MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, an artists’ colony founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, pianist Marian MacDowell (mostly though the efforts of the latter), is on 450 acres of woodland and field, within view of Mount Monadnock. “Three protected rivers flow through Peterborough and play host to more than 117 species of birds, including the bald eagle, the blue heron, the moon loon, and the osprey,” says one brochure from the colony. “Other mountains, parks, and lakes are situated nearby, creating a haven for many species of animals, some endangered.”

More than a hundred years ago, the MacDowells recognized that such rich, unspoiled natural surroundings would make a perfect haven for artists as well. For up to eight weeks, an artist (writer, composer, filmmaker, visual artist, architect, playwright, or interdisciplinary artist) can have a free-standing studio – equipped for the particular needs of their discipline – tucked in among the trees and out of reach of internet access. There, they can get the peace, quiet, and beautiful scenery needed to buckle down and produce.

Writer Melissa Febos says that there’s a “psychic shift” involved in transitioning from all the other everyday responsibilities and distractions, to actually sitting down and writing. So, she explains, it’s invaluable to be able to support it with a “landscape shift.” Going from Brooklyn, where she lives, to one of the studios at MacDowell is a pretty big landscape shift. “My Brooklyn studio is as big as this desk,” she says, sitting in one (the largest) of the colony’s 32 studios.

Then, excitedly, she tells me about the natural surroundings. “I get up in the morning and I see all these deer,” she says. “There’s this gang of turkeys… and the other day a coyote ran across the road in front of me!” But this isn’t just big because she lives in Brooklyn. “I grew up in the woods,” the Cape Cod native explains. “But not woods like this.”

“It reawakens this visceral connection with nature,” says Susan Moody, a cook at the colony. Evidence of that connection, she adds, can be found in the art; to illustrate her point, she lists off birds that live in the area and matches them to musical pieces composed at MacDowell. She even whistles a few bars and imitates the birdcalls. Amy Beach’s “A Hermit Thrush at Morning,” of course includes the hermit thrush’s song; “To a Wild Rose,” by Edward MacDowell himself, the red throated sparrow; and so on with Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland (who stayed at MacDowell eight times, and was the colony’s president from 1961 to 1968) and their respective birds.

Besides bird-inspired songs, the art created at the colony includes such notables as the plays Our Town (inspired by the town of Peterborough), by Thornton Wilder, and Porgy and Bess, by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward (who met at MacDowell). Novels written at MacDowell include The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather, and The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen. Josh Marston worked on his 2005 film, Maria Full of Grace, and Scott Frank, Michael Korie, and Doug Wright wrote the musical Grey Gardens. Past fellows, or “colonists,” have earned a total 69 Pulitzer Prizes, and numerous Guggenheim Fellowships, Genius Awards, Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, and National Book Awards. And in 1997, the colony itself was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Clearly, the “Peterborough idea,” as Marian and Edward MacDowell called it, was a very good one.

I visited the MacDowell Colony on Medal Day, the one day a year when the public is allowed into the colony to look around and talk to the artists. This year, with the crowd spilling out of the giant tent during the ceremony to honor jazz saxophonist and composer Sonny Rollins, I overheard MacDowell’s recently-retired president, Carter Wiseman, observe, “I’ve never seen it this crowded.” Though friendly and willing to share their work and answer questions, a few of the artists looked a little unsettled by the masses descending on what only hours before was a peaceful near-wilderness, and I overheard one visitor apologize to interdisciplinary artist Stephen Fiehn (half of the performance duo Cupola Bobber), “This must be pretty jarring, since you kind of come here to get away from people.” Febos noted, while describing the wildlife, that the field in front of her studio only has deer in it “when it’s not a parking lot.” While Medal Day is a great opportunity for people to meet these artists, and see the colony’s beautiful environment, it is also the one day a year when we disturb what I can only imagine is, for the other 364 days, an incredibly tranquil forest environment, mostly unchanged since Marian MacDowell bought the land.

But even with all of those people around, I still managed to get lost in the woods, on what really seemed to be a trail, with no one else in sight or earshot. In all directions, there were only trees, ferns, and a few of the boulders a glacier left behind. All I could hear was the slight breeze up in the leaves, and a birdsong that might or might not also be part of some composer’s oeuvre. Of course, I sat down on a rock with my notebook and filled a few pages.