Don’t get me wrong. Western Massachusetts is beautiful and the people I encountered were entirely nice, at least on a stranger-to-stranger level of interaction.
And driving down the road here is a balm for a California driver: There are trees, lots and lots and lots of trees. Often there will be houses on both sides of the road but you can barely see them for all the trees. There is space, lots of space, between houses and you can see that the backyards often open up into woods. There are lots of woods, just scattered about all over the place. Read more