Berkshires MA: Kripalu, Stockbridge Village & Tanglewood Lawn

The largest yoga and wellness retreat in the US, on a 150-acre campus above Stockbridge Bowl in Lenox. Daily open programs for non-guests include yoga classes, workshops, and the dining room's all-you-can-eat lunch buffet of vegetarian and locally-sourced food. The campus was a Jesuit novitiate before becoming a yoga center in 1983; the views of the lake and the Berkshire hills from the meditation decks are among the finest in Massachusetts.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra's Saturday morning open rehearsal at Tanglewood (9 AM, July-August) is one of the finest musical experiences available in the US — the full orchestra rehearsing works for that evening's concert in the Koussevitzky Shed, with the audience on the lawn and in the shed seats at a fraction of the concert ticket price. Musicians stop and restart; the conductor explains decisions. The informal atmosphere reveals the music-making process invisible in concert.

A Berkshire institution on New Marlborough Road since the 1960s, serving lunch in a converted barn with the most eccentric character in the Berkshire restaurant landscape — a folk art-filled roadhouse that has hosted Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, and the Berkshire bohemian community through multiple eras. The menu is simple American; the history is not.

The Norman Rockwell 'Main Street, Stockbridge' painting (1967) shows this exact block — the Red Lion Inn at the center, the 19th-century storefronts unchanged, the elm trees lining the road. The painting was executed from a hotel window across the street; the original hangs in the Old Corner House at the Stockbridge Historical Society. The Red Lion Inn's porch is the finest afternoon setting in the village.

The BSO's Saturday evening concert in the Koussevitzky Music Shed — a full symphony program with lawn seating available until the shed fills. The lawn experience with blankets, picnic baskets, and candles is the Berkshire tradition that the Rockwell paintings captured; the sound from the lawn is excellent through the shed's open back wall.

The Berkshire flagship of the Canyon Ranch spa resort brand, in a 100-room Gilded Age mansion on 120 acres above Stockbridge Bowl. The day spa program offers massage, yoga, fitness, and the pool complex without overnight stay; the culinary program demonstrates the integrative approach to nutrition that Canyon Ranch pioneered in 1979. The mansion building, with its ballroom and dining rooms, was built for Joseph Stickney in 1897.

A 1,300-acre Audubon Society sanctuary in Lenox, with 7 miles of trails through wetland, old-field, and northern hardwood habitats. The beaver impoundment on the main trail is one of the most accessible beaver-watching sites in Massachusetts; the hillside meadows above the sanctuary buildings are a monarch butterfly waystation in September.