For much of my childhood in the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts, I didn’t give a hoot about the Housatonic River. Notions of Edenic riverbanks came from my mom reading “The Wind in the Willows” out loud after dinner — not from encounters with the actual river that flowed 330 yards from our front door. An arched bridge over it, which I crossed on my walk to high school, marked the transition from home to the stresses of my teenage years. I learned, too, that reaches of the river acclaimed by Melville, Ives and Longfellow were laden with PCBs, an industrial pollutant. Tourists, taking their cue from locals, have only rarely ventured down to the Housatonic’s banks.

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Persons: Melville, Ives, Longfellow Locations: Massachusetts, Housatonic