Category Archives: Columns

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

Mystery Ramble

Pancho was a bandit boys His horse was fast as polished steel Wore his gun outside his pants For all the honest world to feel. Pancho met his match you know On the desert down in Mexico Nobody heard his dying words Ah, but that’s the way it goes. “Pancho and Lefty” Townes Van Zandt […]

Ascutney Fork

Traveling north on the interstate along the west bank of our Great River, it is near the large green Bellows Falls sign where, under clear skies, pointed Mt. Ascutney first calls — its distant, faded peak towering above nearer foothills. Long before roads existed, this distinctive Vermont peak served as an important landmark for approaching […]

Run Stopper

The sweet aroma of small, white, multiflora-rose blossoms overwhelms Sunken Meadow this week, and the same uplifting scent, accompanied by complementary mock orange and pink weigela, brings refreshing air to my front parlor as well. So I can’t say I’m surprised by the rapid halt to Connecticut Valley anadromous-fish migration, which today is at a […]

Running Wild

The orchard grass is in places chest-high, with fragrant pink weigela bushes in bloom, turkey season winding down and shad running like gangbusters leading up to Memorial Day Weekend. I just discovered that the annual Fort No. 4 reenactment in Charlestown, N.H., is next weekend. Can’t wait. I think I’ll take both grandsons this time. […]

Nesting

A wet, sticky week. Nesting season. Signs everywhere. Just this morning, Wednesday, on our daily romp, the dogs and I bumped into an average-sized snapping turtle of the most ornery countenance in a shallow puddle not far from a beaver pond. Chubby found it, knew better, barked and kept his distance. Lily really didn’t bother […]

Springtime Capsule

Steamy and sticky it was for our Wednesday-morning walk, the dogs now kenneled and my brow still perspiring from the romp around Sunken Meadow, where we caught the sights, the sounds, the scents, the sweet smell of spring overwhelming, four interesting mushrooms, large and showy, sprouted along the fallen trunk of a chestnut oak. I […]

Checklist

Nature Lessons

It’s May Day — Workers Unite! — gray and wet, a saturating rain casting a warm green glow across the freshly mowed lawn out the window; large, twin Japanese maples along the southern perimeter at their prettiest red, the hues slightly different, right one a tad softer. I have often wondered why, then spat out […]

Checklist

Life was good, the weather fine, a cool, stiff south wind making our walk pleasant indeed as random thoughts ran through my consciousness, not unlike the dogs sliding in and out of Sunken Meadow’s dense wetland perimeter. Driving in, the two Canada geese Chubby’s been playing with for months were for the first time in […]

Observations

My, how that 90-degree Monday brought in the leafing and blossoming of spring. Overnight, my two large Japanese maples went from subtle buds to small, delicate red leaves, the burning bushes and bridal wreath suddenly became opaque, pink flowers popped out on the apple tree, a similar hue appeared on three Kwanzon cherries, and the […]

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