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.

Dysfunction Junction

Yes, it was indeed April Fools Day, but no spoof. Finally, spring had sprung, and the cock cardinal sitting in the burning bush off the inset porch was announcing it to the neighborhood, his joyous morning melody brightening the clear, pleasant air before fading off into infinite clear-blue sky. I celebrated the event by doubling […]

Cougar Leftovers

Though cold indeed, spring’s in the air, and judging from his morning song, the scarlet cock cardinal knows it. Perhaps he too hears the brook rattling as it snakes through dirty, dwindling streamside ice shelves. Maybe he even realizes that my once-bloated woodshed is emptying, the end near, and my taxes are e-filed. Yes, for […]

Denial Games

I can’t say whether the short introductory note topping an email sent my way this week was fueled by exuberance, defiance or relief. Does it really matter? So let’s just call enthusiastic cougar-researcher Ray Weber triumphant indeed, and leave it at that. OK? “Well,” he wrote in a delayed, victorious response to a five-month-old email […]

Whisperin’ Winds

Sights, sounds and smells: hourly stimuli awaiting a well-placed flick of the forefinger to set the pinwheel into a blurry gyre that can flitter off to enticing places, if you let it. If you don’t dare, well, you probably spent too much time in church or school, where free-thinking and free-play is discouraged, maybe even […]

Attic Treasure

Whew! This prehistory stuff is attacking like rogue waves, one after another — wild, powerful and quite exciting. No, I’m not bellyaching. I won’t allow this stubborn winter that’s clinging with a white-knuckled grip to get me down as spring tiptoes in and I lug heavy armfuls of cordwood in from a disappearing woodshed mound, […]

Whims and Whispers

I really should know better than to read Henry Miller. The bad-boy American novelist disrupts a bunkered spot in my consciousness that likes to be roiled, stirred to a tumultuous boil, its riotous bubbles bursting violently through the surface into a belching, spitting, steaming, scalding mele. Yes, that’s what Henry Miller does to me, and […]

Twists and Turns

It wasn’t the oh-so familiar yet faded scene — a dark, dingy basement classroom in the bowels of UMass’ Bartlett Hall — that left an impression on me. No, no, no! It was the Coppertone man, a long, thin and tidy braid splitting his back between the scapulae. The man’s name was Doug Harris, preservationist […]

Divine Intervention, plus

Cabin fever? Nope, not me. It’s true the dead of winter is upon us, the temperatures frigid indeed. Yet for some reason, it doesn’t seem to matter this year, news swarming like black flies, the brittle carcasses piling up on chests of drawers, tables, chairs — you name the piece of furniture in rooms where […]

Splashy Spin

Yeah, yeah, I know. We’ve all cleaned up from one storm, with another looming large, so the early-week slate’s been wiped clean, the stage reset so to speak. Yet still, sometimes a man who does what I do has to capture the moment, which for me occurred before the storm, on Tuesday morning, when, following […]

Oxbow Island

The task now confronting me appears at first glance as a steep hill to climb on many levels. Where to start? That’s my first dilemma, because you must understand we’re dealing with a complex subject in a place familiar to few, except maybe by distant observation out the car window. Plus, it all makes such […]

Mad Meg theme designed by BrokenCrust for WordPress © | Top