I’m assuming pheasant season opened with a bang Saturday. I wasn’t there to witness it. Why buck opening-day crowds? That’s my motto. Crowded coverts are not for me.

But I’m not here to chat about hunting today. We have other issues, ones I pushed onto the backburner last week after learning of an old Whately friend’s sudden and untimely death. So now it’s back to that mountain biker’s Northfield Mountain cougar sighting reported here, then a little more on the Deerfield River dams, which may or may not have contributed to and/or been capable of avoiding millions of dollars of damage along the 73-mile, power-generating river that runs from Somerset, Vt., to Old Deerfield.

But let’s begin with the follow-up on that early-September cougar sighting by Jeff Mias from Worcester. It appears that times have changed at MassWildlife after that wild Western cougar was killed on a Connecticut highway in June. Apparently, our state wildlife officials are no longer turning a deaf ear to sightings like Mias’.

I received an Oct. 4 email from Mias that started lightheartedly by debunking my speculation that, if reported to the authorities, they would likely dismiss his sighting as a misidentification or an LSD flashback. “Well,” he wrote, “the folks at MassWildlife didn’t tell me I saw an orange tabby housecat hunting chipmunks, yet!!!” Instead, his emailed report drew an appropriate response from a woman at MassWildlife headquarters in Westborough. Her response was:

“It would be very helpful to get a description of the animal you saw. Size is important. Tell us if the animal was the size of a familiar breed of dog (i.e. sheltie, border collie, German Shepard), color of fur, distinctive markings, length of tail, shape of face. These too are important for us.”

Mias was more than happy to cooperate, promptly responding with a detailed written description of what he saw that day:

“Thanks for the response. I’m most familiar with the German shepherd, so I’ll equate it to that. When I saw it, the mountain lion was at a slight crouch with the head and back level. It was clearly tracking something. In a crouch, it was probably as tall as a full-grown German shepherd. I suspect that if it were upright, it would have been slightly taller. This thing was huge. Its length was much, much longer than a German shepherd, that’s for sure! It was certainly not a smaller bobcat or fisher cat.

“The tail was down and long, kind of like the letter U. The head was quite large and round, with a short, round snout. There wasn’t a long nose on it like a Shepherd or even a wolf. It was definitely a large feline face, as opposed to canine. I don’t remember anything about the ears. There were no distinctive markings or multiple fur colors whatsoever. It was all one color, kind of a grayish, darker color. I assumed mountain lions have a lighter brown coat, so this part confuses me a little.

“Lastly, I remember the legs seemed very large, too, not in height but diameter. It was walking and the thighs seemed enormous to me. The trail I was on is pretty wide, 15 feet at least, so the sighting was only a matter of maybe six or seven seconds as it walked across the trail from right to my left.
“Any other questions, please feel free to ask. I’ll do my best. My heart still races when I think about it!”

Think about it: Would a man really go to those lengths to embellish a wild, publicity-seeking hoax? Not likely in my mind. But that’s just me. Opinions vary.

Enough of that, though! On to the Deerfield dams, all 10 of them controlled by a power company named TransCanada. The first three are located in Vermont, but the remaining seven are right here in western Franklin County.

Curious about the water-release protocol before and during high-volume rain events such as Irene, I queried a staff attorney for the Vermont Public Service Board, which oversees the state’s power-generating dams. The attorney was more than helpful and, upon request, promptly emailed me a grid listing Vermont dams, their reservoir capacities, hazard ratings and other information. All three Vermont dams on the Deerfield are rated “high hazard,” which doesn’t mean they’re physically weak or compromised, just that a dam-break would lead to significant loss of life and property, not a comforting thought.

The lawyer was forthcoming with information on Oct. 3, when we went back and forth in a rapid-fire, instant-messaging-like email exchange about the dams, including my question as to where I could get a list of the Massachusetts dams along the Deerfield. All his answers were quick and helpful, but when I asked if there was a public record of daily water releases, he had no answer, just this:

“I know of no public listing of water releases. I do know the owners of dams walk a line between planning ahead for public safety, maximizing generation, and maintaining proper water levels for fish and wildlife, but I don’t know how to get access to records to see just how they are performing that balancing act. My impression from my limited contacts with the TransCanada people is that they take all three missions very seriously, but their dams are not actually under the jurisdiction of the Vermont Public Service Board except in extremely limited ways.”

Hmmmmm? A power company can use a valuable public resource like the Deerfield for private gain, yet no public records? How could that be? Doesn’t that leave TransCanada unaccountable following a devastating flood that could have been impacted by bad decisions made under duress by people affecting the river flow? I was hoping a record of historical releases would be revealing about how the dams handle their releases during high-water events. I was also interested in pre-Irene reservoir releases compared the other periods of high water over the years. No such luck.

Like I suspected from the start and have suggested here more than once, it will likely take an act of Congress or a court order to pry those Irene records free. And do you know what? It may yet happen if riverside property owners who had no flood insurance file a lawsuit, as rumored, to try to recoup losses from the power company, if culpable.

The Aug. 27 and Aug. 28 dam records should be released and reviewed, if for no other reason than to be prepared for the next dangerous tropical storm. Like a Whately octogenarian told me just Monday in his pasture, “It seems like we’re getting those 300-year storms every other year nowadays.” So, given that, isn’t it likely we’ll be facing more serious flooding in the near future?

I suspect we haven’t heard the end of this. Not by a long shot. I keep hearing rumors that may have legs down around Stillwater, The Bars and Old Deerfield. Although I haven’t been up in Shelburne Falls, I suspect there’s talk there, too.

Stay tuned. It could get interesting, contentious and, yes, even ugly.

The natives are restless.

A familiar landscape it was, viewed from a new vista, flavored by a soft southern breeze that helped inflate a solemn affair with a touch of charm. Old friend Dave Scott, ninth-generation farmer on a proud Whately spread — that alone worthy of tribute — was being laid to rest at a place of his choosing: a secluded knoll on acreage he and his family have called home for parts of four centuries. We should all be so fortunate.

The Sunday afternoon air was hot, the pasture a vibrant autumn green, the view beneath infinite blue skies simply breathtaking. At the base of the hill to the left stood two or three ancient oaks, their muscular limbs reaching with clenched fists to the sunny heavens. Behind them, on the eastern horizon, stood the Sugarloafs, north and south, my childhood playmates, backed by the dense Toby range, that too once a mischievous youthful destination. To the right of Mount Sugarloaf and across the hidden Connecticut River stood the top third of the Sunderland steeple, poking like a slim white wedge through rich green tree cover displaying faint hints of fall. As I stood in somber respect, eyes wandering as the minister read Scripture, Scott family seated on hay bales up front, I remember thinking a man couldn’t find a better spot for his final resting place.

Scottie was my old high school teammate and friend. He died suddenly, after lunch Oct. 5, working at the woodpile below. We had spoken often there, sadly will not speak again. They say he expired before hitting the ground. Lucky, yes. Yet, at 59, far too young. I will miss him: a good, honest, humble man of aristocratic Connecticut Valley pedigree and humor.

Years back, I remember speaking to him in passing right at the spot where he expired. I was hunting, stopped to chat and, without hesitation, addressed him by his old high school nickname. “Hey, Scottie,” I said to get his attention. When he looked up with bemused countenance, I took notice, thought maybe he hadn’t heard what I said. Then it dawned on me that maybe no one called him Scottie anymore. I asked if he objected to his old schoolyard name and he responded with that half-grunt, half-chuckle of his through a dense, unruly gray beard, looked me square in the eye with those warm, light-blue eyes, shook his head a bit and quipped, “No, not so much, but I don’t mind it. I can still call you Bags, can’t I?” His eyes always reminded me of my father’s. I call them Whately eyes, pale blue, kind and seductive. I was born with my mother’s browns; OK, I guess.

Since that day probably 20 years ago, we often spoke when our paths crossed, usually during hunting season, be it along North Street or up along the dirt road through the Glen, once Sanderson’s, now Scott’s. I even bought cordwood from him on occasion, never a bad load, a man of integrity you could trust. Friendships from youth, especially those shared by teammates, even on teams you’d rather forget, survive through years of adult separation. Such bonds are branded deep into a special chamber in your soul, where it takes only a soft bellow’s breath through puckered lips to quickly revive the ashen embers to a hot orange glow. Although we didn’t chum around, hunt together or socialize, we had that old indelible bond, Scottie and me. I’m sure he shared the same type of relationship with others. Not soul mates. Just friends.

It was fitting how I learned of my friend’s passing, right up there on that familiar Glen road where we shared ancestral spirits peeking around massive hardwoods like Pan himself, half goat, half man, before whimsically fleeing atop sturdy stonewalls stained with our DNA. A friend and I were returning from a hunt for hen of the woods mushrooms when I spotted Scottie’s longtime friend and hired hand, Tanner, approaching slowly in his truck. Tanner always putts along, searching the landscape. I pulled over to chat as I always do when I bump into Tanner. We talked about hen of the woods and the best place to find them before he told us of Scottie’s death less than 24 hours earlier at the base of the hill. “Oh,” I said. “No wonder Ducky was at his father’s place when I went through earlier.”

I still call Scottie’s younger brother Don “Ducky,” and I know others do as well, those who’ve known him since they were kids. For me, the nicknames stop with the kids, though. I call their father by his given name, Lyndon. Those of his generation know him as “Sonny.” Not me. I call him Lyndon, friend and distant relative of my dad, and that’s what I called him when I stopped to offer my condolences the day I learned of his older son’s passing. I found him sitting on a lawn chair near the driveway, two neighborhood ladies keeping him company on a difficult day I am familiar with. He seemed to be doing well, considering.

By chance, I ran into Ducky the next day at Pekarski’s. I was buying meat when his wife, Judy, walked through the doors. “Sorry to hear about Dave,” I said. “Yeah, it sucks,” she responded. I found Ducky sitting in his SUV outside, a young, happy, yellow Lab poking its head through the back window, ears alert, eyes friendly. Ducky was stoic, like his dad had been the day before, but I knew he had to be hurting inside. He told me the funeral service was scheduled for Sunday, a green burial “out back” in a plain pine box. He expected a crowd. I would be part of it.

When Sunday arrived, I planned my day around the service and arrived at Scott’s farm before 1 p.m., following a sign through the old barnyard and up the hill to a pasture I had often viewed from below but never visited. There were many cars and people, Scottie’s family and friends. The service would be on the first level, the burial a step up. The hearse was a simple hay wagon. Perfect for Scottie. I had to work and couldn’t attend the graveside ceremony at a secluded spot I’m sure is quite beautiful and tranquil. I’ll get up there someday, probably sooner than later. Maybe I’ll stop to say hello to Lyndon and offer him a ride up. I want to see it, maybe stop on a whim to say hello. I’m sure someone will show me the way. Maybe even Tanner if I catch him this fall in my travels. I’ll drive, drop it into 4-wheel if necessary. Scottie’s spirit will undoubtedly brighten the place, make it inviting and friendly in his gentle manner.

I was determined to sign the register before I left the pasture for work . There had to be a book somewhere, but I didn’t know where. I asked a few people but no one had seen it. When the minister invited people to the committal service up the hill, followed by a social gathering at a tent next to the house, I figured the tent was the most likely place to look. So I slid off toward the house and, sure enough, found the book there on a folding card table outside the tent. A woman neighbor was in front of me. We were on the same mission. My name went under hers, second. I printed my name, adding  below it “A Whately brother.” Others may have seen it and been confused, wondered what I meant. It doesn’t matter. Scottie and I were cut from similar Whately homespun. Many people claimed we bore a resemblance in high school. My mother has always said our fathers also look alike. It makes sense. We share many grandparents, all of whom lived in Whately when it was still Hatfield. Upper Pioneer Valley roots don’t grow much deeper than that among the fair-skinned.

While it’s true that I have never lived in Whately and likely never will, I will forever consider it my home. It flows through my bloodstream and also that of the ninth-generation farmer and friend who died young but left his mark. His humble hillside farm was part of him; now his private grave is part of it.

It’s sad we all can’t wind up in similar paradise.

Here I sit, once again wondering where I’m headed, akin to taking an old path through new woods. Unafraid, I’m confident I’ll find my way back to the truck one way or another. So why not stretch my legs and see where they take me?

I know where I should be going. It’s the final week of the 17-day September bear season. I could be calling the checking stations like I always have, digging for local tales worth sharing. But, no, I’m not going there today. That “Fancy Dan” presidential candidate of ours, Mitt “The Twit” Romney, ruined everything as Bay State governor. It seems these republicans with a capital R have perfected ways to keep the press at bay ever since Nixon reappeared in 1968 and … horrors … won. So, even right here in the cradle of liberty, no more quick calls to state officials without permission from professional screeners.

When I try to sidestep the annoying policy by calling longtime sources that trust me after years of interaction, the answer never changes: “Sorry, Gary, you know the rules.” In other words, as much as they’d like to talk, they can’t until they get permission, which has always been granted upon request, but never instantaneously. First, of course, “official” clearance must arrive by email or phone. Mind you, we’re talking about freakin’ bear-harvest numbers here, not state secrets. But I don’t want to get too wound up. I may well be under surveillance from a “smart meter” on the side of my home or maybe a tiny camera on the telephone pole across the street. Not out of the question these days, no matter what the apologists tell you.

Isn’t it sad how government has brought the press to heel these days, reducing “news” to press-release journalism, where everyone gets the homogenized story on the same day, and newspapers must resign themselves to reporting “old news” the morning after readers have seen it on the boob tube? Oddly, the papers seem fine with it. That’s what I can’t understand. Maybe it protects editors and scribes from getting “scooped” by the competition, if there is any, so they accept it. Not me. I view it as suicide and refuse to play their silly game. I’d much rather write something unique, even if it must be about poking around with the dogs, marveling at nature’s harmony, which, sadly, our political system cannot duplicate. Aren’t politics irritating? In fact, it’s gotten to the point where it’s difficult to pay attention; so much misinformation and deception, pure rhetoric aimed at toothless bores in Walmart boots who chew and savor it, then spit it up like a floppy-eared bitch in a whelping pen. The difference is that the regurgitated food on the floor helps pups’ weaning process. There is no benefit to propaganda unless you’re the special-interest group bankrolling it. I often find myself wondering where it’ll all lead. I think we’ll soon find out. Other empires have declined and decayed. Why should we be any different? Greed kills. Virtue is dead, or at least comatose.

But let’s not get mired in politics. I want to revisit the beechnuts I’ve been watching all summer. They’re now ripe and quite delicious. I’ve been eating them daily and even shared one the other day with a hippie dude nursing Christmas trees down in my favorite meadow. I may be a gun-owner and hunter but I’d rather talk to a hipster any day than one of those guys wearing an NRA cap, mirrored aviator sunglasses and a Cabela’s T-shirt, proudly belching Fox-News claptrap. From a man who’s never tweeted or texted, all I can say is OMG. Wait. Didn’t I leave out a letter? No. Better not. This is a family paper.

Anyway, back to the hippie dude. He chewed my shiny white beechnut pearl and said, “Mmmmmmm. Nice. Tastes a little like an almond.” I had spotted and walked toward the young man out of curiosity. It was raining and his parked motorcycle was covered by a blue tarp near the gate. Never before had I seen the bike there. When I reached him with the tree dogs, Lily barking in an unthreatening manner, I remembered having a handful of the thorny nuts in my breast pocket. I dug one out, split it in two, popped the two nuts out of the husks and peeled off the shells and inner brown film covering the good one before handing it to him. The other shell contained only a withered brown sliver. Don’t ask me why. It’s above my pay grade. But I have found several like it in recent days when breaking fallen nuts open. Also, most of the shells lying free out of their husks on the ground were similarly empty, much like I’ve grown accustomed to finding over the years in my beech-grove meanders. Earlier this summer, I couldn’t pick a nut that wasn’t full of immature meat; now this. Hmmmm? Maybe someone out there knows why so many beechnuts become hollow soon after or just before hitting the ground. If so, please tell.

Later that night at work, my chamois shirt covering photos stacked in a basket on my desk, I remembered the nuts were still in the pocket. I grabbed the shirt, took out a nut and pried it open. The interior shell was still greenish and, sure enough, both nuts were good, one better than the other. I peeled them both clean, threw the trimmings into the wastebasket and handed the better nut to desk mate and local agronomist Jay Butynski, to me, the Big Boiczek. He sampled it, looked at me like I was crazy and nodded with satisfaction. I told him that, although labor-intensive, a quart jarful of the little pearls would be great to have on the counter for mixing with fruit in morning cereal. Then he really thought I was losing it, maybe even turning granola-cruncher. But, hey, the Indians used to grind beechnuts into flour for nutritious breads and gruel that kept them far healthier than the stuff you buy nowadays at Stop & Shop or Shop & Save or whatever. Myself, I’m provincial and proud of it. At least local families own Foster’s and Big Y. That’s where I go. Big boxes are to me what smallpox was to colonials: something to stay far away from. But what do big boxes have to do with beechnuts, anyway? OK. I get it. Just a quick diversion. Back to the task at hand, that of local news that’s recently crossed my wayward path.

Whispers of a power company’s villainous role in the Aug. 28 flood that ravaged Deerfield apparently haven’t quieted. In fact, they may be getting louder. I received an email from a photographer friend who’d been out of town and missed my last two columns. He wanted to know if I had heard or written anything about a potential lawsuit by Deerfield farmers who contend that the power company erred by failing to release water from their upriver reservoirs as a safety precaution before Tropical Storm Irene. A fly-fishing guide told him the landowners were angry and united. I called a friend who’d know and he had heard nothing but said he’d look into it. I never heard back from him but did get another email the next morning from a Deerfield resident I do not now. He said WMass Electric Co. linemen had told people the day of the flood that the Whitingham Dam had been breached and the gates were opened because officials feared a disastrous blowout. He also claimed that local legislators had been flooded with calls for a probe but not a one of them wanted to touch it. Hmmmmm? Go figure. Who knows if there’s anything to it? Just thought I’d pass along the rumor. My guess is that it won’t be “news” to some readers.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now, likely more than enough for the weak-kneed and true blue. I hope I didn’t stir things up too much. It’s hard to say exactly what consumed me. Maybe it’s the magical beechnut protein, spiritual food for thought. If so, I may yet fill that quart jar on the counter with pearls of wisdom to sprinkle on my cereal and stir my imagination.

They’re pure, wild and delightful.

With grandson Jordi in town for Labor Day weekend, I was sleeping in a small upstairs room when my wife appeared at the door after 4 a.m. Sunday.

“Honey?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry to wake you. A cop just left. He said a neighbor complained that Buddy was barking and there’s a skunk in the kennel.”

“How could that be?” I thought, as I rose to dress.

A skunk in the kennel? Huh?

I hadn’t heard the barking because the air conditioner eliminated outside noise. But when I got out back, sure enough, Buddy, excited to see me, was leaping up at the kennel door. Below him, seemingly content and unalarmed, stood a young black skunk with a thin white strip down its tail. The little critter had already left its calling card, a strong odor clinging to the kennel area, as I cautiously approached. When I opened the door, swung it out and stepped back, Buddy sprinted toward the brook and I walked away in the same direction, attempting to give the skunk a wide berth.

After 10 or 15 seconds, the skunk waddled through the doorway and followed a stone wall away from us. I stood and watched, figuring I’d give it time to get out of sight before moving. Then, suddenly, the skunk took an abrupt left turn and scooted out our way like a kitten called to dinner. Curiously, the little critter seemed fascinated with Buddy, which I found a little unnerving, me standing there empty-handed in backyard darkness, wearing shorts and a pair of Birkenstocks. I sensed weirdness. Maybe the skunk had rabies or something else dreadful.

I decided to vacate the area, so I turned, walked quickly toward the barn and called Buddy, who sprinted past me like only Buddy can, running the length of the barn and circling into the front yard by the flagpole. When I looked back to monitor the skunk’s movement, I was surprised to see it following like a happy little lapdog. I picked up the pace, turned the corner, got to my carriage sheds and turned on the lights. My wife was standing in the open doorway, shooing Buddy out.

“Did you find it?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s a young skunk. You should be seeing it soon. It’s following us.”

“Get a shovel,” she said. “Buzzy says that’s what he uses.”

As I walked toward the shovels, rakes and tools hanging on the inner shed wall, sure enough, here comes the skunk, right at me, not aggressive in any way, waddling with a happy gait. I grabbed the first thing I could reach, a long wooden-handled edger with a rounded 10-inch blade, and extended it out in front of me as the skunk passed. But that skunk wasn’t interested in me; it wanted its newfound Buddy, who was standing in front of the door my wife had by then closed. The friendly little critter walked up to Buddy, who didn’t seem the least bit afraid, ignoring it as he looped toward me. When the skunk followed, I backed off, but it kept coming right at me. At that point, when it got within reach on the illuminated driveway, I took a swipe at it, narrowly missed and the metal blade threw sparks off the tar in front of its face. The skunk got the message, turned and waddled away down the driveway and across the road, never to reappear. I put Buddy back in the kennel and went to bed.

In the morning, I went out back for daylight inspection and found that the skunk had tried to dig its way into the kennel around the entire perimeter. How it finally entered, I could not tell, but it got in, maybe squeezing through one of the three-inch diamond-shaped, chain-link fence openings. I daily feed the dogs out there in the adjacent cookhouse and the skunk must have been eating spilled food on the ground and cookhouse floor, then smelled something it liked in the kennel and found a way in while Buddy slept soundly on cedar shavings in his plastic 50-gallon drum. At least that’s my theory, and I did give the mystery some serious evaluation.

A day or two later, while walking my favorite meadow with the dogs, I recounted the story to a woman who raises Christmas trees there. We often speak in passing and that day was no different. Her theory was that the skunk had been separated from its mother by the flood or something else, and was temporarily confused and hungry. A similar post-flood occurrence had unfolded in her own yard, she said. A rat, flooded out of the steep bank overlooking a wet depression behind her home, had sat bold and brazenly in her yard for a couple of days until the floodwaters receded. Then it disappeared, likely back to where it had come from.

Later that day, on my second walk through the meadow, this time with my wife, the same woman approached through the mature Christmas trees. She wanted to share a tale about another critter she had encountered that had apparently been dazed by the flood. While cleaning and straightening her trees that had been underwater on Aug. 28, she and her crew came upon an unusual sight. Stretched out head-high across debris woven into the needled limbs of a seven-foot Christmas tree laid a large, healthy garden snake. A worker poked at the harmless reptile and it shot off to safety like it knew exactly what it was doing.

The moral of the story?

Although weird things happen when nature unleashes her fury and all hell breaks loose, wild creatures find a way to survive.

A lot of questions, few answers: That’s what’s facing me this week, especially Tuesday, on what would have been my late son’s 29th birthday.

I remember Gary’s 1982 birth well. There I was, marching with a bare-bones, pick-up softball team toward the annual Athol Labor Day Tournament finals, and my wife went into labor around 4 a.m. on, yup, Labor Day. How appropriate. Off to the Cooley-Dick we went, taking the back road through West Whately. We arrived at the hospital before 6, Gary was born by 8 or 9 a.m. and I raced off to sweltering Silver Lake Park, where we wound up winning the tourney against an array of ringer semi-fast pitchers from Gardner, the North Shore and New Hampshire. But that’s not my subject this week; no, just a quick diversion down memory lane before returning to the present. So now it’s back to the flood aftermath, and threats of new flooding with more rain that must be derailing opening week of bear season. These days, I’m most fascinated by the silt, sand and stone distribution on Old Deerfield’s meadows, north and south, quite a variation from one site to the next. It’s challenging to make sense of it all.

I’ll start on the North Meadows, where my friend raises a vegetable garden on historic Native American farmland owned by the Yazwinski family. There is no better soil in the world. That’s why the Pocumtucks, Deerfield’s indigenous tribe, chose it for their maize fields, which were discovered sometime after 1636 by William Pynchon and scouts seeking beaver pelts to export from their riverside Springfield base. I long ago told my buddy he was fortunate to have a garden down there, that he couldn’t find a better plot. If the Indians used it as cropland, it had to be the best soil on earth. Yeah, there are other local spots as good — Hadley’s Honey Pot and Northampton’s Oxbow, for instance — but none better than the North Meadows. Although I know I’m traipsing into blasphemous territory and am not intentionally trying to stir up true-believers who think the world is flat and began with Adam & Eve, sites like the North Meadows have layers of deep, rich soil deposited by annual floods dating back tens of thousands of years. Less than a mile upstream from the Deerfield’s confluence with the Connecticut River, that North Meadows soil got a foot or so deeper two weekends back.

A couple of days after the Aug. 28 flood closed local roads and bridges and swamped buildings, my buddy and I were discussing it on the phone. His North Meadows garden had been submerged by water so deep that it covered the 10-foot, steel rebar rods he erected for his climbing, Sicilian heirloom tomatoes. When the water disappeared, a five-gallon pail rested atop one of the rods like a Mexican sombrero, clearly illustrating a serious flood. Likewise, Sunken Meadow where I walk my dogs had been covered by six or eight feet of Green River water. When we discussed the fine, grayish silt spread over both sites, I mentioned something about it being the most fertile soil money could buy. He said he wasn’t sure that was true but offered no debate. He had walked through the deep, cumbersome mud that day, it was sticky and he wasn’t sure what to think. It appeared clay-based and he couldn’t be certain it was rich, organic soil. And I must admit that his uncertainty got me wondering about the silt’s quality, a question that bugged me for a few days.

Then, toward the end of the week, I got a telephone call at work from an old South Deerfield pal of mine, an “official” observer of the Deerfield flooding. He had not been to the North Meadows but had visited South Meadows and the Bars. When I mentioned that the only positive from a negative event was a new layer of rich topsoil, he told me I was mistaken. He had spoken to landowner Sandy Williams, whose South Meadows farmland was covered with sterile sand that had to be scraped off and trucked away. Hmmm? That got me thinking. Maybe fall floods don’t spread the good stuff like their spring cousins. I almost mentioned something about it last week here but was perplexed and decided against it at the last minute. I wanted to take a field trip before commenting, didn’t want to pillory my ignorance on the public square.

The plot thickened this week when I called my North-Meadows-garden buddy. He had spoken over the weekend to Butch Yazwinski, who told him the gray silt covering his acreage was as rich and fertile as it gets. With that question answered, my buddy drew the landowner into a conversation about a related subject he was curious about. He had noticed that, unlike North Meadows farmers, those working the South Meadows irrigated their crops. Why? Yazwinski told him the soil in the two adjacent meadows was dramatically different, the South Meadows’ sandy, the North Meadows’ rich. Intrigued, my buddy took a ride to the South Meadows and, sure enough, just like my other friend had told me, Williams and other farmers were busy scraping into big piles what looked like beach sand left by the flood. It had to be removed along with stones. The desert sand was obviously better suited for swimming than farming. The color alone made that obvious. Wasn’t it interesting, he thought, that two meadows on the same bottomland plain, just two or three miles apart, could have such different soil composition.

That Tuesday telephone conversation is what initiated my exploratory mission. I picked up my buddy and off we went to territory I am quite familiar with. We drove through the two meadows joined by a narrow, riverside strip that includes the flooded lower Deerfield Academy athletic fields, one meadow on each side of Old Deerfield Village. The North Meadows was covered with a rich, dense, gray silt with no resemblance to the stuff deposited on the South Meadows, where bucket-loaders were still scraping up sand. We wondered aloud about the phenomenon of two meadows so close getting entirely different soil deposits from the flood. It must have something to do with elevation, flow-rate and the comparative weight of the sand and rich gray sediment raging through the long, steep Shelburne/Conway gorge before flowing into Stillwater and spilling into the bottomland, sweeping around several sharp turns that eventually can’t contain the rising water. Whatever the dynamic, it has remained consistent for millennia, thus the dry, sandy soil in the South Meadows and rich, deep, black soil in the downstream delta. The lighter sediment settles in the expansive basin after the slightly higher plain gets the heavier sand and gravel. Plus, the rich sediment gets spread fairly evenly throughout the North Meadows by a backwater swirl that gently circles away from the destructive current hugging the western perimeter and fills the basin all the way to the Route 5 & 10 eastern lip.

Who knows? Maybe my explanation is way off. Then again, maybe common sense put me on the mark. I admit I’m no expert, just thinking on my feet. So why not just throw it out and see what happens. Not my first fishing expedition by any means. Maybe someone will read my observations and chime in. I may get three or four convincing explanations, not one of them accurate. I guess it’s a chance you take when chumming for answers. But I have a feeling that by next week I’ll know a lot more about flood silt distribution than I do now.

I hope so. It keeps life interesting.

A light-gray silt film covering the dense, green, wild-rosebush border showed the water line from Sunday’s flash flood that inundated Sunken Meadow. It was head-high, maybe even a little over six feet, and had deposited a significant layer of what looked like clay throughout the Christmas tree farm, the blanket deepest in the depressions, where I sunk almost to my ankles Tuesday, covering my Keen sandals with fine gray mud. I was there to walk the dogs and assess the damage two days after observing the flooded meadow from its elevated western lip. Even the dogs recognized the difference, seemed extra curious. You could read it in their gait and demeanor.

One symbolic discovery told me how severe the flood had been. Following the riverbank wood line back to my truck, I noticed little Chubby, four months old, sniffing at something on the two-tire farm road with grass in the middle. When he picked it up and ran, head high and proud, I could see it was a fish, maybe a foot long. Upon closer inspection, it was a plump rainbow trout. Yeah, I know, a hatchery trout released this spring. Not “wild.” But, still, if fish died, it had to be serious. The two Great Blue Herons we flushed from the periphery must have been cleaning up other dead or stranded fish in the narrow wetland puddles along the back side.

My wife and I had taken a ride down there out of curiosity Sunday around 5 p.m., after witnessing the extent of the flooding at the Green River Swimming and Recreation Area. I had seen the place under water before, but not that deep. The Butynskis living along the southern lip concurred. About my age and living there all their lives, they had never seen their lower meadow and the swimming pool across the street under so much water. Not even close. It wasn’t far from spilling over Colrain Road. Truthfully, I would have never suspected such nearby devastation while sitting at home reading Sunday, maybe a half-mile west of the Green River. My backyard brook was roaring. I could hear it and went out with an umbrella several times to observe. Even my dogs respected it, obviously wanted no part of it. The roar must have warned them to stay away. But the deeply-cut bed, which drains runoff from Patten Hill in Shelburne, would have needed to rise three or four additional feet to overflow its banks; amazing when you consider what happened to the Green River just a hop, skip and a jump away.

I guess most of the Christmas trees down in Sunken Meadow will be salvageable with a little work. The larger ones sustained more damage than the little ones planted over the past two years, which seemed to “weather the storm” just fine, minus some that were uprooted and flattened by deadfalls and other debris swept up from the river below. The taller trees were leaning south and had sustained some damage to branches on their upstream sides, but they’ll probably be OK once pruned and straightened.

When I returned home, I passed the “Road Closed” sign at the outflow of my driveway and headed for the Jersey barriers 200 yards up Brook Road to see what was happening on the other side. A Shelburne Highway Department crew put up the sign and barriers Saturday, before the tropical storm hit, presumably as a precautionary measure on a gorge road where all hell can break loose during heavy rainstorms. Curious to see if the heavy-duty repairs to some washed-out ravines from a few years back had held up through four to six inches of rain in less than 12 hours, I figured I’d take a little walk with the dogs. I love it when that road is closed and I can walk the dogs up it totally safe, no worries about traffic. People from Patten Hill, East Colrain and southern Vermont have a different opinion. When the curvy, brook-side road is closed, they wail at the inconvenience. If you don’t believe me, ask Shelburne selectmen. They’ve heard the cries every time they’ve suggested discontinuing the troublesome road to save money and labor. I walked about a half-mile to two bridges and found no damage other than a couple of small trees down in the road. Nothing serious. So, unless something let loose above where I walked to, the road closure is temporary. It was still closed Wednesday, reopening it not likely a priority with all the damage in downtown Buckland-Shelburne.

When I got back to my yard, greener than it’s ever been this time of year since I bought the place, I put Lily and Buddy in the kennel, brought Chubby around to the backyard alcove with me, fed him, sat down and finished “Ethan Allen: His Life and Times,” by Willard Stearne Randall while awaiting two loads of cordwood, primo, gray, dry oak. The biography ought to be required reading these days for anyone who believes that these Tea Party idiots making such a commotion resemble in any way the colonial radicals who fomented the American Revolution. The rebels who filled Boston Harbor with tea and plotted revolt were liberals and ardent democrats, not reactionary right-wingers protecting the status quo. The conservatives in those days were Tories, or loyalists, who supported the king and even took up arms alongside the British against the likes of Washington, Allen and the Revolutionary army. Had the latest health-care fiasco occurred in Ethan Allen’s day and been resolved as it was in favor of the larcenous insurance companies pilfering Americans daily, Allen would have ridden in with the Green Mountain Boys and ran them out of town on a rail, if they were lucky. Ethan Allen was a defender of the common man, no friend of the clergy, the royalty, the courts and corrupt politicians. Had he been alive a few years back, he likely would have ridden down Wall Street on a chestnut horse and ordered it burned to the ground, not bailed out the thieves so they could continue abusing the little guy. Allen had no love for New York schemers in the 18th century and would have had no change of heart today. Trust me.

I can say I’m proud to call Ethan Allen a cousin. We needed more like him back then, and desperately need a few good men like him now. But don’t hold your breath waiting. It ain’t happenin’. If you thought it was difficult to overthrow power in those days of sailing ships, flintlocks and tomahawks, try it against today’s frightening military force, which always protects those in charge.

I guess all we can do these days is shut up and accept it. Either that or pretend we don’t understand it.

Had Mike Flanagan been told that Gary Sanderson would publish a story about UMass memories after his death, he probably would have flashed that wry, crooked grin I remember well and quipped, “Bags? Uh-oh!”

But I’m not here to dust off skeletons from the closets at the 20 Ball Lane, Amherst bungalow we once called home. No, that is not my errand. Mike Flanagan was a dedicated ballplayer. No Animal House tales. Only good stuff. I only want to embellish the legacy of a man we called “Flan,” polish the legend of this former major league pitcher and Cy Young Award winner who committed suicide Wednesday at his Maryland home. He was 59. Too young. I knew him before he made it big. But the truth is that Flanagan was always big, which doesn’t mean physically large, just huge on talent. Anyone who played with or against him would agree. We all knew he had it and was destined to make it. He was a that good.

“You really ought to give him a call sometime, I think he’d get a kick out of hearing from you,” urged a mutual friend who said my name came up in a conversation with Flanagan in the past five years. “He loves fly fishing and would probably like to go out with you if he’s ever around.”

Well, that never happened. I figured a lot of “old friends” had contacted Flanagan over the years looking for tickets or other favors. I didn’t want to be just another pest. Plus, frankly, I had little to offer. My serious fishing days were over in the early 90s.

It has been said that Flanagan and I were roommates, which is not true. Legends seem to grow with time. Actually, I was the man who took his Ball Lane bed when he departed for Baltimore Orioles training camp. I moved in after the start of the spring 1974 semester, sharing the small North Amherst bachelors’ pad behind Matuszko Trucking with UMass basketball guard Billy Endicott and two of my baseball teammates, righthanded pitchers John Olson and Chip Baye. I knew Baye because I had faced him in Legion ball and scrimmaged his Northampton High School football teams.

My Ball Lane transition period was uncomfortable at first because Flanagan was still in town until mid-February and there was an interim period of a few weeks when I was moving in and hanging in limbo. But we got through it with aplomb. Flanagan was always easy going, affable and funny, a great, fun-loving guy. The last time I actually saw him in person was during the 1974 UMass spring baseball trip to Miami Beach. We were playing Biscayne College, which served as the Orioles’ minor league camp, and he stopped by to sit on our bench and watch the game with O’s teammate Mike Boddicker. The last time I spoke to him on the phone was in the early 1980s, when Chip Ainsworth and I were doing a weekly radio talk show on Greenfield’s WPOE AM-1520. I’d get his phone number from his father, Manchester, N.H., mechanic Ed Flanagan, and set up a time to call him for an on-air interview. I don’t recall interviewing the man, but we probably did.

Flanagan’s dad was an average Joe. There was nothing average about son Mike. He never ceased to amaze me with his extraordinary athletic skills, a kid who could do anything he put his mind to. Take pinball, for instance. He was a master. We lived just around the corner from a jock bar then named Mike’s Westview Café. The place was busy seven nights a week and Flanagan often stopped in to have a few beers, play pinball and socialize. He loved “Big Indian,” one of those classic old machines that tilted, had flippers and bumpers and bells and whistles. He’d enter the bar after supper, say 7 or 8, and leave the machine a few hours later with so many free games racked up on the board that people would play “on him” until closing. No lie. That game fared no better against him than hitters. He dominated.

People have often asked me to rate Flanagan as a pitcher. He was a lefty and I did face him a few times in live practice drills with no success. I remember arriving at Earl Lorden Field for practice in the fall of 1972, checking the daily hitting schedule and finding my name among the three hitters who would face the phenom. On the one hand, I thought it unfair. I was trying to make a team against stiff competition, with about 140 candidates vying for 40 slots. Why did I have to face the best pitcher in New England? But on the other hand, the fact that I was slotted against him was flattering. It told me I was being seriously evaluated. I vaguely remember the at-bats. Flanagan threw hard and his control was excellent, the best I had seen, so he gave you little to work with. Your choices were pretty simple: hit it where it was pitched or strike out and look foolish doing so. Your only chance was a mistake. He made few. My recollection is that in three shots at him I hit two ground balls to second base and a pop-up caught by the shortstop in short center field. I didn’t embarrass myself, but he got me out. The name of the game.

Flanagan was a fine-tuned precision machine, the likes of which I had never faced. I had seen scarier fastballs. Amherst’s Tom White first comes to mind. You could hear his heater as it exploded past your face, the high ones rising, the low ones dipping. When Whitey was on, it was a victory to foul one off. No lie. He was that overpowering; a lean, mean, 6-foot-6 lefty with a nasty fastball. But he didn’t have Flanagan’s confidence, command or repertoire and fizzled out in Double A. I think he would have made it as a one-pitch short reliever in today’s specialized game.

I actually “caught” Flanagan informally a few times on the frozen, gravel Ball Lane parking lot. He and other pitchers sometimes begged to throw on warm winter days and I’d accommodate them by putting  on a glove and playing catch before squatting to offer my target. The others could be erratic and leave welts and bruises. Not Flan. I swear he rarely missed by more than the width of the baseball. That fine, whether throwing his tailing fastball, the big 12-to-6 curve or a tighter breaking ball he’d use to cut the corners on two-strikes pitches. His command was so good — even for those off-season, parking-lot sessions — that I wouldn’t have hesitated to catch him sitting naked on a peach basket in a paved lot. No one I ever faced could hit spots like Flanagan. It was the skill that separated him from the rest.

Flanagan probably could have made it as a big-league hitter. Too bad he didn’t play in the National League, where pitchers hit. He would have done some damage. Few people who own his baseball card likely know he was not only one of the Cape League’s best pitchers in 1972, but also among its home-run leaders. Check it out if you doubt me. It’s true. Which reminds me of a night during the 1973 UMass season when I drew Flanagan’s ire after midnight. Limping from a sprained ankle that had ended my season and required two-a-day, physical-therapy, crushed-ice whirlpools, I flopped down at 20 Ball Lane on the night before a big Saturday doubleheader and hung around with the fellas for an hour or two. Flanagan was relaxing in a worn, dusty stuffed chair that looked like the ones you see roadside with a “free” sign. Watching TV and joking around with the gang, his mood changed when he discovered I needed a ride back to my frat house. He begrudgingly offered his services but wasn’t thrilled about the late-night inconvenience. After dropping me off at Sig-Ep and speeding off in what I think was a black Pontiac, he went home to bed, awoke the next morning and pitched a UMass game for the ages. Going against Yankee Conference rival Maine on short sleep in the twin-bill opener, he hit three home runs, drove in six runs, scored four and pitched a two-hitter with 10 strikeouts in a 10-1 win. The run he surrendered was unearned. Look it up if you don’t believe me. It’s a piece of the UMass Flanagan legend; to him, just another day at “The Earl.”

Baseball wasn’t the only sport Flanagan excelled at. He was a pretty fair country point guard on the 1971-72 freshman basketball team that compiled the best record in UMass history. Other notable players on that 15-1 team were Endicott, John Murphy and Jimmy Burke. Rick Pitino was a sophomore on the varsity. Another Flanagan teammate on that freshman team was South Deerfield’s late Rickey Boron, a friend of mine who was a year ahead of me at Frontier Regional School. Boron was Frontier’s first 1,000-point scorer back in the days when the milestone meant something, before the 3-point shot. He was the sixth or seventh man on the Redman team and had quite a reputation as a free-throw shooter capable of throwing in 100 straight almost anytime. One day after practice at Curry Hicks Cage, late UMass coach Jack Leaman approached Boron to tell him he’d heard about his free-throw-shooting prowess. He then issued a challenge: “I’ll rebound until you miss.”  That too became UMass legend when Boron proceeded to toss in more than 200, which apparently didn’t faze Flanagan a bit. Boron, who reportedly beat NBA Hall of Famers Sam Jones and John Havlicek regularly in free-throw contests at summer camps where he was a counselor, once told me that Flanagan was his toughest opponent. It was Flanagan’s confidence and Boron’s diffidence that leveled the contest. Flanagan would step to the line and throw in 50 or so, then playfully needle Boron until he missed. Boron wasn’t hesitant to admit that Flanagan could psych him out. You just can’t beat confidence in athletic competition, and Flanagan oozed it.

Apparently Flanagan recognized his basketball limitations quickly at UMass, though. When playing for the Toronto Blue Jays in the late 80s, he told a Toronto Sun beat writer about a memorable UMass practice against Erving that had set him straight. “I really didn’t know much about Dr. J until I came down on a fast break and pulled up to take a jump shot,” Flanagan told the scribe. “Dr. J was nowhere in the area but, out of nowhere, he blocked the shot and nine players were running the other way. First thing I thought? Better work on my slider, because this is a whole different level of play.” Perhaps he did scrimmage against Erving at the Cage, but Erving was a rookie for the Virginia Squires during the 1971-72 ABA season.

I could go on forever. There are so many yarns I could spin about Flanagan, all of them stitched with thread from which legends are stitched. Let me end with a couple anecdotes from a 1973 Amherst Common fair. The month was probably October and Flanagan, a pro ballplayer, was in town during the offseason to finish up his degree. Our UMass baseball team had returned from a Saturday doubleheader at Dartmouth College and I was headed downtown with two teammates when we bumped into Flanagan outside of Boyden Gym. We stopped to talk and he decided to accompany us to a downtown bar named Barsellotti’s, “Barsie’s,” for a couple of beers before checking out the fair. We figured we’d horse around and get a bite to eat. When we passed through the gate in a festive mood, a clown was juggling three wooden balls over to the side. Flanagan stood close and studied him for a minute or two before requesting a quick lesson. The clown obliged by slowing down a bit to demonstrate technique, then held out the balls with a why-don’t-you-try-it challenge. Flanagan accepted. After a few mess-ups, Flanagan surprised the clown and us by finding his rhythm and juggling like a court jester. That, I will never forget. The guy was blessed with extraordinary hand-to-eye coordination.

It gets better. Later that same night on the midway, we came upon a loudmouth carnival barker sitting on the plank above a dunk-the-dink tank. The dink dude was hollering out insults like, “Hey, chicken wing or noodle arm, give it a shot” and other barbs intended to pull in suckers. He clearly didn’t know what he was dealing with when our foursome approached. There we were, four ballplayers — three pitchers, one a pro with pinpoint control — and they were offering three throws for a buck. Baseballs, no less. Though short on cash as students usually are, we couldn’t resist the tease. Most enticing was the fact that the dink wasn’t wearing a wetsuit. He was about to pay a stiff price in the frigid autumn air. Within 10 or 15 minutes on that cold, dark, windy night, that dink was turning a light shade of blue and shivering so hard that we could hear his teeth chattering from where we stood outside the booth. He finally cried uncle, pulled in a replacement and wrapped himself up in a couple of wool blankets. The scene really tickled Flanagan’s funny bone. He laughed hysterically and tossed a few good-natured verbal harpoons at the shivering soul as we walked away.

I guess that’s how I want to remember “Flan,” with that infectious laugh and cool, calculated confidence. Don’t bore me with the portrait those who didn’t know him are painting in the press following his tragic final act. The way I view it, he departed his way. As a friend, I must accept that.