Author Archives: Gary Sanderson

A South Deerfield, Mass., native, Gary was the longtime sports editor at the Greenfield Recorder, a daily newspaper in Greenfield, Mass., where he retired in June 2018, having worked parts of five decades over 39 years. A senior-active, nearly 40-year member of the New England Outdoor Writers Association and the Outdoor Writers Association of America, his Thursday column "On The Trail" ran for nearly 40 years, ostensibly focusing on fish and wildlife, conservation and issues pertaining to them in the Connecticut Valley, where his roots reach deep into its oldest burial grounds. He and wife Joanne live in a historic Greenfield Meadows tavern today known as Old Tavern Farm, which has a rich history dating back to the mid-18th century. The home, which became a National-Register-of-Historic-Places building on his watch, served as a small, seasonal bed and breakfast from 1999-2015. Gary's other interests include history, anthropology, archaeology, literature, genealogy, Americana, country auctions, and early-American architecture and landscapes, as well as hunting, fishing and especially reading. His primary focus is the Pioneer Valley, its people, places and critters.

Squaretail Chronicles

A record Maine Eastern brook trout weighing nearly eight pounds darted through my Facebook feed last week. The photo and story posted by a fellow New England Outdoor Writers Association member told the story. Both were pulled from a recent issue of the Bangor Daily News, which had lifted them from the smaller biweekly Moosehead […]

Riverbank Bobcat

April 7. Raw and rainy. Eleven-ish. Out in the woodshed on a morning whim, I’m rearranging what’s left of my winter cordwood supply, heaped against the north and east walls. I can see there’ll be a little left for fall. I chuck a big, heavy, all-nighter wedge of hard seasoned red oak closer to the […]

Opening Day Stirs Fenway Memories

Four o’clock. Opening Day. Settled into my power recliner, my wife lounging eight feet to my right in its twin leather companion, computer tablet propped up on her lap. The Red Sox and their new flame-throwing phenom, lefty Garrett Crochet, are facing the Texas Rangers in Arlington, Texas. Half taking in the pre-game festivities over […]

Montague Reader Offers Plain Truth

Spring is in the air and I’m a bit on overload. Thinking. Always thinking. Reading. Absorbing a 24/7 news feed that can be frightening these days. Exhausting, too. I tried to ignore cable news after the election, which is next to impossible without a change of address to some secluded ramshackle shack along a cold, […]

The Beat Goes On

When you’ve worked a beat for nearly a half-century as I have, and enjoy deep roots therein, upturned stones of investigation can trigger vivid memories. This is such a circumstance. It started with word of a supposed archaeological site in South Deerfield, about to be disturbed by the construction of a new dog shelter. When […]

Memory Valley

Monday morning. Eagles’ Super Bowl LIX rout in the rearview. Cold and calm. Skies icy gray. Intermittent flurries flying. Fresh snowbanks framing roads. Splendid day for a road trip. No sun. Classic bluegrass spinning. Loud. Stimulating. Stringed instruments trading the lead, helping to ricochet spontaneous thoughts through the rocky, vegetated canyons of my mind. What […]

Vacant Archaeological Salmon Evidence Explained

Venerable, retired, Connecticut Valley archaeologist Peter Thomas has chimed in on a perplexing regional Atlantic salmon puzzle that keeps on giving and won’t go away. The question is: Given that we know spring salmon-spawning runs once populated New England rivers, and that salmon was a valued food resource for indigenous and colonial inhabitants alike, why […]

Why Not Dig Deeper Into Salmon Mystery?

Wedged inconspicuously into a slim, dim, and dusty space between a wall-length book cabinet and the northeast corner in my study hangs a framed, matted, five-by-seven-inch pen-and-ink sketch of a younger me signed by late Manchester Union Leader illustrator John Noga. Despite ultraviolet-protective glass, the paper has taken on a warm sepia tone that speaks […]

Gramly’s Mastodon Adventures Bearing Fruit

I feel like I’ve been swept into the mainstream of a raging archaeological/anthropological torrent that just won’t let go – no sturdy, overhanging tree limbs to snag or flotsam to maneuver to shore. Hopelessly suspended in this roaring swell, I hear interesting cobbles of information tumbling past me on the invisible streambed. All I can […]

Reevaluating New England Salmon

OK, at long last, time to revisit and reassess, as I promised many weeks ago, the uncertain topic of New England’s prehistoric and early-historic Atlantic salmon runs. This subject was a staple of my weekly Greenfield Recorder outdoor column “On the Trail” in the 1980s and 1990s, when an aggressive, ultimately unsuccessful Connecticut River Atlantic […]

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