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.

Showtime At Sunken Meadow

It was a gray, wet, low-pressure Tuesday afternoon, about 4 o’clock, and I was wearing light, fast-drying athletic shorts and Classic-Clog Crocs, running the dogs through saturated, waist-high grass. Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s tick season; and, yes, I have been finding the annoying little buggers lately. Saturday, I even medicated the dogs for the […]

Record-Breaking Shad Surge

With turkey season in the rearview, irises bloom, Memorial Day looms and woodstoves limp to the finish line, burning just hot enough to kill the chill as hayfields, soon to harbor newborn fawns, whine for their first cut. Overall, it’s been a cool May, one that’s apparently excellent  for American shad migrating up the Connecticut […]

Tempting Fate

Ominous swords of Damocles have leaned out over my daily path for years — first three, then two, now one; same species, same size, same menacing presence. Yet there we were last Dec. 1, my friend and I, with the help of an aluminum, 24-foot extension ladder, harvesting five pounds of late oyster mushrooms from what is […]

Open The Gate

A day late and a dollar short, it’s time to include me in the chorus of support for Paul Luippold’s plea to reopen the old, padlocked boat-access just downstream from Stillwater Bridge. Luippold’s written complaint — dated May 1 and addressed to two local news companies, a chief of police and two state politicians — […]

Sing Praise For His Yankee Ways

My dad’s sun set last Thursday morning. A glorious setting it was, peacefully ending the life of a man three days short of 89. He had a good life, a dream death. How can you beat it? After maybe a half-hour in the yard digging up dandelions, he must have been tired. Job complete, he neatly […]

Fiddleheads And Feedback

Turkey season is underway as skunk cabbage brightens marshy floors with splotches of salubrious green, fiddleheads are sprouting – providing harvesters a tight window in which to pick the springtime culinary delight – and feedback about the 1959 Deerfield River reclamation project discussed here last week was, not surprisingly, considerable. It’s difficult to say exactly […]

Correction And Reclamation

A mishmash of fishing stuff this week, beginning with a little correction from last week, when I incorrectly noted the old “April 15” opening day of the Massachusetts trout-fishing season. It seems that the father of a colleague I call “Big Boiczyk” thought a “clarification”  was in order. He looked forward to opening day as […]

Fishing Season Is Here

In the old days, anglers would have been gearing up this week for the traditional April 15 opening day of trout-fishing season, which this year falls on Saturday. It would have been a big day for fathers and sons, grandfathers and grandsons, fishing buddies or just plain secretive, solitary anglers fishing from a boat or […]

A Dark, Sunny Place

Spring is the season of hope and optimism, fertility and life, mating and nesting, buds and sprouts; also spontaneity, which unexpectedly seized me noontime Sunday. It all begins Saturday night at 10, returning home from day two of “Writing Naturally,” a three-day environmental-writing workshop led by “Orion” magazine editor H. Emerson Blake. The circle discussions […]

Lunchtime On Boondocks Pond

As MassWildlife’s Western District stocking crews deposit netfuls of large, fresh and frisky trout along the upper Deerfield River this week, diehards are still ice-fishing at secluded upland ponds nearby. Well, at least I think there’s still enough ice left up there. “I hope so,” growled my buddy Killer, still a hard-charger at 72, when […]

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