Herman Melville’s vast and enigmatic creative mind led to some of the best novels in American Literature, “Moby Dick” at the top of the list. They’re an odd mismatched bunch of books though, which begin with several autobiographical tales of the sea in order and end with the truly peculiar “The Confidence Man.” To know Melville, a reader must recognize him as a sailor, a wanderer, a quester. He married, yes, and had children, but it seems he was never genuinely happy but for a short period of time in a sprawling farmhouse called Arrowhead at 780 Holmes Road, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, when he befriended Nathaniel Hawthorne. For a brief but monumental time, two great writers interacted in time and space. Hawthorne lived nearby in a rented little red cottage now on the Tanglewood grounds. Of the younger Melville, Hawthorne said, “he had a very high and noble nature … better worth immortality than most of us.”

Arrowhead Farm walks visitors right into the soul of the writer perhaps more so than any other literary place I have ever visited. It sits atop a rise on the road to Pittsfield, with a fine view of the mountains and one in particular that looks much like a great gray whale. The farm’s charm lies in its physical placement amidst the rolling Berkshire foothills, the long fields that tempt walking, the big rooms worthy of a family and a great writer, a quintessential red barn and a view of the entire countryside.

Melville, born in August 1819 – died in September 1891, bought the farm in 1850 and lived there for the next 13 years. Before it, he was a struggling writer finding his craft, each book a little better perhaps than the one before, but none of them masterpieces. Here at Arrowhead he found his most profound voice and produced, arguably, his best book “Moby Dick” (the other in contention would be the posthumously-published “Billy Budd”).

The great writer said of the farm, “I have a sort of sea-feeling here in the country, now that the ground is all covered with snow. I look out of my window in the morning when I rise as I would out of a port-hole of a ship in the Atlantic. My room seems a ship’s cabin; and at nights when I wake up and hear the wind shrieking, I almost fancy there is too much sail on the house, and I had better go on the roof and rig in the chimney.” His writing room upstairs looked out on the whale rock in the distance, the desk – a surveyor’s slanted top desk-pushed right against the window glass.

It wasn’t just the setting of Arrowhead though but the company of Hawthorne that encouraged young Melville to literary greatness there.”On the hither side of Pittsfield sits Herman Melville,” Hawthorne wrote of his young friend, “shaping out the gigantic conception of his “white whale” while the gigantic shape of Graylock looks upon him from his study window.”

Hawthorne was himself actively writing perhaps his best work, “The Scarlet Letter.” Surely the two writers influenced each other’s works in some kind of profound and substantial way, Hawthorne finding courage from Melville’s utterly wild heart and metaphysical questions and Melville finding confidence to construct his “wicked book” from the praise showered on him by a well-respected writer, already successful in his field. Hawthorne had established the kind of success as an author that Melville would never gain until well into the 20th century, long past his unheralded death.

But for a short important while, nearly two years, the two confided and shared a one of the most interesting friendships in literary history. They sometimes talked all night, according to scholar Perry Miller, or long into the night. The Hawthornes would come by carriage from Lenox, even in the depth of winter to dine with the Melvilles. Their children played together; their wives got along well.

Sometime in the autumn of 1852, Hawthorne fell into one of his despondencies, dark and long lasting moods that took him out of society, out of company and often alone upstairs for weeks or even months on end as he pondered and wrote and declined all visitors. We do not know what happened, but Hawthorne suddenly gathered up his little family and left Lenox so quickly he left one of their cats behind, it’s said. The sudden departure sent Melville into a depression. He would visit Hawthorne and his family in 1853 and several times thereafter, but it was never the same between the two writers again. It remains one of those literary mysteries.

But for a time, Melville lived in a farmhouse on the side of a Berkshire hill where beauty was in abundance, where his muse flourished. In it, he wrote four novels, 16 short stories and a volume of poetry. He would never be so prolific again. The grounds are so lovely especially mid-August when the white hydrangea shrubs are abloom and the air is so still and warm that one could sit all day on a bench by the split rail fence. It’s a fine place, one worth a long weekend visit. It’s a spot now honored by the Berkshire Historical Society as one where genius bloomed. To wander there is to know what it is to be a writer.

To visit Arrowhead Farm from Jamestown, take I-86 west to Binghamton; head north on 81 then northeast on 88 to Albany. From Albany take 87 south to the Mass Pike to Exit 2, Lenox. Approximately six hours/400 miles. Daily tours continue until Oct. 29. From that day until Nov. 21, the house and grounds are open for tours Saturday, Sundays and Mondays only with tours every hours 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. After Nov. 21, the house is open by appointment only until the summer season 2017.