroll the Amherst Writers Walk, which spirits pedestrians to the lovely, mostly clapboard homes of 12 writers, including Robert Frost, who taught at Amherst College for a spell. The tour’s apogee is the Emily Dickinson Museum, and this fall is a prime time to take in its two properties: The Homestead, where the poet dwelled in possibility, was restored in 2021, and The Evergreens reopened just this year—it’s the impressive Italianate home of Emily’s brother, Austin, and his wife, Susan, who was Emily’s great love.

While Amherst is a fine place for rambling (both the walking and talking varieties), it’s a fine place for eating, too. One thing that sets it apart from other Pioneer Valley towns is the large number of international students who live here, which has translated into a longer-than-average roster of cuisines, including eclectic pan-Asian (try Fresh Side for its terrific tea rolls), Vietnamese (there’s fetching pho at Miss Saigon), and Tibetan (as in MoMo Tibetan Restaurant, with its tasty MoMo dumplings with chili sauce).

But wait—“Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?” I see the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art looking back at me. This light-filled modern venue, located right by Hampshire College, displays work by not only Carle but also fellow children’s book authors and illustrators, such as Mo Willems (Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!), who lives in nearby Northampton. It is part of Museums10, a collaboration started by the Five College Consortium to highlight area museums on campuses and off. Two are at Amherst College, both free to the public: The Beneski Museum of Natural History has the skeleton of a Columbian mammoth, plus eerie casts of hundreds of dinosaur footprints from the banks of the Connecticut, while the Mead Art Museum displays 5,000 years of artworks and boasts an entire 1611 manor room (stained glass, walnut, lots of crests) brought here from England.

It’s surprising that a town this owlish (Amherst Books, by the way, is an excellent indie bookstore) can also work for night owls. You’ll find live music, dance, comedy, story slams, and more at The Drake, a recently debuted performance venue named for a long-gone local hotel. Just around the corner is Amherst Cinema, one of the best independent movie theaters in New England. And the UMass Amherst Fine Arts Center hosts top live acts such as the Peking Acrobats, the Mingus Dynasty jazz band, and, coming this October, Dropkick Murphys.

Amid all its culture, Amherst also has a high nature GPA. There are lots of easy walking options and hiking destinations, including Hadley’s Skinner State Park, where the Summit House on Mount Holyoke features the most beautiful panoramic view of the area. In Amherst, the Hitchcock Center for the Environment offers looping paths through the woods and a great educational visitors center. Then there’s the Amherst College Wildlife Sanctuary, with trails through 500 acres filled with forest, wetlands, and nearly 100 student-monitored nesting boxes occupied by wrens, bluebirds, and more. On one trail, you’ll stumble across a mailbox, as oddly marvelous a sight as, well, a phantom tollbooth. The box is marked “Free Poetry.” Read the words inside, then leave some of your own. That’s the Amherst way.    

See More: Guide to Amherst, Massachusetts | Eat, Stay, Play

Katharine Whittemore

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