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 the upper hayfield, near the greenhouses. They stood tall and alert as we passed them on the farm road, and remained upright after I had parked and released the dogs for our romp. After walking just less than a mile around the southern lot, seeing a mink scamper along a beaver dam, and returning to the truck parked along a thin hardwood stand overlooking the smaller northern sunken meadow, Chubby stood there with a beggar’s countenance. He obviously wanted to continue, and so we did to the nice house at the corner, then down into our second bottomland meadow along a Green River flowing with lusty vigor after the rains that so brightened the landscape.

As we approached the path down into the meadow, I heard the geese honking their warning call upwind from me and wondered if Chubby was onto them. He wasn’t, so we took the gravel path below. After circling the lower field and finding yet another splendid fiddlehead patch for next year — distinctive, mature, light-green ostrich ferns are always easy to spot standing tall and proud following spring rain — we climbed back to the upper hayfield and Chubby immediately sprinted into the crosswind along a split-rail fence. About 100 yards later, he caught wind of the geese, probably 80 yards west, southwest of him. He came to a screeching halt, changed direction, ran diagonally into the wind and flushed the geese, which flew briefly into the wind, swung west, then north before circling over me and following the river south.

We returned to the truck, where I boxed the dogs and turned the key for the trip home. Approaching the greenhouses, Red Allen and the boys (including the late, great Jerry Garcia for a couple of tunes on the “Bluegrass Revival” CD), broke into that cautionary chorus to “She’s No Angel,” sung by many a man for more than a century. The chorus goes:

She’s no angel, no angel, her wings are not real.
She’ll ruin your life, it’s your heart she can steal.
She’ll tell you tales to bring tears to your eyes.
So don’t you believe them ’cause they’re only lies.

Tell me, fellas, what man can’t relate to that refrain? Only liars. But, hey, when you think of it, most of us have played the role of victim and perpetrator, so why dwell on mundane, trivial matters? We all get through it and have fun along the way. Those who can take it even mock it in song, fiddle sarcastically giggling, cutting right through you.

Anyway, I got home, parked, kenneled the dogs, got the mail and went inside, where I put tea water on, dug out a tea bag from a delicate little pottery bowl next to a five-pound jar of Apex Orchards honey (can’t beat it, 22 bucks, cheapest I’ve found; tasty, too) to get my Tom White mug prepared for the pouring, the golden honey beautifully illuminated by a soft ray of light entering the window. The only mail of interest was the American Political Biography catalog I look forward to each month. I figured I’d quickly peruse it my tea before heading to the study to write my column. Two straight days had brought something enticing in the mail — on Tuesday the May/June “Orion” magazine immediately captivated me long enough to read two long essays, stuff about nature/culture/place that everyone should read and, sadly, few do. Also a Wendell Berry short story to save for a rainy day.

Waiting for the water to boil, I went to the woodshed and brought in two hefty armloads of locust, among Blue Sky’s finest, more on its way, all dry, some even seasoned gray, big-time BTUs, even if  the stove’s inhaling dying breaths. When the teapot whistled, I filled my mug with steaming water, stirred in the honey with a grooved wooden dipper and temporarily retired to my aging green La-Z-Boy by the southern window. There I scanned the catalog and marked books that piqued my curiosity while the tea steeped. After circling maybe 10 titles in pencil, I thought it high time to write down all the subjects that had passed through my mind during my solitary morning walk. When complete it read like this: “honey, geese, mink, wood, lawn, trimming, American Political Biography, Orion, salmon, trout, turkeys, Debs, Randolph, Clavamox 250 mg;” all potential topics worth touching upon this week. Imagine that: six already in the rearview. Sweet.

Today, with the four-week spring turkey-hunting season set to open Monday, and given what I witnessed this past weekend (104 miles logged), why not start with wild turkeys? To begin with, I’m predicting a record harvest, maybe even our first of 3,000 or better. I saw big birds everywhere, traveling through Greenfield, Bernardston, Northfield, Leyden, Colrain, Shelburne, Conway, Ashfield, Williamsburg, Whately, and Deerfield. Yup, quite a country tour it was; productive indeed, many toms in full-strutting splendor. Boys will be boys. With little winter mortality due to favorable snowless conditions and easy access to nutritious winter mast supplies, there should be many boss toms and plump jakes for the picking, all superb table fare if prepared right, and some trophies for the den. There will be no excuses this year despite limited forest sight-lines clogged by fully foliated undergrowth, the only negative opening-day factor I can decipher. Well, of course, it could always rain, but that would be only a temporary setback during a 24-day season.

As for trout and salmon and shad, well, it’s happenin’, Dude. The stocking trucks will fatten up the Deerfield River high and low this week, and the only other local waters scheduled for trout are lakes Wyola and Laurel. Since quoting outfitter Chris Jackson’s favorable remarks about the status of Deerfield trout-fishing last week, I have bumped into others singing praise of perhaps our best trout fishery, though some prefer the Millers River Watershed. Those I have spoken to in my travels say the river bed was altered for the better in many places by Irene, with new channels, runs and pools to hold trout and lure anglers. Plus, there seems to be much mention of a fish I once worshipped — Deerfield River browns, those big, wild brown trout that are elusive indeed but well worth pursuing while most are dreaming and snoring. Supposedly, our best local flyfishers have been hooking into these fish more often than in the past, if you can believe them. I do. The fishery does exist, the boys I have spoken to are “in touch,” and I have no reason to doubt their assessment, having long ago “been there, done that” myself.

Regarding our anadromous-fish — shad and  salmon — the news seems good as well. Well, as good as it gets in these, the days of paltry returns. The Holyoke fish lift opened on April 13 and, through Tuesday, seven Atlantic salmon and more than 36,000 shad had been counted in the river system. Salmon have thus far showed up at the Rainbow Dam (1) on Connecticut’s Farmington River and the Holyoke Dam (6). With river temperatures still in the mid-50s Fahrenheit, there’s plenty of time left. The runs annually peak at between 65 and 70 degrees. Can’t say I expect as many as 200 salmon or 300,000 shad. I hope I’m wrong.

Moving to my “lawn” and “trimming” notes, they’re references to yard work, which has been under way for weeks, beginning with pruning the raspberries and blueberries, sumptuous additions to morning cereal and muffins, even midday salads. I mowed on a whim for the first time Friday, before the greening deluge, so that’s now a part of the weekly routine I never dread; and, my, how that rain doubled the rhubarb growth overnight. Amazing! I love me some rhubarb crisp. But there are still a few loose ends here and there, stuff like trimming back the flowering bushes and raking leaves out from under the large tulip magnolia, which can no longer conceal the natural fertilizer blown underneath thanks to that Oct. 31 snowstorm that snapped off its low branches. Nature has a way of thinning out tangled webs.

Regarding the “Clavamox 250 mg” on my list, that’s Lily’s antibiotic, the three-week run nearly complete. It looks like the UTI is behind her. We’ll see if it comes back. I sure hope not. I got the medicine without visiting the vet, always a money-saver; well, unless it doesn’t work. Then there’ll be a steep price to pay. But Lily isn’t peeing often or displaying any of the tell-tale signs of a UTI, so I’ll cross my fingers and hope.

Well, that’s about all I’ve got this week. Back to “Edward Randolph and the American Colonies 1676-1703,” a “tweener” on my reading list. Having finished the Eugene Debs biography I mentioned last week, I’m awaiting the arrival of “The Trial of Socrates,” by I.F. Stone of Sixties “Bi-Weekly” fame. I’ve wanted to read it before, just never followed through. Why now? Well, Debs was imprisoned for free-speech issues here in America during the reactionary World War I era. Socrates was executed for similar issues in ancient Greece, the birthplace of democratic freedom, liberty and justice, all of which can take a turn for the worse during wartime. If you don’t believe it, ask the fellas caged at Gitmo, if you can get near them.

Oooops. Better go before I myself end up in the sunny South … and, damn, I didn’t even get to that Koch Brothers documentary I was invited to preview Sunday at the Bernardston Unitarian Church. Oh well, maybe next week.

Quite an image, huh? Me in a Christian church on Sunday. I hope there are no photos. Bad for my image.

Here I sit for the second time today, just couldn’t get started on my first attempt, distracted, too many options. To remedy the little stalemate, I decided to load up the dogs and take a walk through the twin sunken meadows, which always seem to lift me to a better place.

When I returned a half-hour or so later, my inbox contained a fresh, thought-provoking letter from faraway pen pal Hannelore, the German lady with whom I enjoy communicating, have never met. She was responding to my week-old response. We are intellectually attracted to each other, far more precious than any physical temptation that will ever land on your doorstep. I’m grateful for the freedom I’m given as a married man, no petty jealousies to preclude such harmless, Platonic relationships. Life’s too short to abide by tedious, stifling routine. Why not a little excitement? But enough esotericism; better stick to benign matters even dearly departed Rick Santorum would approve of.

Considering that I teased to cougars at the end of last week’s column, I feel obligated to begin with that subject but, not the locked-in type, allow me, please, to sidestep it briefly. Let’s instead go to an interesting Monday spent with a bright young woman photographer closing in on her Hampshire College degree with a challenging thesis about, in her words, “the middle road between industrial farm-animal production and vegetarianism.” She had emailed me to say she had all the needed subjects — hunter, farmer, goat herder, slaughterhouse, traveling butcher — but had yet to find anyone who fished for sustenance. A mutual acquaintance, also a photographer, had suggested she query me, thought maybe I could come up with somebody in a pinch. Well, let’s just say that following a wetland walk, a trout and fiddlehead hunt, and a half-pint of Jack Daniels, she didn’t walk away disappointed.

It’s funny how I orchestrated the outing by Shanghaiing a hunting buddy I was sure fit her needs and would be entertaining if I could only somehow get him to cooperate. I also knew he’d be a tough sell, so I introduced the concept to him while picking fiddleheads Friday and, as anticipated, he wanted no part of it. But, as goes the old saying he’d better relate to than I, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat,” and, in backwoods vernacular, I “skun” it my way.

Because my buddy and I prefer Eastern brookies, our native trout, to the rest, I had many times told him of a secluded little beaver pond I’ve been monitoring for months. I promised that someday when I had time, preferably with my grandson in tow, I’d take him there to investigate, fishing rod and a bucket of crawlers in hand. Well, let’s just say I used that enticement to facilitate what must have seemed to the young woman like a hopeless 11th-hour assignment. With deadline looming, it all worked out like a plan from the sweet heavens.

When my buddy called Friday to say he was anxious to revisit the pond, I told him I’d rather wait till Monday when I had time and he said that sounded fine. Later, I wrote back to the woman, whom I had not met, and suggested she meet me at my home Monday morning between 8:30-9, no guarantees. She wrote back that she was willing to give it a shot and, sure enough, pulled into my driveway before 9. We took a quick walk with the dogs, returned home to kennel them, called my buddy and picked him up with a little surprise riding shotgun. I introduced them and we drove to the beaver pond, where we caught seven nice, colorful squaretails, picked three pounds of fiddleheads and returned to my kitchen table for a long, tape-recorded interview. Running late at the beaver pond, where she even pulled in her first two fish, she had called into work on her cell phone to cancel her 11 a.m. shift at the school library. She departed from my yard a little after 3 p.m. with a lively taped interview, several photos, a Ziploc bagful of trout tucked into a plastic grocery bag containing two pounds of fiddleheads, and oral instructions on how to clean and cook her savory wild fare.

When walking the dogs before the expedition began, the young lady was curious why I couldn’t be her fishing subject. I explained that I didn’t fit the mold because I haven’t fished for many years and, even if I had, I was a catch-and-release man. The fella I wanted her to interview was a meat fisherman, not to mention an authentic hunter/gatherer who raised a garden, gathered wild plant foods, hunted and fished for meat, and had even in his day run trap-lines to supplement his income, a bonus indeed. And, oh, how that half-pint of Tennessee whiskey improved the woman’s information-gathering process.

We stopped for the little bottle of truth serum at Harper’s, down the road from my place, at his request. He needed a drink the day after Easter; you know, must have been dry from eating ham. Oh, I forgot, he had leg of lamb. Anyway, when he asked if I could stop, I said, “Sure,” and our lady friend was in full agreement, hoping, “Maybe it’ll loosen your tongue a little.” A visionary she was. I think the interview went well, probably better than either of us expected. I’m glad I was able to help at the last minute. For the record (my old townie and frat buddies would get a kick out of this), she and I drank maple-syrup-sweetened Lipton tea. Getting old, I guess. Don’t bet on it.

At one point during our pre-maneuver walk, the young lady and I were addressing random subjects when I warned her that although she had likely lucked out and found the right man to complete her academic project, “I’m not sure you know what you’re getting yourself into. You may have bitten off more than you can chew with me.” She responded with a priceless, bemused little grim I will not soon forget. No, she wasn’t a bit afraid, nor did she seem too taken aback by what unfolded, Jack Black and all. But you must remember that the kid did come from Hampshire, a little different, my kinda place. Yes sir, she was a trooper. I can’t wait to read the thesis, which she expects to exceed 100 pages.

Before returning to cougars, I noticed my old UMass professor, Howard Ziff, died Tuesday morning at age 81. Friend George Miller noticed mention of Ziff in last week’s column and was waiting for me Monday evening at work to tell me my UWW sponsor was ill in hospice care. He died the next morning. What I find most interesting is that out of the clear blue sky I had mentioned the man last week in one of my rambles. Who knows why? He just came to mind and I went with it. Frankly, I don’t view it as a coincidence. No, call me crazy if you will, but I believe Ziff was creating a lot of energy as he faded in his deathbed, and somehow it found me. Often, when thinking of an old friend or lover or late family member, I find myself wondering why. Then I think I have intercepted that person’s thoughts, new or old, which I believe infinitely float through our universe, and they have pierced my consciousness. But enough of that, back to cougars, the four-legged variety, of course. Why in heaven’s name would any 58-year-old man fancy the two-legged? Way too late for that.

Anyway, where to begin? These days, cougar stuff seems to be coming at me like June “no-see-ems” on the balmy edge of a Maine cedar swamp. Just Tuesday morning on my daily rounds I stopped and talked to Ev Hatch, always pleasant, who told me he had something for me. At a roadside Brattleboro information booth, my good neighbor had picked up a magazine containing a cougar story he thought would interest me.

“I bet you mean that ‘Vermont’s Northland Journal’ with an old black & white photo of a man sitting next to a dead cougar on the cover,” I responded. “If so, someone from Heath sent it to me at work and I just read it this morning before walking the dogs.”

Yes, indeed, that was the magazine. The cover photo shows triumphant Alexander Crowell of nearby Readsboro sitting beside the hometown cougar he killed in 1881, still accepted as the last known Vermont catamount. What’s surreal is that our conversation occurred within inches of where Ed Galvin had stopped me a month or so back to hand me the winter 1994 “Vermont Life,” which featured a story about a 1993 cougar sighting in the Northeast Kingdom town of Craftsbury. The recent Journal piece evens mentions that Craftsbury sighting among others, and suggests that cougars are indeed back in the Green Mountain State.

That said, the cougar tale I teased to last week has nothing to do with either of the aforementioned magazine pieces, or with Vermont cougars. Nope. This tale emanates from the heart of Recorder country, in the happy little Millers River hamlet of Wendell. Of course, Wendell cougar-sightings are not news to me. Several reports from that vicinity have reached me over the past 10 years, including a couple from my old softball buddy, “Big Richie” Kellogg, now a proud Wendell resident.

So, when Peter Fisher sent me a string of cougar comments a few weeks ago from an online Wendell community bulletin board, it piqued my curiosity. Among the people who had seen cougars near the same location was Fisher himself, who wrote: “The responses are sent in the order received. The commonality of five different sightings is their geographic proximity to Wendell’s Bear Mountain, which rises on the south side of Route 2, across the way from the Farley ledges, a popular climbing site, above which lies the Northfield Mt. reservoir.”

Something he didn’t mention is that there are many deer in that area, an attraction for big cats, which rely on deer as their primary food source.

Broadening the scope of eastern Franklin County cougar reports over the years, I have been told of several sightings in the Quabbin region, through New Salem and into towns along the northern perimeter like Orange, Royalston, Templeton and Warwick, also a few from adjacent Northfield. Another string of sightings came from Wendell’s southern periphery, in Montague and Leverett, so how can anyone just ignore them as hallucinations or LSD flashbacks, which I would guess occur from time to time in sleepy Wendell? But that’s just wild speculation based on some of the folks I have known to live there. Again, my kinda folks, kindred spirits of Hampshire students and Timothy Leary’s old Harvard research group, if you get the gist.

Enough! A fine place to call it quits this week. No, wait! One more little tidbit before I go:

If it’s travelin’ music you’re looking for, you can’t go wrong with Blake and Rice, better still, B&R joined by Doc Watson for a couple cuts, flat-picking at its finest.

The sports desk flashed the green light Tuesday night, said Wednesday’s local schedule was thin indeed. “Oh good,” I thought. “Now I can go right to town on that column I started Monday and revisited Tuesday.” So, proceed with caution. I have been known to get carried away.

Which reminds me. I was in my own little world a week ago when Irmarie passed my desk on column night. Focused, I didn’t even know she was in the building until she addressed me.

“Hi Gary. Oh, must be working on your column.”

I looked up, didn’t want to be rude.

“Yeah, Irm, sorry. You know how it is.”

“Yes, yes, is it long?”

I nodded, sheepishly grinned and said, “Well, yes, I’m afraid so.”

She responded with a reassuring one-word answer: “Good!”

How about that! I guess some can stay with it. Then again, others surely don’t, like, for instance, the guy who told his wife he didn’t like my writing because it had a hard edge. All I can say to that is, I love compliments, but we all have a soft side, too. Truth is, I can’t write for everyone. No one can. I learned that long ago from respected mentor Howard Ziff, an old newspaperman, UMass professor and “New Journalism” visionary from my distant past. The best advice he ever imparted was that “if all you make in this business is friends, you’re not doing your job.” That and, “Write for the reader, not the subject.” Two golden rules of journalism, realities all scribes should heed. That said, I do believe my audience has changed dramatically in 33 years, especially since I allowed a gentle ray of filtered light into my soul, which some enjoy and others don’t. I can live with that, too; enjoy it, in fact. Why should I be ashamed of my bedrock philosophy? The other side isn’t.

I must say it was nice to bump into my two deer Wednesday morning, right out in the middle of the hayfield at 9 o’clock, the same doe and her yearling fawn I’ve been watching since February’s thaw. I assume they just couldn’t resist the infant clover, small, tender and of the healthiest, most exuberant green, so rich-looking that I thought about taking a nibble. As I drove toward them, they lifted their heads and froze like alert statues, ears erect, watching. When I parked, the larger one ran to the northern wetland’s lip and stopped. Then the little one fled to join her when I opened the truck door and stepped outside. By the time I had released the dogs, the deer had disappeared over the bank and we proceeded to meander through both sunken meadows, the second one leading to my sacred Indian red rock in the Green River, illuminated by the bright sun in a high sky cleared by the waxing moon. I hadn’t seen those deer for more than a week but knew from their tracks that they were near; them and a small loner buck that will be a 6- or 8-pointer this year. I know the buck’s distinctive print, the front hooves better than three inches long and split into a V. I don’t know the sex of that little skipper, but neither it nor its mother appears pregnant to me. Maybe they’re just not showing yet. It is only early April.

Moving indoors, the old-tavern mantles and tabletops are decorated for Easter, if you can imagine that in the home of a deist, pantheist or whatever the heck you’d call me; certainly no Christian. Well, actually one mantle, the one in the study, isn’t decorated, at least not for the Resurrection. The reason is that it’s full of books stacked high in four piles around a large, gilt-framed, trompe l’oeil, after-the-hunt oil painting of two wood ducks hanging upside down from a string tied to a cut nail in the wall. The books have been read since fall, with still others piled on the chest of drawers in the adjacent everyday parlor. The one I’m currently reading, a Timothy Leary biography by Robert Greenfield of Rolling Stone fame, is lying handy on a wooden TV tray alongside a green La-Z-Boy recliner decorated with tiny gold fleur de lis. It may sound fancy but, let me tell you, it’s overdue for a dump run. Midway through Leary, that most unusual Springfield rebel, all I can say is that it’s once again clear to me that the wrong side prevailed in the Sixties. Now look what we’ve gotten ourselves into: Nixon/Reagan/Bush lackeys who think cavity searches for simple misdemeanors are cool. Hey, it’s all about national security, right? Well, maybe so, but I sure do hope I never have to schedule a colonoscopy at the local State Police barracks. Sounds way too much like Hitler’s Germany, maybe Baghdad to me. You know the routine: create a terrifying bogeyman to frighten ignorant voters and they’ll permit all sorts of government invasions in the name of “protection,” probable cause or no probable cause. Maybe if I went to Huckabee or Hannity for “news,” didn’t read and wasn’t intellectually curious, then I too would go along, just another dazzled ewe following a clueless conformist flock to the slaughter or shearer. Thankfully, I saw the light young, when it was bright and idealistic, and decided to hack my own trail to autonomous wilds. Some may even call it anarchy, I suppose, a scary word indeed, but that doesn’t concern me in the least. They too have a right to their opinions, too. Just, please, don’t lay them on me. I ain’t buying it.

Ooops! There I go, distracted again. Colonoscopies in police barracks? Huh? Where’d that come from? Sorry. My mind got to wandering, I guess. That can happen to a man my age. Back to those other two downstairs mantles, the ones that are Easter decorated with collections of hand-carved wooden rabbits, eggs and chicks — all well-executed, probably bought years ago at Yankee Candle, before it went corporate — surrounded for effect by that shiny, plastic, purple grass you’d put in an Easter basket. Grandson Jordi, who lost his dad, was in town over the weekend. I picked him up Friday evening in Randolph, Vt. The decorations were for him, a way to inspire egg-coloring and whatever other Easter activities the wife had planned as I finished an interesting Ambrose Bierce biography and watched a little Final Four. Most interesting to me about Bierce was that he and I share common Mayflower ancestor William Bradford, likely other old Plymouth and Bay Colony families, dissident all. A Civil War vet and San Francisco newspaperman with an infamous bite, he wandered off as an old man to Poncho Villa’s Mexican Revolution in 1913 and never returned, the location of his bones and  cause of death an infinite mystery, right up his alley. Bierce was that kind of guy, from Indiana by way of Connecticut and Cape Cod, his grandfather a Puritan minister, his dad a deacon, his mom devout indeed. I am cut from similar cloth but, like him, have found my way through that dense, disorienting Christian fog to an oasis where reason and reality outweigh faith and fallacy.

I must admit that some of the old Easter photos scattered about at home hit a mournful string in me. They show the kids — Gary, now dead, and Rynie — on past Easters, holding rabbits, coloring eggs, hunting two-piece, hidden, coin-filled plastic eggs outside, all in gay, now grieving hues. A white-framed oval photo stands on my desk, just to the right of the monitor, right in my face, kind of haunting but happy, too, if you get the gist. The kids, wearing soft, devilish grins, are dressed in their Sunday best, gray formal slacks, pale-yellow Oxford shirts under white V-neck sweaters, limp white bunnies gripped behind the shoulders dangling from their hands. The attire reminds me of when I was a kid and my mother took us annually for those dreaded, frantic Easter shopping sprees. Remember, I was no alter boy, didn’t care much for church and chants and prayers and choral song, hated dressing up for Easter service and posing for sappy shots. But that’s just me, I guess, and I can’t say I’ve changed much. I remember the circa-1990 photo session that produced that desktop photo of the kids. We were at Rick Roy’s High Street studio, which, unless I’m mistaken, was in the same gray house once home to Dr. Low’s practice. That night, I had discretely slipped out of work and was handling his angora rabbits when, suddenly, my eyes started watering, itching and feeling like coarse sandpaper when rubbed. Having experienced it once before, I realized a dangerous allergic reaction was erupting. No time to spare, I quickly excused myself, scooted off to that nearby CVS Pharmacy in the old Grand Union building, bought some Benadryl, doubled the dose and went back to work, where the irritation soon passed. Quick thinking, no doctor; once again I had done it my way and lived to tell about it.

I mentioned something to my wife last week about putting me through the wringer with those photos of Gary everywhere. She understood but offered no apology, said all we have are memories, why deny ourselves those pleasures? She’s right. I accepted it. But they still stir sadness, probably always will. That’s life. We’re not alone. Everyone must learn to cope with loss. Bierce lost two sons in their 20s, one shot and killed in a lovers’ triangle (imagine that, from Puritan stock no less), another a pneumonia victim. My son also died from pneumonia, and other insidious hospital infections; 76 grueling days, never a chance, no matter what the upbeat surgeon insisted, always upbeat. The nurses knew better. I read their gloom. But why go there? Onto more cheerful subjects, starting with one that’s actually not so happy when you think of it. No sir, Lily is due for a trip to the vet. That liver-and-white bitch, a flushing dynamo in the field, can sure be expensive. She needed two surgeries last year — cha-ching! — first to remove a dead puppy from her womb at that collateral-demanding South Deerfield hospital, then to my regular vet to drain a ribcage abscess, the result of a pheasant-season puncture in a beaver-infected alder swamp. This recent problem appears to be a simple urinary-tract infection, which shouldn’t be too outrageous if the first antibiotic works, never a given these days. I’ll just cross my fingers and hope my layman’s diagnosis is correct. I can’t imagine it’s something more serious. Not from her demeanor. Other than frequently squatting to pee small diluted drops of blood after her bladder’s drained, she’s happy, hungry and full of vigor, tail constantly wagging a happy rhythm you just don’t see in a sick animal. I hope it’s not wishful thinking on my part. Old Lily-Butt’ll soon be 9, but she’s a rugged bird dog and should have a few good, productive years left after showing no signs of decline last season.

Back to the Green River, I know things can change fast this time of year, but it looks perfect for fishing, running strong and clear, the latter development a welcome sight. The river is due for its first stocking this week. I’ll have to watch and see how long it takes for the fish stocked at the Pumping Station and above to get down to my secluded rock. I would guess not long. Before I start thinking about fishing, though, I better get to that yard work I’ve been uncharacteristically delaying, which reminds me of a song I’ve been playing in the truck for Jordi. Titled “Arkansas Traveler,” it’s a traditional tune about to strangers that’s been around for ages. Some call it “Hello Stranger.” My version comes from Grisman & Garcia’s “Not For Kids Only,” which makes great traveling music for any alert 6-year-old. I know Jordi gets a kick out of it, especially the part of the verse where the two strangers, mandolin and guitar, address a little home-repair issue:

“Cant you see that your roof’s a leakin’? Why don’t you fix it?” asks the wanderer.
“Well, right now, it’s a rainin’ too hard,” responds the man sitting side of the road. “And when the sun’s a shinin’, why, the roof don’t leak.”

Jordi gets a kick out of that little skit, thinks it’s silly. I explained to him that the man with a leaky roof is procrastinating, which we can all be guilty of from time to time. I can’t say I was surprised the new word piqued his curiosity. Quite intentional. He looked at me with inquisitive eyes and said, “Grampy, what’s procrastinating?” No lie, pronounced it perfectly.

“Well, kid, that’s when people put things off, kinda like the woodpile under that maple tree in my front yard. I should have cleaned up that mess long ago.”

“I’ll help you pick it up, Grampy.”

“I know you would, Jord, but I have to split it before I move it and must go to Home Depot to buy a new handle for my maul.”

“Maul? What’s a maul, Grampy?”

“You’ve seen one out in the woodshed. It’s a heavy ax, not as sharp, kinda like a combination ax/sledgehammer.”

“Oh, why don’t we just get the handle?”

“Well, I guess for the same reason that stranger doesn’t patch his roof: I’m procrastinating.”

I knew before mentioning the impending chore that it would be a good one for the two of us. I could show him that the maul was too heavy, tell him I’d split and he could throw the pieces into my truck. Then we could drive around to the woodshed and throw the split wood in. It didn’t happen this weekend and likely will be done before his next visit, if I stop procrastinating. More importantly, though, I believe he’ll remember that new word, even suspect he’ll use it at some point next time. Just a little game I like to play with him, one he doesn’t even know I’m playing but has responded favorably to in the past. God, I do hope he’ll learn to enjoy language, tinker with it, bend rules. And I sure hope that some asinine teacher doesn’t discourage his future attempts to use such words by penalizing a misspelling in an otherwise creative, precocious description. I can’t say I’m confident something like that won’t happen. In fact, it’s probably inevitable.

Uh-oh! There I go again, that “hard edge” protruding like that big, red, Green River rock, initiating a reflexive cringe from “good boys” who learned young to genuflect and make the sign of the cross.

Oh well, better back to “turn-on, tune-in, drop-out” Timothy Leary. Damn, I didn’t even get to that Wendell cougar artery I intended to bleed. It can wait.

I can see the rain pouring down outside, hear it splashing off the flagstone terrace. I knew I should have thrown that whole cord of wood in this morning. Blame the wife, an easy, unjustified target.

Up just after 7, I made coffee, fed the fire, got dressed and immediately went to gather wood and fill the stove-side cradle. In the woodshed, fresh cord dumped outside right up to the open doorway, I, of course, started tossing it in and got carried away. After 20 minutes, I had three-quarters of the load heaped inside when I heard the kitchen door swing open, my wife walking toward me. She wanted me to take a break, didn’t want me working like that. No desire to argue, I stepped into the woodshed, squeezed through a narrow lane created by the woodpile, brushed off in front of the coal bin, walked into the shed, past the pantry and into the kitchen. There, I poured a big cup of the coffee, walked through the dining room and into the parlor to relax. The woodshed chore could wait, wouldn’t take long to finish, maybe 10 minutes. I just wanted it behind me before predicted afternoon showers. Then, sure enough — or is it of course? — walking the dogs an hour or so later, it started raining and I had to head home to cover that small outdoor woodpile with a cheap blue plastic tarp. Women! Those much-needed voices of caution and reason, agents of procrastination! No sense getting worked up, though. The wood didn’t get saturated, will be just fine.

What a difference a week makes. My wool vest is back out and handy, hanging over the back of a birdcage Windsor tucked under the east end of the long, cherry, dining-room harvest table. Not only that, I’m back to turning up my collar for walks. No, it sure didn’t take long for Monday’s brisk north winds to reintroduce March and erase that nice summer mirage we all enjoyed last week. The trees and bushes seemed to savor the hot weather, too, budding way earlier than normal. In fact, I’m sitting here in my study peering out the window at a green lawn getting greener by the second, and a bridal-wreath bush that’s budded at least three weeks early. We’ll see what happens. Usually I trust Mother Nature to process such anomalies. But you never know how the old witch will react to the careless sins of mankind. I’m referring, of course, to the Gulf spill and Fukushima, the effects of which are still circulating out of sight and mind, along the ocean floor, in the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink. Yeah, yeah, I know the “experts” hired to deliver good news to head-in-the-sand Pollyannas claim those catastrophes have passed with no lingering effects. I say, bull-twinkie. And, trust me, you don’t need a sophisticated researcher to uncover an entirely different, unvarnished evaluation from unbiased, independent scientists, the ones Fox-News harangues daily as hysterical alarmist loons. Just don’t try to decipher truth from the mainstream. Except for rare and welcome exceptions, the available “news” there is just too clouded in objectivity. But why belabor an old, unworthy issue? Back to the early spring, that sacred red rock I visit daily, trout stocking, turkey-season prospects, a music smidgen, a brief diversion back into the woodshed, and whatever else enters my mind’s eye. Just one of them days, I guess. Lots of stuff buzzing between my ears.

Sirum’s serviceman Deane Wonsey stopped by Tuesday to convert my John Deere lawn tractor back from snowblower to mower, and also to perform the annual spring service. The previous day had brought an impromptu visit from landscaper Andy Melnik, in the neighborhood, now come and gone from his annual power-sweeping chore. It seems everything except my trip to accountant Tom Scanlon has been early this year. And now even he’s in the rear-view, sort of; yeah, a month late, but still a good thing. Which doesn’t mean all news from the old tavern is rosy. Nope. I must travel only so far as the kitchen to find a credit-card bill from Bank of America lying on the countertop; insignificant damage, yes, but there nonetheless. Yup, we too are slaves to that behemoth predatory lender that seems to have its talons curled into everyone. Oh yeah, one more thing out of the murky gray skies before I get focused. I see Chick Underwood died. Too bad, but I guess a man can’t live forever; he was 91. I liked Chickie, even though he was an unapologetic Yankees fan. Still, the guy was an authentic, small-town American character, a fixture for generations around the local diamond, gridiron and hardcourt. His infectious, sometimes sinister laugh and playful banter will be missed. They don’t make ’em like they used to.

Traipsing even further askew, I must say I was happy to hear from faraway pen-pal Hannelore, that bright, accomplished German lady who from time to time checks in on a blithe whim from her homeland or Hawaii. A friend of a late friend, she has a way of just popping into my inbox, always providing thoughtful, well-written narratives on this or that, all relevant, often enticing. Multilingual, she loves to write and ponder, has found a willing correspondent and soul mate. Maybe someday we’ll meet. It wouldn’t surprise me. Then again, even if we don’t, she’s fun, even invigorating at times, her topics random, the answers often elusive, sumptuous food for thought. I devour such stuff with my face in the bowl and come away messy. As it turns out, we’re both quietly working on introspective stuff. A Knut Hamsun devotee, I learned long ago to admire the European mind, at least what little I know of it; and now this pulsating, breathing, articulate human being, a lady no less; even better, regardless of Christian society’s stern warning that males and females, made by nature for each other, must proceed with caution, be forever wary, particularly after repeating chapel vows. I don’t play that silly taboo game. It makes no sense. … Time to stop right here, though, for that quick trip back to the woodshed.

Oh, yes, the woodshed. Once you’ve had one that’s connected to the house and handy, could you ever go without? Not me, at least not as long as I’m burning wood for winter comfort. Having your wood supply close and covered near the stove is a grand luxury indeed. Just Tuesday my shed was empty, excluding the small stuff piled high for the fireplaces in a north-side cubby-hole created by the protruding “indoor” outhouse, also a grand luxury in its day. This last load from wood vendor Blue Sky is beautiful seasoned locust that will easily carry me through May. Yup, I know, another 225 bucks down the drain. But what can a man do? I suppose I could buy myself a chainsaw and splitter and humiliate myself begging for free fuel by offering to remove toppled trees from the side of the road. But when you look at it rationally, what do you really gain from such a demeaning chore? Isn’t your time and labor worth something, too? I guess it depends how you look at it. And what’s the alternative? No wood? Stove dampered too low? Gloves and a  wool cap in the winter reading parlor? I could live with that little step back in time, but my wife? Uh-uh. It’s OK. I like keeping a fire from October to May, awaking in the wee hours to feed it. I can’t understand those who let the fire die most nights, only to start anew the next morning due to pure laziness. But, hey, that’s just me. Maybe I’m weird or something.

Readers may have noticed how I stopped mentioning travelin’ music a couple of weeks ago. To be honest, I figured no one really cared. Then, just last week I bumped into an unknown  fella who, maybe sarcastically, wanted to know if I was still listening to bluegrass. Well, kinda, but I ain’t going there. All I’ll say is that if you like Dylan, you’ll love Tim O’Brien’s “Red on Blonde,” be it putting along a dusty dirt road, roaring down the thruway passing lane, or just relaxing by the fireplace in a cozy wing chair, lights dimmed, cordwood crackling, Rare Breed on the rocks, twist of lime, enhancing the mellow warmth. It can get deafeningly loud on winter nights like that, doors sealed tightly, Pres Speakers rattling your eardrums. Good old Pres, a softball buddy from days past. Older than me, he’s still chasing the dream, playing Over-30 and Vintage baseball with a rare, admirable passion. Good for him. It’s not for me. I’m done with it. But I must admit to happening upon an Over-30 game at Herlihy Park last summer and, out of curiosity, pulling over to watch an inning or two from an overlook. Although I don’t mean in any way to offend my buddy Pres, I found exactly what I expected, not a ballplayer among the sorry wannabes. I don’t know where the teams stood in the standings but would guess somewhere on the bulkhead stairs. This much I can tell you, though: my Deerfield Pony League team from the old Pioneer Teen League would have mercy-ruled either team. Paaaa-thetic. Why even bother? To prove you could have been a ballplayer when a Big Y bagboy? It reminds me of that classic Brando “On the Waterfront” line:”  “I could have been a contender.” I say, so what? Move on. Get over it.

Moving to turkey hunting, I admit that even though I haven’t participated the past couple of springs, I do think about it often; that and trout fishing, which I haven’t done in decades. Every day as I visit that Green River red rock and downstream pools, I study the water from an angler’s perspective, reading the runs, the pools, the eddies where trout lurk. Once you’ve fished seriously and understand the game, it never leaves you, that ability to read water, identify hatches, search for subtle movement in sunny lairs at riffles edge. Word has it they stocked the Deerfield last week and plan to return again this week. Ashfield Lake’s also on the list. I’m sure the Green will soon be fattened. The water is perfect. Which reminds me: I think my days of providing weekly stocking reports are over. Why? Because it’s all listed online, and several people I would not expect to be Internet friendly are frequent visitors to that MassWildlife website. Yes indeed, times change. You can’t fight it. I’m afraid it|doesn’t bode well for stubborn daily newspapers that refuse to adjust. Yeah, I know it’s true there are those who still don’t use computers or watch cable TV. But are those the readers newspapers should chase? Not in my mind. To me, it’s literally a dying market. Myself, I prefer to reach people who get their news by modern means and visit newspapers looking for something different, news or the delivery thereof that can’t be found on the nightly news, 24/7 cable or Google. In my opinion, newspapers that don’t deliver unique news ain’t long for this world. But, even though retirement is near, why stir that stinky cesspool? It’s pointless.

Ooops! There I go again. Can you believe it? I got distracted and didn’t follow through on my turkey-hunting ramble. Like I said, I have been thinking about turkeys lately, mostly the fact that they had a gift-wrapped winter with minimal, if any, mortality except predatory. January and February spotters complained they weren’t seeing winter flocks where they had grown accustomed to seeing them. Well, guess what? The big birds are back with a vengeance after a long, glorious winter of foraging secluded red-oak groves of their choosing for protein-rich acorns. There should be a lot of jakes and some beautiful boss gobblers out there for the picking around the first of May. And with little snow and no mud season, the dangling beards ought to be long, full and undamaged, rare trophies. The problem will be seeing birds in the forest and hearing distant gobbles. Hunters typically get a couple of weeks of open forest, with no leaves and open sight lanes. Not this year. The landscape is already looking very much like a normal opening day. By the first day, it’ll likely look like the last, visibility poor, bugs pesky. Oh, well, you gotta accept what nature puts on the platter. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even get out this year. Then again, maybe not. I don’t intend to push it, am unwilling to become a zombie just to shoot a turkey I don’t need. The day is fast approaching when I’ll be calling my own shots, won’t have to worry about schedules and routine. For that day, I am eager. Change doesn’t frighten me. In fact, I welcome it, find it inspiring and new.

Hey, how about that! It stopped raining. Time to tackle the what’s left of the woodpile. Then back inside to finish “The Democratic-Republican of Massachusetts” by Paul Goodman, difficult but informative. Next up: an Ambrose Bierce biography. I finished “Death in the Haymarket” last week. Everyone ought to read it now that they say we’re headed back to the robber-barren-and-wage-slave Gilded Age. Why does the bad stuff keep repeating itself? Maybe people are stupid.

Daffodils stand straight as an Episcopal preacher, cardinals sing their joyous tunes and life is good, spring optimism saturating my nostrils, filling my lungs, penetrating deep into my cynical soul. I love spring but must admit it was not kind to me as a kid. When an adolescent’s sap ascends from his roots, oh my, the trouble it unleashes for some of us. But I’m old now and that’s behind me, right? Never know. I long ago learned to proceed with caution.

Many subjects worth traipsing into this week, starting with a reader flagging me down departing from my morning walk with the dogs through Sunken Meadow. It was neighbor Ed Galvin, an old skiing buddy of my late Uncle Ralph’s who I’ve known since his days at Clark’s Sport Shop. He signaled me to stop with a smile, pulled over to the side of the road, exited his gold Toyota Tacoma, and hurried toward me, magazine in hand: Winter 1994 “Vermont Life,” on it a two-inch chartreuse paste-on note directing me to Page 20. I opened to the page and discovered a color photo of a cougar, four-legged, a headline above reading “THE CAT IS BACK.” But hold that thought a minute. First, a few of other items worth mentioning, including the death of a loyal reader, new books on the parlor chest, an embarrassing correction, and various observations about new hunting and fishing regulations that have people squawking.

Let’s start with the passing of Leyden reader Edward M. Wells, 85, who died suddenly, the way we all should go, last week at home. A former teacher and World War II Marine, we were unlikely friends, I suppose, but he read this column, chirped in from time to time and even visited my Greenfield Meadows home a few times. Our common interest was this place we call home, the Pioneer Valley, where we both worshiped deep roots he referred to as “DNA in the valley’s oldest cemeteries.” He was proud of it and so am I, thus our friendship. I’m sure he cringed at some of my opinions about public schools and teachers, not to mention politics, but we got through it to establish a friendly relationship. I will miss bumping into him at the Big Y, greeting him, speaking to him. A dignified, soft-spoken, died-in-the-wool Republican typically dressed in a tweed jacket, he sometimes didn’t know how to take me but would eventually squeeze out a wry grin and engage in conversation that grew livelier as it progressed. A cousin of his emailed me on the morning he died to say “Mike” spoke highly of me. She even shared something he often told her told that I hesitate to repeat: “Gary has a true feeling for the ground and those who have come before. I may not exactly agree with some of his philosophies, but he is a fine young man.” I’m sure my enemies and political foes will choke on that one. Oh, well. Isn’t it too bad that legislators on opposite sides of the aisle can’t be as accepting?

As for the new books that arrived Monday morning, I’m sure my wife wishes I’d curtail these purchases. They add up. But, like I told her, it could be worse than reading, maybe even getting into mischief, the forces of Satan lurking around every corner. I tell her I don’t look for mischief, it has always found me. But let’s not go there. Deep down, she understands my reading and does respect my intellectual curiosity, not to mention that independent, at times defiant, streak. Anyway, I do look forward to perusing the “American Political Biography” catalog that arrives monthly in my mailbox from Jeff Speirs of Newtown, Conn., where my late Uncle Ray (Keane), an artist and good man, once owned a home. I ordered three books this time: one on the infamous Haymarket bombing along with biographies of Timothy Leary and Ambrose Bierce. You gotta love a man like Bierce, who served with distinction and valor in the Civil War, then had the audacity to say that some of the bravest soldiers followed their conscience to the firing squad. As for Timothy Leary, that Sixties icon of “Tune-in, turn-on, drop-out” fame, well, what can I say? I’ve always harbored a fascination for the man and his medicine.

Actually, I ordered four books from Speirs but was too late on the most important one, about Massachusetts’ Democratic-Republican Party of Elbridge Gerry, eventually James Madison’s vice president. Old revolutionaries and radicals, the Democratic-Republicans were 1790s anti-federalists from the founding-Puritan mold. Because my fifth great-grandfather, Deacon Thomas Sanderson of Whately, was one of them and used newly elected Gov. Gerry to facilitate the controversial 1811 annexation of a long-disputed portion of Deerfield to Whately, I have for some time wanted to understand precisely what those people stood for. Speirs’ catalog alerted me to the Harvard Press title and, after coming up empty on his site, I found another first edition for 15 bucks on bookfinder.com, in unread condition, dust jacket “near fine.” Hey, even saved myself a sawbuck. My wife will like that. The book will likely be my final purchase on the subject. Then I intend to pore over the Joseph Hawley Papers, looking for correspondence between Hawley and my Whately ancestor, also whatever peripheral information I can glean. I thought the 18th century Northampton radical’s papers resided at the Smith College Library before a Wednesday email begged to differ. We’ll see. But enough of that, on to the MassWildlife stuff.

Let’s start with the correction. I was wrong. Sporting licenses did not go up 30 bucks as reported here last week. The price is the same as last year, not a nickel more. I just erred when purchasing mine online, accepting two “Wildlands Fund Donations” I didn’t want. I feel like I was tricked into it and probably could get a refund by swallowing my pride and complaining. But it was my fault. I should have double-checked when the $93.30 charge caught my eye. Won’t happen again. But, while discussing hunting and fishing, a few other quick tidbits:
• First, don’t forget that lead sinkers are illegal this year, and folks are grousing about the steel and aluminum replacements, which, for one thing, are expensive, and, for another, are much lighter than lead;
• Second, there’s a new antlerless-permit system that has people scratching their heads. No one’s quite sure just how the new random-selection method works, but it won’t be drawn at a public lottery as in the past. So I guess we’re just going to have to trust the fellas to do the right thing, never a guarantee;
• Third, all hunting harvests except shotgun deer-kills can now be recorded online without going to a checking station. Of course, “Suspicious Sammy” warns it’s a bad idea to check anything online because it may flash the green light for game wardens to come snooping around your home, where they could stumble across some picayune violation. Although that concern didn’t cross my mind, it did cross my path and I thought I’d pass it on.

Which brings us back to that familiar subject of cougars, and the 1994 “Vermont Life” story opining that a beast today declared extinct was alive and well in Vermont 18 short years ago. Hmmmmm? Imagine that! Galvin must have stumbled across the magazine while spring cleaning and knew just the man who would be interested. After looking for me at home a few times and finding my truck gone, he caught me on my daily rambles and flagged me down. The magazine story was fascinating, even more so when I read a quote by John Hall, a Vermont Fish and Wildlife source I have known for many years, admitting that catamounts, gone for more than 100 years, were back in Vermont. I have never before heard or seen such an admission from a government official. Wow!

The story unfolded in the snowy Northeast Kingdom town of Craftsbury, Vt., where a laid-off Hanover man was visiting his grandmother the day after April Fools’ Day 1994. Out spreading bird seed, he noticed movement in the woods and saw three large animals he assumed were deer. When they briefly broke into the open, he was stunned to see three long-tailed mountain lions about 100 feet away. Spooked, he scooted back to the safety of Grandma’s house and phoned the State Police, who gave him the number of a Craftsbury man chasing cougar sightings. He placed the call, the investigator answered, was extremely interested and soon arrived onsite with a couple of his sons.

With deep, imperfect tracking snow on the ground, the prints were easier to follow than identify, but the experienced outdoorsmen knew they were dealing with a big cat. Carrying a video camera just in case, the fellas followed the tracks several hundred yards and finally came upon unusual scat samples, which they flicked with a ballpoint pen into a plastic battery case for analysis. The sample was sent to an Oregon wildlife-forensics lab and, sure enough, was identified as cougar scat. Similar to house cats, cougars wash themselves by wetting their front paw with their tongue and rubbing it over their head. Thus cougar scat carries easily identifiable leg hairs, which the Vermont sample contained.

Isn’t it amazing how, despite that discovery and subsequent cougar scat found at the Quabbin, the United States Fish & Wildlife Service took it upon itself a year ago to declare Eastern Cougars extinct? If you recall, less than three months later, a wild, transient cougar turned up as road kill on a southeastern Connecticut highway.

Oooooops!

Don’t you hate it when stuff like that happens?

Wispy morning fog, sodden turf, earthy aroma, no deer, not far. I had been playing with a doe and her yearling the previous two mornings, fun. Drawn by the fresh, tender, tasty green stubble sprouting under the brown hayfield, they’ll be back.

But it’s not like there was nothing else to jack up Lily and Chubby on our short walk through the small sunken meadow leading to that big red rock poking out of the Green River. At the base of a lip descending into the lower level, the dogs stopped to sniff at something. Upon closer inspection, fresh coyote scat. Then, maybe 35 yards ahead, skunk odor permeated the damp, still air as the low, filtered, eastern sun cast a blinding glare. The dogs picked up their heads and immediately chased the scent, sprinting for the thin riverside woods, taking different routes once they broke the tree line on a freakin’ mission. Maybe that coyote ate the skunk. Then again, maybe the skunk released a burning, stinging stink-bomb before waddling off to the safety of a brush pile. I lean toward the latter. Never know.

Back to that big red rock that’s captured my fancy lately. I’m convinced it has Native Pocumtuck significance. Don’t ask me why. I can just feel it. Wednesday morning, it was mostly submerged by turbulent water, the river rushing around both sides, a major eddy swirling under the south side, no doubt holding trout. Swollen and ebullient, that river was begging for a juicy nightcrawler or, better still, a weighted nymph, maybe an Early Brown Quill, a Woolly Bugger or Montana. I always had good luck with those Montanas, even here, three-quarters cross-country, probably because of the little yellow throat patch, an attractant on straight retrieves or fluttering, erratic ascensions. I do hope to teach my grandsons the joys of flyfishing — knots, connecting tippets, the double-haul, shooting line, roll-casting, mending line, setting the hook on loose-bellied slack line, the fly ahead of the loop in fast water. I’ll show them how to lift the rod ever so slowly and wait for just the right moment to flick the wrist back gently; a challenging finesse game. I collected many graphite and bamboo fly rods over the years that I can now share with the boys. Who knows? They may even re-invigorate my own flyfishing passion, once overwhelming, now dormant after long hibernation. My work schedule doesn’t line up with my fishing tastes. I have always said that if the birds are singing when I arrive, it’s too late, not interested. In retirement, I’ll make my own hours.

I’m sure no one wants to hear me wail but — who cares? — it’s been a brutal week. After procrastinating for more than a month, I finally started my annual, tax-preparation, accounting chores, the ones I most dread, worse than raking leaves when I could be banging away at cackling, ring-necked roosters. It’s true that I thoroughly enjoy playing with words and language. Numbers are different. They drive me bonkers, make me cranky, and right now I’m actually looking forward to getting out in the yard, picking up fallen sticks, raking, trimming, moving cordwood piles from that destructive October snowstorm. It can wait, will still be there tomorrow. I have to keep reminding myself it’s not May, that we’re way ahead, not your typical March. Ask the maple-syrup producers if you don’t believe me. They are the lords of spring. Enough of that, though. Let’s talk about local fishing on two major rivers, reviewing feedback that’s crossed my path since last week, when I led with fishing, specifically current pre-stocking Green River trout-fishing prospects. We’ll begin with good news, then bad; by chance, the way it came to me.

Although I do come into daily contact with the neighborhood river Natives called Picomegan, I have not actually wet a line there in years, since the old days of bumping elbows with Marshall Denison below his family’s East Colrain sawmill at first light, to me, the best hour. Now out of touch with this beautiful stream, I asked readers to chime in with interesting observations. Well, a couple of responses appeared in rapid fashion, one from Hatfield the day the column hit the street, the other from Colrain the following day. Both sang praise of the fall fishing and sent color photos of nice, healthy Green River rainbow trout to support their claims. Aren’t those tiny digital cameras and the ones in cell phones great? The shots from Hatfield were dated Dec. 4 and 28; those from Colrain undated but showing brilliant fall colors in the background; October, I assume. Interesting comments accompanied the snapshots.

“Everyone (at the Deerfield River Watershed Chapter of Trout Unlimited) is raving about the quality and quantity of holdover trout that are being caught in the local waters (sans the Chickley of course … but that is another matter entirely. Too much human intervention.),” wrote the Colrain correspondent, a female artist I have known for a couple of years. “There is even a large number of trout being spotted breeding, and breeding in newly enlarged small creek-beds that are Deerfield tributaries as well. Flooding was a giant flush for the system, and while some things will take time to flourish again — it did do wonders in other ways.”

The Hatfield respondent was in full agreement, and his photos backed him up: “Green River is well-equipped for holdovers. Flyfishing from Thanksgiving and up through Christmas was fantastic! Well after the October storm and earlier Hurricane, fish were everywhere, but mostly off the beaten paths and far from the swimming pools ’skinnies’ frequent all year. There are fish to be had before the trucks start rolling, but it will take a little effort. I will try wetting a line there maybe later next week to get a more recent appraisal.”

When I answered his email, he shot right back the next day to assess the post-Tropical Storm Irene flood damage. One observation was particularly relevant in light of this week’s Recorder coverage of Pumping-Station dam and retaining-wall reconstruction. The spot took heavy damage.

“My concerns for the Green are from the covered bridge down,” he wrote. “I saw first-hand the massive machinery in the river restoring the banks. Those track monsters were scooping out goodness and flattening it out all over the landscape. Earthmovers were grinding the north bank. Unfortunately, we  haven’t had any high waters this winter or early spring to correct the manmade mess. I didn’t traverse farther down the meadows of your ramblings to see what damage occurred there.”

So much for the good news. Now the bad, which came from a devoted South Deerfield angler I’ve known for years. He called noontime Tuesday, wanted to speak about the Deerfield River and validated his outspoken opinions by claiming to know the river better than he knows his wife. Don’t doubt it. He wisely insisted he remain  anonymous. No problem. I wouldn’t do that to a man, anyway, but can confirm that he loves to fish the Deerfield … well, at least he used to. Nowadays, he says it’s a waste of time.

“I’ve been out almost every day and there’s no fish,” he said. “I was there again today and the river’s color was disgusting. There were fishermen at Stillwater and the Twin Bridges but I didn’t even bother stopping. I knew what they were catching: nothing! I don’t believe trout can’t survive in that water. It looks terrible. It’s been muddy much of the time since August. I don’t know what they’re going to do. They say the ugly brown water is coming from upstream construction around Rowe. At least that’s the word down here.”

As it turns out, he was correct, according to Western Wildlife District aquatic biologist Dana Ohman, who confirmed river disturbance created by big equipment working in the upper Deerfield. Complicating matters are open sores called “bank slides,” which let loose during Irene along the main stem and tributaries and continue to contribute harmful siltation. “Right now (those washouts) are bare earth and the dirt’s getting washed into streams by rains,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do. We just have to wait for vegetation to re-establish itself and hold things together again. It’ll all correct itself over time.”

Ohman substantiated another rumor from my South Deerfield buddy. Indeed, just as he said, West County’s Chickley and Cold rivers and lower Clesson Brook will not be stocked this year. The notice posted on the Western District’s page of the MassWildlife stocking website says it all: “Due to the dramatic physical changes from the Tropical Storm Irene event in August 2011, the Cold River, Chickley River and the lower section of Clesson Brook have been temporarily removed from the trout-stocking list. Stocking will resume in future years.”

Although Western District stocking is idle, not so for the Valley District, which sent stocking crews out and about this week, hitting brooks and streams. So, if anxious, you may want to give it a shot this weekend at such waters as: Shattuck Brook in Bernardston; Poland Brook in Conway; Mill River in Deerfield and Whately; Mill River in Hatfield; Roaring Brook and Sawmill River in Leverett; Mill Brook in Northfield; West Brook in Whately; and Cushman Brook, Fort River and Mill River in Amherst.

Which reminds me: I bought my sporting license online Tuesday, with the same additional stamps and permits as last year, and the cost increased a whopping 30 bucks. Imagine that! Thirty bucks in one year. Do they call that inflation? Terrible news for a week when I’m a little ornery to begin with, in the midst of irritating tax chores. I guess I should just let it go. Why get all worked up? Not worth it.

So, off I go, back to “Quickbooks” insanity. Soon the tedious chore will be in the rear-view for another year. Never soon enough for me, even if the hourly wage does blow away my real job’s.

I learned long ago that a well-paying job isn’t necessarily a good one. Money isn’t everything.

Always dangerous to compose a column one day, then sit down for rewrite chores the next, exactly where I today find myself. So buckle your chinstraps, me a Cancer, waxing Full Sap Moon casting a contemplative midnight hue out back by the brook.

Isn’t it nice how this last winter moon cleared the air, lit the snow-blanketed terrain with a warm, seductive glow, and brought in frigid overnight temperatures — all the while the image of a massive, pale-red, sandstone ledge poking through the Green River captivating my imagination. Why, you ask? Well, two reasons: one, that familiar reddish rock reminds me of boyhood Sugarloaf adventures and, two, the race and pool following that submerged ledge’s south side offers a classic trout lair, a great outdoor classroom to teach a kid to read water and catch fish; quiet and secluded, my kinda place.

I discovered the site weeks ago while exploring new territory along a little-traveled section of the Green, a stretch of river I had meant to investigate since moving to the neighborhood 15 years ago. Since day one I have suspected it was ripe for fishing, yet never ventured there to confirm my suspicion. Well, now I have. I must in the future bring my grandsons there to savor the thrill of hooking stream trout, an art Babe Manson taught me many years ago on West Brook. So, I guess today we’ll talk a little about that and — surprise! — whatever else rises to the surface while sitting here tackling a weekly duty that has become quite dear to me 32 years later. Great fun, I’m never certain where I’m headed. But let’s start with that huge, red, Green River molar that likely plunges deep into Greenfield Meadows’ jawbone.

I can imagine uninhibited skinny-dippers sunning themselves on that massive red rock, not unlike one I know in the nearby Deerfield River. I’d guess this new stream monument measures better than 30 feet long and half that width, flat but undulated with soft, shallow contours to comfortably accept a body soaking in the hot summer sun. It sits along the east bank, where the river takes a sharp right turn, forming a backwater above before a short rapid sluices around a jutting point and drops gradually into a clear, deep pool that climbs around the corner into another shaded flat-water run across the river. I can picture halving a frisky nightcrawler, showing the boys how to thread it onto a No. 10 hook, bait-holders curling upward off the rear shaft, in such a way that the worm can expand and contract naturally as it rides the current, activity always enticing to hungry trout. I’ll then teach them how to cast upstream into the current above the rock and finesse the bait through the fast, tight channel at its head before dead-drifting it down into the shadowed, undercut feeding lair.

What has really been bugging me, though, is the salient question of how many trout are left in that river after the devastating late-August flood that big-time disrupted it and others. A few days after the flood, I found a dead, 11-inch rainbow in a dried-up bottomland puddle just downstream a bit and suspect there were many more like it that died similar slow deaths. I know the blue herons were having a ball in a sunken wetland border along the edge, likely devouring stranded fish, easy picking. At the time, I queried fisheries biologists who speculated that the mortality had been significant, if not from turbulence and river overflow, then from the fine, dense, suffocating clay particles that remained suspended in our rivers for more than a month. Trout can easily handle that fine debris during temporary summer events activated by heavy showers and flash floods, a common, short-lived phenomenon that stimulates superb angling because of all the feed washed into the stream. But six solid weeks and more of clay-fouled water can do a job on fishes’ respiratory systems, clogging their delicate gills with deadly accumulating grit that overloads their filtration system like an air filter exposed to powdery, dusty roads.

Reader Fred Bourassa sent an email last week saying he was glad to read mention of the stocking trucks revving their engines for their annual spring distribution. He said he couldn’t wait to fasten his hip boots around his belt. But, like me, he’s concerned with what he may discover upon visiting the likes of Clesson Brook, the North or Green rivers or, heaven forbid, that poorly reconstructed Chickley River before trout populations are replenished. Because the state hasn’t assessed post-flood trout mortality, early-bird anglers will be our best field researchers. So, please, if you find something worth reporting, fellas, give me a holler. I’d love to hear some homespun evaluations from those capable of comparing this to previous pre-stocking springs. My guess is that there will be fewer “holdovers” than usual, fish easily identifiable by their oversized heads and slim bodies that haven’t had time to fill out after winter dormancy.

Moving on, I’m still studying pre-Revolutionary Boston and must admit I’m proud to have deep roots here in Massachusetts, the cradle of American liberty and radicalism. Monday passed and I heard nary a word to note the 242nd anniversary of the Boston Massacre, accepted by most historians as the true first battle of the American Revolution. British soldiers shot and killed five “demonstrators” in the streets that day, March 5, 1770, when threatened by an unruly mob objecting to British military occupation of Boston. This largely forgotten skirmish preceded the Boston Tea Party by more than three years and set the stage for that day of Concord/Lexington infamy, April 19, 1775, another patriotic anniversary on the near horizon. Trust me, you can count on some mention of that one.

Britain back then was then the world’s imperial superpower, its military peerless yet unable to hold back a torrent of colonial rebellion. The result was victory by the radical leaders. The rest is history. But, wait, just for the heck of it, why not digress a bit by fast-forwarding to May 4, 1970, nearly 200 years to the day later, when National Guardsmen responded to Kent State University anti-war protests by killing four students and wounding nine? Out of one bloody demonstration came independence from a foreign oppressor, out of the more recent one, a sharp right turn by the law-and-order gang that led us in our current situation, “Occupy Wall Streeters” bludgeoned by city cops and thrown into filthy jails to the cheers of the mainstream; yes indeed, the same clueless lot whose pockets are picked daily at the pump and supermarket till by bankers’ greed. My, of my, how times change. Not always for the better, either. I truly believe that we arrived where we sit today because of three “timely” Sixties assassinations — supposed random acts by kooky loners, one an Arab, no less — that boomeranged the nation’s political direction back toward McCarthyism. I better not get going, though. Way too inflammatory.

Honestly, I should know better, having suffered the consequences of criticizing the Kent State killings as a peach-fuzzed, hormone-driven high-school junior. Let me summarize briefly without mentioning names. I can’t resist. My English teacher, long gone, was a horn-rimmed flat-topper who had carved a local reputation as a Recorder-Gazette scribe before making a career change and bringing his big ego and haughty air to the teaching profession at age 40, I’d guess. This squinty-eyed, tallish man praised my first essay to the heavens, giving me an A and — horrors! — reading it aloud to the class as I turned 19 shades of crimson, slumped low in the back row. Later, he handed out another assignment, potentially far more dangerous. He wanted us to opine on Kent State. Did we think the National Guard was justified for actions taken? Well, it probably comes as no surprise that I believed the soldiers should be punished, even prosecuted for murder. The teacher, now a local hero with some silly track and field sportsmanship award named in his honor, wasn’t interested in such immature claptrap. An erect, red-white-and-blue law-and-order man, he obviously thought the soldiers had performed a patriotic duty by finally teaching long-haired, malingering commies an overdue civics lesson. Love it or leave it! That was his chauvinistic mantra. And he probably even owned a cap or T-shirt to display his love of country. Anyway, he put a big red D on that essay and never a better subsequent grade. His criticism had nothing to do with my composition. Chalk it up as one more reason why I have no fond memories of that high school which abutted family property on two sides, and also why I have absolutely no respect for most of the teachers and coaches I encountered there. But, hey, that’s ancient history, right? Yeah, definitely. I’m way past that, an irrelevant speck in my rear-view mirror.

Just one more item before I skedaddle, a little alert to folks who recommend books to me. Although I do appreciate the gesture, scan the lists and keep them handy, I seldom follow through. The reason is simple. There is a method to my reading madness, always exploring, one subject leading to another, most recently the early New England mind. I have taken a few short diversions the past couple of weeks after bumping into an E.B. White book of essays in a place I wasn’t expecting to find it. I bought it, probably paid a little too much and have enjoyed reading it, studying the language, the construction. It’s what I do. If you get the drift, I sometimes read for information, stuff like history and biography, typically cumbersome, academic writing, the authors historians, not artists. Other times, I immerse myself in literature, reading for pleasure, studying style and literary device. White is worth reading for the latter. Though not in a league with my favorite novelist, enigmatic Norwegian Knut Hamsun — introduced to me by a UMass poet and Vietnam War correspondent whose UMass department head told him to strike “Pan” from his reading list — White is a tactician whose native language is English, a plus. I would recommend his 1959 revision of Will Strunk’s “Elements of Style,” known today as Strunk & White’s, to anyone who enjoys writing and language. It’s a good “little book” to keep handy, even though it may clash with AP Style and does remind me of school and the many unfair, uninspired high-school teachers who bored me to fury. But again, just water over an ancient stone dam, nothing more. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s always easiest to kowtow to authority, pull on those cushy knee pads for a big, loud, wet smooch. But in the end, given innate intellectual curiosity, do you really need high school and many teachers with little to offer?

Oooops! There I go again. Enough!

I’m outta here, a proud autodidact fortunate enough to have found four or five great teachers for guidance. They were easy to identify, though rare, even in college.

Then again, I went to college to play baseball and party, not study.

Lots of stuff and little space, nothing new, more like a weekly dilemma; that is, how to touch all the bases without busting allotted space, getting carried away, so to speak. Well, with snow falling, the press running an hour early and local activities canceled, why worry? There’s space to fill.

To begin with, grandson Jordi is in town for the week and I must say I’m thoroughly enjoying his bright-eyed companionship. So, I’ll give you a bit of that and a little more on our ongoing turkey discussion, something on fishing, particularly trout stocking but also shad and salmon, plus a quick mention of Buddhism and another brief diversion into traveling music.

Let’s begin with fish, the salient question being: Exactly what impact will our mild winter have on the Connecticut Valley stocking schedule, not to mention the timing of our anadromous fish runs, spurred annually by water temperature and flow. Well, Valley District Fisheries Manager Dave Basler confirms that indeed he intends to start trout-stocking next week. So there you have it. Could a better sign that spring’s sprung appear on the horizon, despite the snow that began falling after noontime Wednesday? As for our wild, migratory fish, it seems likely that Connecticut River water temps will be running a little high this spring, new snow notwithstanding, thus perhaps an early run, unless my knee-jerk logic is sadly twisted. Always a possibility, I suppose. A chance I take. We’ll see.

On the music front, yes, I’m still enjoying bluegrass in my travels but I also dug out Townes Van Zandt from that black, faux-leather sleeve strapped to my visor — turkey and partridge tail feathers poking out of a slot to add the wild effect. I’m enjoying Van Zandt’s introspective lyrics, not to mention the all-star acoustic session musicians backing him up on “The Nashville Sessions,” for my money, his best album. A Texas singer-songwriter, Van Zandt is in a class with Dylan as an artist but lesser known. A talented and troubled man, he was tortured by inner demons, chief among them depression, which comes through loud and clear in his lyrics, haunting stuff like:

If I had a nickel I’d find and game.
If I won a dollar I’d make it rain.
If it rained an ocean I’d drink it dry,
and lay me down dissatisfied.

That’s a thought-provoking verse from “Rex’s Blues” that has always touched me, gets my wheels spinnin’ in a philosophical manner. I guess we’ve all been there. Not a pretty place to linger. It’s manageable when unusual and brief, but Van Zandt, dead for 15 years now, lived it, couldn’t shake it while battling substance-abuse demons that deepened his melancholia and contributed to his untimely demise at 52. He was among our best poets but likely never reached his pinnacle.

Which segues nicely into Buddhism, of all things, a subject that really grabbed me while reading the latest “Orion,” a literary magazine focused on nature/culture/place and published every other month, the likes of Wendell Berry and Barbara Kingsolver among the contributors. The latest issue (March/April) is jammed with great, highly recommended stuff, including a little short story by Mark Slouka titled “Russian Mammoths.” Sloutka opens by explaining that Buddhists separate their lives into quadrants, the last of which is “enlightenment.” I guess what hit me square on the chin first was an old friend’s opinion that I was a closet Buddhist because of my fascination with moons and waters, citing particularly the way I often compare flowing waters to the ebbs and flows of life itself. To be perfectly honest, at the time I knew nothing about Buddhism other than its Far-Eastern origin, but I did find that long-ago comment from a friend alluring, a real wheel-spinner I have not forgotten. I remember thinking back then that maybe there was something to reincarnation theories. Perhaps in my past life I was Buddhist. Or, then again, maybe Buddhism just came to me like the sweet scent of a flowering Memorial Day lilac bush in the early-morning fog. Could it be that there’s a little Buddhist in all of us, or at least in those of us with Pantheist tendencies? When I read Slouka’s lead about the final enlightenment stage of Buddhism, I realized I’m living it, wondered for the umpteenth time where it’ll take me in the future. I hope to continue living this introspective stage of life for decades, reading, reflecting and relating intricate pieces of life experience into a final perspective. I find it exciting, something to live for, to share with those dear to me. But enough of that. Onto turkeys, a subject mentioned frequently here of late, another harbinger of spring on a snowy day.

The focus of my recent turkey dialogue has been the lack of sightings by travelers along local byways typically littered with birds of winter. Well, just a day after last week’s column hit the street — Bingo! — things changed. First the Conway observer who’s been bemoaning the scarcity of turkeys around his property for months sent me an email that arrived Friday at 6:17 p.m. and read: “They’re back. Not sure where they were, but there were about 80 in (my neighbor’s) field this afternoon. Not much for deer, though … yet.” Because I was working a rare Friday-night shift, I wasn’t home to receive that email but did, within an hour of its arrival at my home, receive a phone call at work about a sighting off Route 63 in North Amherst, near Cherry Hill Golf Course. A woman identifying herself as “The Hatfield Chick” called me from the Rendezvous because she had seen a large turkey flock earlier in the day and wanted to send me cell-phone photos. Hmmmm? I was confused by “The Hatfield Chick” moniker, immediately thinking of another lady I call “The Hatfield Filly.” But then it all came into focus and I placed her. She’s an acquaintance from the annual “Soup Party” I look forward to each February at my old South Deerfield home but missed this year due to a business engagement. Anyway, her photos show a longbeard fanned out in full display for what I at first believed to be a harem of lovely hens. Well, check that. Upon closer Photoshop inspection, they’re all males, some gobblers, some jakes, maybe 12 in all, but still in their winter mode. So, no, I guess our turkeys are not confused by this so-called winter of ours that finally reared its ugly head Wednesday.

In closing, back to grandson Jordi. I drove up to get him at 1 p.m. Friday in Randolph, Vt., and was stunned by the bare brown fields along the way, that and the total absence of cows anywhere on landscape once littered with them. Not anymore. In fact, never saw a cow anywhere. Isn’t it sad how New England dairies have vanished? As for snow, well, also basically nothing but postage-stamp patches here and there in shaded depressions until I got past Bethel on Route 89. Then, climbing into Vermont’s snow belt on the way to Randolph, consistent snow cover finally appeared on both sides of the road. But even there, very little, maybe an inch or two in the woods, a generous estimate. Likewise, on the faraway Green Mountains vista encompassing Sugarbush and Mad River Glen, there was snow but much less than you’d expect this time of year. Well, wouldn’t you know it! No sooner had I snuggled into the Randolph-McDonald’s parking lot under somber skies than a wet, sticky snow began to fall. The storm was short-lived for Jordi and me. By the time we hit I-91 in White River Junction, Vt., it was far in our rear-view. By mid-afternoon, we were parked in my Greenfield driveway. Jordi was pleased to learn on the drive that there would be a 1704 re-enactment the next day in Old Deerfield. His excitement pleased me. He needs joy in his life. No boy should experience the devastating loss he has endured at his tender age. The kid just turned 6 a couple of weeks ago, wasn’t even 5 when his father died. Now he has other vexing issues that are no fault of his own. I won’t even go there, but let’s just say life can be unfair. I will be there for the kid, and for younger brother Arie. I owe it to their dad, my late namesake son who died at 28.

I can’t say Saturday’s re-enactment compare favorably with the one we attended in June at The Fort at No. 4 in Charlestown, N.H., but it was still worth the trip. The weather was chilly, there were fewer re-enactors and no booming cannons, which are always a fascination for youngsters. Nonetheless, Jordi got plenty out of our Deerfield adventure, another important seed of discovery planted. He talked to costumed French, Indians and English colonists, made a partial candle by dipping a wick, dangling from a thin stick, into an iron pot of liquid wax hanging from an Indian House fireplace crane, and even got to handle New England, Oak Tree, Willow Tree and Pine Tree shillings, America’s first colonial coins, minted by none other than his 11th great-grandfather, proper 17th century Bostonian Robert Sanderson, called the father of American silversmiths. The discovery mission didn’t end there. On our way to the re-enactment perch overlooking the flood-ravaged Deerfield Academy athletic fields, we paid a visit to the Old Albany Road burial ground, Franklin County’s oldest, containing no less than 14 pairs of grandparents and many other ancient relatives. That little diversion I also viewed as an important seed planted, one that’ll sprout a sugar-maple sapling, not one of those sorry Norwegian maples dying along the roadside. Those foreign trees didn’t do any better here than our sugar maples did in Europe, proving one more time that some things are not meant to be.

I believe Jordi understood his deep-rooted attachment to Deerfield when, standing atop the mound capping the mass grave for 1704 victims, he flashed me a soft, humble smile. He “got it” when I explained to him that one of the fallen was “Brave Benjamin” Wait, another great-grandfather of his. A proud, experienced, hard-headed Indian fighter and former captive from Hatfield, Brave Ben foolishly fell in the Meadow Fight he should have known was a death sentence, pursuing triumphant French and Indian attackers escaping town with captives through the North Meadows. Today, I carry some of that innate stubbornness with me everywhere I go. I’m certain Jordi’s got a little bit, too. I guess we’ll have to work on it in the future.

Soon Jordi will be able to read and write and ponder life’s mysteries. I am anxious to help show him the way, be a sage guide during this, the final stage of my Buddhist existence. When fathering my own boys, I was in a far different space, still figuring out who I was and how I fit into the total picture. True, I planted valuable seeds in my boys, many of them sprouting suspicions of authority, never cool in the classroom. But I know in my heart and soul that the grandfatherly seeds I now can sow will produce a sweeter fruit. Who knows? Maybe even a tad less defiant.