I’m finding myself visiting a lot of haunts from my checkered past as a South County teen nearly 20 years ago (there I said it, it’s out there). Many of these places have turned to ruins and relics right before my very eyes. The truck stop in West Stockbridge and its 2 a.m. omelets and coffee, the non-alphabetical mayhem of White Knight records, the stink of horse sweat and money at the Fairgrounds; all gone with the passing of time.

But not all of the monuments of my rebellion are gone. Last weekend I gathered up my courage and my camera for a walk down memory lane. Actually, it’s more of a dirt path. My destination was the Jug End Reservation in Egremont. The 1,100 acre property which is managed by the DCR and the DFW was once the Jug End Barn resort, a winter sports haven for young vacationers to the Berkshires which closed around 1980 (when I was three years old). While I have no recollection of the place in its heyday, my parents worked there in the early 1970s. At the time, they were just married and just kids (my mother was 17 and had graduated from high school in June of 1971 just a few weeks before her wedding). My father worked in the kitchen as a chef and my mother was a waitress.

 Apparently the place was a giant party.

“Did you stay after your shift or did you go directly home,” I once asked my mother.

“Directly home, of course, honey,” she said. My father just coughed and rolled his eyes.

I discovered Jug End (or jugend which is German for “youth”) before it became an official reservation. The place was a teenager’s dream; abandoned buildings surrounded by woods, wide open fields and sky, a turbulent creek, ramshackle gardens with stone walls and fountains. During the day we’d hop in my beat-up Toyota with a blanket, a thermos and a camera, and scour the place looking for odd photo opportunities. At night, we’d build a campfire in the abandoned garden and listen to the odd noises coming from the woods. Or grab our fishing poles and see what the creek had to offer.

Not much has changed. The buildings are all padlocked, the fields are better maintained, sure, but the place hasn’t lost its wildness. The same can be said for a lot of natural landscapes around here. Part of it is my own wishful thinking that time will stand still, just for a moment, and the other part is that, even now, this place is still a constant adventure.

 Once again, there is too much to do in the Berkshires this weekend. It is a pick and choose what the kids can handle and what the weather will allow type of mentality that’s got me reading the Shopper’s Guide, checking the 500 press releases in my inbox and wondering if we will ever get to the apple-pumpkin picking journey I promised the kids…