It’s noontime Tuesday, gray and wet, home snow-removal chores in the rearview, televised Patriots parade underway in Boston. I’m walking the dogs in steady rain that’s softening the shallow coating of fresh, white, sticky snow. The precipitation had changed from snow to sleet to rain as I whisked clean the snow-blower blades and carriage after […]

Whenever I write about local wildcats, it seems that the feedback locomotive gets rolling full-steam ahead. So it was no surprise that last week’s column drew a spike in reader email. Oh my! Can you imagine what’ll happen when I finally jump into that Petersham mountain-lion-attacks-horse tale, which I was aware of months before it […]

A noontime phone call from a neighbor, a brief conversation, a spin around the Internet and — Bingo! — another column in the making. It all unfolded quite by chance on Tuesday, after finishing a couple of morning tasks: first, a trip to Agway to buy dog and cat food and cedar shavings on senior-discount […]

There’s a little something for everyone — be they waterfowlers, anglers, paddlers, collectors, historians, anthropologists, designers, you name it — in the University of Minnesota Press’ recently published “Canoes: A Natural History in North America,” by Mark Neuzil and retired UMass/Amherst journalism professor Norman Sims, a familiar local whitewater enthusiast. This nice, sturdy, cloth hardcover […]