The River Will Visit, the Blizzard Will Humiliate, the Sky Will Punch: A Cummington Story

Friday, September 26, 2025.

The Three Ways Cummington Could Break Your Heart

Cummington, Massachusetts, where I conduct my Marital and Family Therapy Intensives is one of those towns people like to call “tucked away.”

Tucked away from what, exactly, is never clear. Presumably, civilization.

But being tucked away does not protect you from the things that really matter—namely, water, snow, and the sky itself deciding to crush you.

For a town of only 800 people, Cummington has three very promising ways to be destroyed: flood, blizzard, or microburst.

Each has already auditioned in nearby towns, which means it’s really only a matter of scheduling before Cummington gets its turn.

The Flood: The River’s Bad Mood

The Westfield River is lovely when it behaves. When it doesn’t, it behaves like a bored teenager: it floods the basement, wrecks the furniture, and storms off with the family dog.

In 2011, Hurricane Irene drowned half of Western Massachusetts, and Cummington politely took notes.

Irene peeled roads from the ground like old tape, snapped covered bridges in two, and sent houses floating downstream. If that can happen in the next town over, it can certainly happen here.

I was driving home from a friend’s wedding in Vermont. A 2 hour drive took nearly 6, as either rushing or standing water thwarted my way back home.

And what did it look like?

Small town main streets as Venice, but without the gondoliers. Canoes tied to porch railings. I was half expecting to see cows floating past the library in a surreal landscape.

It was the first and only time I ever really wondered, “ am I going to be able to make it home through this?”

The Blizzard: Snow as Personality Test

Blizzards are less dramatic, but more humiliating. You don’t just suffer a blizzard—you endure one.

The Blizzard of ’78 buried Massachusetts, and people are still talking about it as if it were a personal betrayal. Cars abandoned on Route 128 became part of the snowbanks, like modern art installations. Towns like Cummington disappeared entirely.

Now, imagine that again.

Snow so high you can only exit your house through the second floor. Plows buried under the very snow they are supposed to remove. The general store doubling as a refugee camp. And everyone assuring you that “this builds character,” though frankly, it mostly builds lower back injuries.

Cummington residents, of course, will survive with the usual New England combination of woodstoves, grudges, and casseroles. They’ll tell you they’re fine, but secretly they will dream of Florida, then feel guilty for it.

The Microburst: A Sky Tantrum

Microbursts are extremely rare in Western Mass, sorta like bobcats. I saw one of those too. After being here 25 years, one eventually sees every rare thing.

Rare, which is another way of saying they are waiting for their moment.

In 2014, an area near Charlemont, not far from here, was flattened by one. A wall of wind punched down from the sky, rearranged the forest, and left before anyone knew WTF had happened.

Here’s my story. In 2012, I was chilling in my living room.I had a nice fire going, and my nose was sniffing a promising Pinot Noir.

Another quiet evening on my mountain top home. Then suddenly… BOOM!!!!!!

A microburst slammed the side of my house, knocking a heavy framed painting clear off the wall directly over the fireplace, as shattered fragments of glass and now littered my wood stove and the living room floor.

A sudden, violent fire hazard on an otherwise tranquil evening. Yikes.

A microburst is like a tornado, except meteorologists feel better about themselves afterward because they got to use a different word. For the people underneath it, the difference is purely academic.

In Cummington, sometimes barns would collapse like card tables.

Telephone poles would scatter like pick-up sticks. Centuries-old maples would all lie down in the same direction, like exhausted soldiers.

The Moral (If You Insist on Having One)

The Berkshires don’t coddle their towns. They flood them, bury them, or swat them down.

Cummington, like every place in New England, will respond with a mixture of stoicism, sarcasm, and soup. If you want to do a science-based couples therapy intensive here anyway, I can help with that.

Because in the end, survival out here is not just about beating nature.

It’s also about standing shoulder to shoulder when the lights go out, sharing a generator, a snowblower, or just a pot of chili.

It also doesn’t hurt to have 30 solar panels and 2 backup batteries.

In Western Mass, the storms may take the power, but never the people.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.