Category Archives: Columns

Published pieces I’ve written, primarily in The Recorder, Greenfield, Mass.

Jan
06
2026

Trophy 10-Pointer

by Gary Sanderson

Some stories just fall into your lap and write themselves – like this bowhunting tale from an old Powertown pal. The object, squeezed into a large, rectangular, coffin-like wooden box on the bed of Rick Kostanski’s pickup truck, rolled up my upper Greenfield Meadows driveway on the morning after Thanksgiving. It was a beautiful, 10-point, […]

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Nov
26
2025

Wing-Shooting Reflections

by Gary Sanderson

Sunday morning. Gray, soggy and still. A bit foggy. Somber daybreak ramble in the rearview. I’m seated in the everyday parlor. Reclining. Feet up. Laptop on my thighs. Autumnal thoughts spinning, swirling, gusting – drifting off to my old pheasant-, grouse- and woodcock-hunting coverts. What unleashed this train of thought? Probably the damp, raw, overcast […]

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Nov
23
2025

Mission Accomplished: Cupola Restored

by Gary Sanderson

Hallelujah. Job complete. Finally. Just the sight of it, as I approach the driveway leading to my carriage-shed stall, has lowered my anxiety-elevated blood pressure 10 points. I’m talking about our 19th-century Old Tavern Farm cupola, long a vexing concern for me. For more than 10 years I had tried unsuccessfully to get it roofed. […]

posted in Columns, Local history, Tavern Tidbits | No Comments

Oct
31
2025

Mary Graham Arms Photo Restored for Posterity

by Gary Sanderson

I found a great spot for the restored, circa-1855 ambrotype photo of my third great-grandmother, Mary Graham Arms, who was born in Sunderland on June 28, 1794 and died in South Deerfield on Christmas Day 1887. As I sit here writing about her, her framed portrait is looking out at me from a bottom pigeonhole […]

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Sep
18
2025

New Lower Blue Licks Treasure

by Gary Sanderson

My archaeologist / anthropologist friend Mike Gramly placed the call a week into his latest dig at Lower Blue Licks in northeastern Kentucky – a 13,000-year-old mastodon boneyard located along an ancient saline spring bed on a Licking River floodplain. I could feel the man’s enthusiasm. It was infectious, and told him so. “I’m always […]

posted in Columns, Indians | No Comments

Sep
02
2025

Gramly Has Intellectual Energy to Spare

by Gary Sanderson

Late July. Eight-thirty. Bright morning sun. Neighbors’ tall sycamore across the road casting a long, broad, cool, front-yard shadow. Two-mile walk a couple hours in the rearview. The phone on the table to the left of my chair rings. Caller ID reveals an unnamed “wireless caller,” with a 978 area code number I don’t immediately […]

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Aug
05
2025

Nove Salute; Correction; Bears

by Gary Sanderson

On the walls surrounding a small bookcase in the southeast corner of my study hang a trio of framed images – one a small oil painting of a spaniel retrieving a cock pheasant; another a sepia-toned, circa 1882, Lewis Kingsley photo of my great-grandfather Willis Chapman Sanderson’s East Whately family, restored by Chris Clawson; the […]

posted in Columns, Local history, South Deerfield | No Comments

Jul
11
2025

Unsigned Hudson River School Treasure?

by Gary Sanderson

Another auction purchase. Another wild ride aimed at discovery. Isn’t that the joy of collecting? How better to keep a retired old man active, alert and engaged. One of my latest acquisitions is a large, likely unsigned oil-on-canvas riverscape painting I believe to have great potential. I snagged it at auction a couple months ago. […]

posted in Antiques, Columns, Salmon, Shad | No Comments

Jun
11
2025

Elusive Deerfield River Browns Worth Chasing

by Gary Sanderson

Sunday morning, Memorial Day Weekend, approaching 5:30. Day has broken – half-sun peeking over the eastern horizon, squeezing warm yellow rays through the tulip magnolia shielding my upstairs bedroom windows on each side of my headboard. From the tree comes the joyous song of an amorous cardinal, likely celebrating the high blue sky, small white […]

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May
15
2025

Squaretail Chronicles

by Gary Sanderson

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 […]

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